music writing
Speaking of sexism and writing about music
Speaking of sexism and writing about music. Here about is a comment, probably my favorite of all time, from Gorilla Vs. Bear. When I worked at Pitchfork I saw comments on his posts all the time from anonymous readers saying I had ripped off his posts, when everyone gets the
The redesigned SPIN is like a Lana Dey Rey song
A month ago SPIN debuted its new, redesigned, bi-monthly format. As both a music editor and a former writer of music reviews for SPIN, I was curious about it, though in a personal-low-stakes kind of way. If I were still freelancing for SPIN, I’d worry about their decision to
How I judge music
Pitchfork’s internal editing system lets me see my past review scores all in one place. Since I don’t review stuff very often for them, I was a little surprised to see the numbers all in one place like that. It turns out I’m a high grader. Or
What's going on in Austin?
Three years ago, which was about five months into my “professional” music writing career, I personally put a manila folder of clips into Rob Tannenbaum’s inter-office mailbox at Blender. A few days later he emailed me some nice comments, and also a little critique: You’re writing within the
I am testing that dream.
Seeing Weezer for me is probably like seeing My Bloody Valentine for a lot of other people–or maybe not. Maybe it’s really like seeing Liz Phair, where you know there’s something great there that got sorta misplaced or deferred or scared out of the person, or maybe
Music fanboyism
“Only a critic that submits to fanboyism can match his readers’ earnestness, grasping the pinnacles and depths experienced by us, the fans ditching school to camp out for concert tickets, the people who listen to music for fun.” —Making the Case for Music Fanboyism, Orr Shtuhl, The Morning News Some
