I listened to 249 albums (an average of almost 3 times each) in 2017 to arrive at my top 100 albums for 2017. As anyone with math skills will see, that leaves 149 albums that didn’t make the cut. These are (mostly) very good records in and of themselves, but […]
I’m done! Woo-hoo and thank God. With the last page of Finnegan’s Wake, I have now read every book on the Random House Modern Library list of the Best Novels […]
The International Travel Writer’s Guild (or whatever it’s called) must have a rule: you can’t write an article about Tokyo without using the phrase “city of contrasts.”
Probably 15 or so years ago, when I was first struggling with writing and realizing I needed to read a lot more fiction, an author I knew suggested looking at […]
So you want to travel to Japan? Here are a few practicalities to keep in mind, things that you’ll find buried in guidebooks or that I found to be different […]
#25: Aurora, All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend A phenomenal debut from Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora Aksnes. This is more in the tradition of orchestral, torch music of Lykke Li than […]
#50: Corinne Bailey Rae, The Heart Speaks in Whispers Impeccably written and arranged gospel/soul #49: Bleached, Welcome the Worms Imagine The Go-Gos with guts, more punk sensibility and a sense of noise, and you’ll […]
Crying, Beyond the Fleeting Gates Bear Hands, You’ll Pay For This Bob Mould, Patch the Sky Tancred, Out of the Garden Skylar Grey, Natural Causes Japanese Breakfast, Psychopomp Big Thief, […]
Starting off my “Best Albums of 2016” process, here are the albums that did NOT make the cut. Not that they’re not good records (I skim everything first so they had to grab some degree of my attention). In fact, I think I own more from this list than from […]
For a thinking person, it’s an upsetting time. I’ve found myself prone to despair and belly-aching. I spent a lot of time thinking about this through the holidays, and a plan began to crystallize. The final kick in the pants came Saturday when I picked up on all the positive […]