A QUICK WORD ABOUT PAPERTHINWALLS.COM

Did you think Paper Thin Walls was a piece of instal­la­tion art too? What else could a new music start-up with no rev­enue stream be? Appar­ent­ly it was­n’t. I knew it was too good to be true. It paid! Now it’s gone.

I was there in the begin­ning. I don’t remem­ber exact­ly how I got involved. I may have worn edi­tor Christo­pher Wein­garten down or he may have asked me to help him out of a hole while edit­ing the first Hol­i­day Mix­tape. It was a bap­tism by fire, all done for free, or out of some vague belief that I might actu­al­ly get paid for all the non­sense I was doing back then. It did­n’t, but I vol­un­teered for more as my unem­ploy­ment wound down.

In the end, it was all worth it. Work­ing with Chris Wein­garten (and Bran­don and Tom) was an oppor­tu­ni­ty not to be missed for a cou­ple of rea­sons. First, it was refresh­ing to find some­one so ded­i­cat­ed to music writ­ing, in and of itself. I felt that he was real­ly try­ing to recre­ate Chuck Eddy’s ver­sion of the Voice’s music sec­tion. It remind­ed me why I liked music writ­ing in the first place. He was curat­ing the sort of site I want­ed to read all the time.

Sec­ond­ly, and this is real­ly a corol­lary of the first point, Whiney’s just a great edi­tor. When I’d sign on in the morn­ing, I’d check Pitch­fork and find umpteen typo­graph­i­cal errors in the lead review or fea­ture, things that could’ve been fixed with just a lit­tle proof­read­ing. I’d joke with Chris about them, say­ing, “So many edi­tors, so lit­tle edit­ing.” Per­haps it was because of this that Chris held him­self to a high­er standard.

It’s more than a lit­tle sad to see a site like Paper Thin Walls go. It was one of the last bas­tions of music crit­i­cism that did­n’t frus­trate me. The reviews were short and to the point, which helped keep the writ­ing live­ly. When I worked on Bull­horn updates for the news feed, I felt like I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lay waste to the pub­lic­i­ty cycle in 10 words or less. It was the sort of out­let that struck a crit­i­cal bal­ance between gonzo antics and for­mal­ism and kept music crit as it should be first and fore­most: fun!

Last, but cer­tain­ly not least, Paper Thin Walls helped me get my cur­rent job! I cel­e­brate that fact every oth­er Fri­day morn­ing at mid­night. Thanks for every­thing, Whiney. Your hard work and patience will not soon be forgotten.

A QUICK WORD ABOUT “FAKE EMPIRE”

When I first heard the Nation­al’s “Fake Empire” used dur­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, I was­n’t sure if the Democ­rats quite under­stood the reflex­iv­i­ty of its use, i.e. that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has been half awake in a fake empire since Sep­tem­ber 2001. It’s time some­one — or some­thing — woke them up.

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2008: SOLANGE — “SANDCASTLE DISCO”

Bey­on­ce’s lit­tle sis­ter Solange is prov­ing to be one of the most pleas­ant sur­pris­es of the year. “Sand­cas­tle Dis­co” is anoth­er one of those songs that should’ve been released the moment it was clear that there’d be noth­ing fun on the radio between May and August. I mean, how could a song this fun be kept from a mass audi­ence in times like these? It’s the sort of song you’ll be singing in front of the mir­ror into your hair­brush. For a few min­utes, Solange’s “Sand­cas­tle Dis­co” makes you for­get about how bad it is out there. Shred the unpaid bills! We need more confetti!

(Please for­give the spot­ty video qual­i­ty. I tried to use FNMTV’s pro­pri­etary play­er, but it would­n’t load prop­er­ly when embedded.)

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2008: TORCHE — “ACROSS THE SHIELDS”

Some peo­ple are dis­ap­point­ed in Torche for record­ing an album that has crossover poten­tial. That might both­er me, too, if it were still pos­si­ble for met­al bands to crossover. To me, “Across the Shields” exem­pli­fies what makes Torche’s Mean­derthal such an excit­ing album: not only are they mak­ing catchy, hooky music, they’re still going for the jugu­lar. Every moment exults in tri­umph. With Mean­derthal, Torche blend inten­si­ty and pop sen­si­bil­i­ty that one rarely sees in met­al, and it’s more than a lit­tle refresh­ing after a few sol­id years of black met­al fetishism.

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2008: SANTOGOLD — “LIGHTS OUT”

It’s easy to under­stand why San­ti White aka San­to­gold would be upset with crit­ics for call­ing her music hip-hop or R&B, as any­one who’s lis­tened to her lat­est sin­gle, “Lights Out,” would know. It’s a great new wave track that could’ve, nay, should’ve been one of the sum­mer’s under­sung hits. Then again, with a new sea­son of “Gos­sip Girl” just around the cor­ner, it might have the mak­ings of a cam­pus classic.