Two months into 2019, yeah yeah. I have a late pass. This isn’t everything, btw. I’ve omitted a few unbearably bad (one of them anti-Semitic) books I had to read for a gig economy job. No order. Transit Kudos Rachel Cusk Numbers two and three in Cusk’s earned take on WG Sebald’s innerspace fiction. Or, […]
It’s taken time and two f/t freelance gigs, but here we are: 2017 reads. All of these were published in 2017 and, if not, early 2018. One of those freelance gigs required reading fiction (mostly in translation) & non-fiction still to be released in 2018. Sounds like a dream job, but, sadly, most weren’t worth […]
This list is only 2016 (or close?) publications. Read plenty this year from other years, but other lists, other days. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, released in 2015, won the 2016 Booker. Deserved. It’s the best book of 2015 and 2016. The overrated Confederacy of Dunces reads like a dictionary compared to The Sellout. In no order: Trouble Boys […]
The best albums I didn’t hate, in 2016, didn’t inlcude much new hip hop. Not sure why. Maybe Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition. Senior rappers comported themselves well, De La Soul, Kool Keith and A Tribe Called Quest making better records than expected, especially the latter. In descending order, after the Spotify List. Albums: Heron Oblivion – S/T […]
I’ve always considered shoegaze the “I know it when I hear it” genre. For much of Pitchfork’s new “50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time” list, I have no qualms. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless belongs at number one, and Ride’s Nowhere and Slowdive’s Souvlaki could interchange between #2 and #3, I really don’t care. I love the inclusion of Mercury Rev […]
Time to go deep into the last decade, as far as unsung movie scores, now that I’ve gone deep in the 80s and deep again in the 90s. When it came to compilations, the ’00s were flush with comebacks. Kevin Shields returned for Lost in Translation. Oh Brother Where Art Thou? completed Ralph Stanley’s long-overdue crossover from […]
Back before the Compact Disc became a deer in Napster’s headlights, soundtrack compilations were king. Bands enjoyed real paydays by landing tracks on Love Jones, Wild Wild West, or Pulp Fiction, or Trainspotting. Yet, with rare exceptions, most 1990s soundtrack comps trafficked in forgettable chart-eaters and shitloads of filler, some of it not even appearing in the accompying […]
Joe Strummer – Permanent Record (1988) and Walker (1987) Joe Strummer’s post-Clash songs for soundtracks and benefit comps often blow away the pretty damn good songs found on his solo albums. They deserve their own compilation. Following the final breaths of the Clash around 1986, Strummer jumped right into soundtrack work with two excellent songs for Sid & Nancy. With the soundtrack […]
Pitchfork recently spat out their “50 Best Ambient Records of All Time” list, essentially a holistic (and deserved) tribute to Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Oneotrix Point Never, and Tim Hecker. I assume it’s also a native advert for Spotify. For example, omissions include Ash Ra Tempel’s landmark ambient work “Inventions for Electric Guitar,” while the sole […]
Billboard recently posted a list attempting to name the 100 “greatest ever” music books. Billboard’s list includes High Fidelity, as well as a few other novels. Is High Fidelity – listed as high as #9 – a better rock novel than Delillo’s Great Jones Street, Harlan Ellison’s Spider Kiss, or Paul Ford’s Gary Benchley, Rock Star? Tom Perrotta’s Wishbones? Maybe not worse than some or […]
Stop Loving Everything 