Category: Listening

  • Another Hex-mas Miracle

    I can’t remem­ber if I’ve ever been able to lis­ten to as much of Jon Solomon’s 25-hour #WPRBX­mas as I did this year. It was fan­tas­tic as usu­al and pro­duced some great quotes from my sister-in-law. But the real Christ­mas mag­ic hap­pened on Christ­mas Day, as the Fall set wrapped up with the debut of…

  • We Don’t Deserve The New Pornographers

    I wrote this about the New Pornog­ra­phers in 2017. It still holds up. Their new record is fab­u­lous. You should lis­ten to it if you haven’t already! I’m still wrestling with why I ever took a break from them in the first place. A big part of why I tuned out on the New Pornog­ra­phers was…

  • Grails — Deep Snow II

    I met Grails in Fish­town, before or after a show upstairs at the old Cir­cle of Hope on Frank­ford, I don’t quite remem­ber. The show itself was phe­nom­e­nal. They were out in sup­port of  2007’s Black Tar Prophe­cies Vol 1–3, a col­lec­tion I real­ly enjoyed and a sound NPR Music’s Lars Gotrich describes as “doomy…

  • The New Pornographers — High Ticket Attractions

    The New Pornog­ra­phers are an inter­na­tion­al trea­sure. Every­thing I wrote in this post I want to take back. Their only crime was giv­ing us so much joy. You have no idea how elat­ed I was to find their new song, “High Tick­et Attrac­tions,” from their forth­com­ing record, White­out Con­di­tions, post­ed to YouTube. “High Tick­et Attrac­tions”…

  • Gorillaz — Hallelujah Money

    When I think about the artists I grew up lis­ten­ing to there are few I admire as much as Damon Albarn. Sure, much of that is owed to my year in Den­mark, where I wit­nessed up close Blur’s bat­tle with Oasis, but when I look back on that time, I still think The Great Escape…