Author: J T. Ramsay

  • The Thermals — Desperate Ground

    The Ther­mals have a new album out in April on Sad­dle Creek. It’s called Des­per­ate Ground. I’m real­ly excited.

  • Saying Goodbye to My CD Collection

    I start­ed pack­ing up my remain­ing CDs last night. I’ve final­ly real­ized that no mat­ter how often I tell myself that I’ll rip them to a dri­ve, or that I’ll fall in love with the medi­um all over again, they will only col­lect dust in a dark cor­ner of my house. Don’t believe me? Look…

  • My Bloody Valentine — MBV

    There are few musi­cal moments as unlike­ly as a new My Bloody Valen­tine album. And it’s here. And I’m lis­ten­ing to it. And it’s glo­ri­ous in its My Bloody Valen­tine-ness. I’ll leave the review to Ned Raggett. A Smiths reunion seems a fait accom­pli now, no?

  • Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom

    Free­dom will be remem­bered as a sto­ry that cap­tures a very strange chap­ter in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. It’s hard to put a fin­ger on it, but the mood of the last decade is some­thing Franzen nails. His char­ac­ters rep­re­sent the amoral fugue state we drift­ed off into col­lec­tive­ly after 2003. I’m not even sure his hol­lowed…

  • Woebot’s 100 Lost Rock Albums From the 1970s

    Matthew Ingram’s fan­tas­tic Woe­bot blog was an inspi­ra­tion to me as a crit­ic. His vora­cious appetite for and catholic taste in music pushed me to expand my palate and lis­ten to music oth­ers may have dis­missed as less­er works. In short, Woe­bot had big ears and it did­n’t hurt that he could write.  I’m final­ly read­ing…