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Building Nothing Out of Something

The first verse of Modest Mouse's 1996 song "Whenever I Breathe Out, You Breathe In (Positive/Negative)" is the most evocative description of depression that I've ever heard: I didn't go to work for a month I didn't leave my

My Three Son(g)s (of the Summer)

I've come to think of seasons like cultural critics think of the 1960s—the boundaries are less dictated by the calendar and more by monumental vibe shifts. This year my summer began early, in late April when I left for my honeymoon. And now that it's

Pet Sounds

Sly Stone and Brian Wilson died within 72 hours of each other this week, both aged 82. They weren't young, nor were they acquaintances of mine. It still sucks. Both revolutionized popular music as we know it; both were as essential to the 1960s overhaul as anyone not

Demon Days & The Dystopian Undercurrent of the 2000s

Romanticizing the early 2000s is an easy trap to fall into. Now that modern pop culture is essentially a nostalgia factory, every pre-COVID (or even pre-Trump) era is eligible for glorification, but the W. Bush years are particularly prime. They're recent enough to be actively remembered by most

On "Recession Indicator" Music

Yesterday at 12:25 PM, the third pillar fell. Skrillex took all of the goodwill he's gotten from making borderline-tasteful music for the past decade and threw it in the trash. Wait no, sorry, I meant to say that Skrillex surprise-released a new album. It just so happens

My Two Favorite Bands Released Albums Today

THIS IS MY BARBENHEIMER. On one side, a louche Dan Bejar stumbling underneath chandeliers. On the other, a wraithlike George Clarke shrieking in the eye of a hurricane. Ask me to name my favorite band/artist and you’ll get a blank expression and a lot of blinking. If you

Melancholy and the Infinite Breakfast

A review of the new Japanese Breakfast album, 'For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)' Last week, I was listening to the Mazzy Star episode of Bandsplain, an incredibly informative and entertaining podcast hosted by Yasi Salek. Her guest was Meaghan Garvey, who is probably my favorite music writer

The Future is Pink Siifu

Shout out to long, time-commitment art. Not all of it, obviously—devoting multiple hours of your life to hollow bloat sucks—but there's nothing quite like luxuriating in the sprawl of a rich, excessive film or album. Everyone loves a tight, bite-sized marvel of efficiency, and with good

The All-Timers #9 - Fall Out Boy's "Thnks fr th Mmrs"

"Playing with house money" means gambling with chips you've already won. I had to Google that, though I use the expression all the time. I've only been to a casino once—in high school, some friends and I took advantage of a weird loophole

Walking at Night in a Cold World

Last week, I walked south from my apartment to Elmhurst Park, a small sliver of land that backs up to the Long Island Expressway. Between Corona Park to the east, Astoria Park to the west, and said Expressway to the south, this northwest chunk of Queens has a severe lack

The All-Timers #7 & #8 - The Olivia Tremor Control's "NYC-25" & The Zombies' "Hung Up on a Dream"

I have no idea about the prerequisites, logistics, or responsibilities of a music supervisor for film and/or television, but I've always thought it'd be the coolest job in the world. There's nothing more memorable than a pitch-perfect sync—Underworld's "Born

My Year in Maximalism

Lately I've been thinking about an essay entitled "Maximal Nation" that Pitchfork ran in December 2011. In it, veteran music journalist Simon Reynolds identified an overarching trend in the year's most acclaimed electronic music, linking otherwise unrelated artists through their common pursuit of things

The Underrateds/Honorable Mentions

A few weeks ago, amid the mass migration of well-intentioned lefties from Twitter to Bluesky, I promised that I'd let my thousandth follower on the latter platform select the topic of an upcoming newsletter. To one Andy Steiner's credit, they picked a very easy prompt that

ElveruMania Feat. Daniel Bromfield

From the guys that brought you Stereogum and Pitchfork's reviews of Mount Eerie's new album comes: even more Mount Eerie content. I'm back from an unannounced monthlong Inbox Infinity drought. This newsletter is fun but it makes me next to no money, so I

Enter The Stargate

A short work of fiction about Blood Incantation's new album, 'Absolute Elsewhere' ~~ I needed that, Sheriff thought as he drove to his first day back at work. A week at the cabin always does me right. The family had fun, the water was warmer than usual,

Seattle's Most Historically Significant Music Studio Enters A New Era

Though I grew up 90 minutes north, and more recently spent eight years three hours south in Portland, I've never lived in Seattle. I have, however, spent a ton of time there on childhood trips and adulthood visits to see friends. Over the years, I've found

Why The Hell Do I Like Porter Robinson So Much?

"Russian Roulette," the third single off of Porter Robinson's month-old album SMILE! :D, contains the silliest verse I've heard all year. I'll print the excerpt in question, but first: if you're confused by the words "Pitchfork monkey piss review,

The All-Timers #6: Jackson Browne's "The Pretender"

In this series, I write about one of my all-time favorite songs. There's no rhyme or reason to the order. Check out past editions here. Are you aware of Jackson Browne's reputation as a ladykiller? Regardless of your familiarity with his music, you should be. Just

How Does Charly Bliss Do It? An Interview with Eva Hendricks

Whenever I come across an album that I'm certain will appeal to specific friends, I keep it close to my chest until I'm presented with the perfect moment to shove it down their throats. On paper, the afternoon of December 26th, 2017 wasn't the

Cultural Ubiquity is a Knife

Here's my idea for the first trailer for recently-wrapped "epic melodrama" Mother Mary, which stars Anne Hathaway as a troubled popstar and has Charli xcx and Jack Antonoff handling the soundtrack: Open with a Hathaway voiceover about the pressures of fame over slo-mo shots of a

The Song "Doves" By Armand Hammer?!?!

I turned off We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, the album that rap duo Armand Hammer had just released, about halfway through my first listen. It was a beautiful day in September and I had just started a four-hour roundtrip drive in Washington State, from my parents' house to SeaTac

BEER MUSIC: A Taxonomy

You hear a pop, crack, fizz. It's more sonorous than a seltzer or soda—the thick foam announces itself even if it's not spilling over the top. It's not the echoing plunk of an uncorked wine bottle or the crackling of liquor poured over

10 Underrated Albums and EPs From the Half-Year

Earlier today, I tweeted a rough, unranked list of my favorite albums of the past six months. There are some years that don't seem to kick into high gear until the fall, where whatever albums I list at the end of June are barely an afterthought by the

This Is My This Is Lorelei Review

I like to think of myself as a writer, a reader, and above all, a fan of wordplay, puns, and dad jokes. Need evidence? Look what I decided to title a newsletter about a band called This Is Lorelei. Whenever cheeky and/or clever verbal trickery goes over my head,

The All-Timers #5: Linkin Park's "Somewhere I Belong"

In this series, I write about one of my all-time favorite songs. There's no rhyme or reason to the order. Check out past editions here. Music class, Fourth Grade. It's a once-a-week thing. One afternoon, we're all given miniature xylophones—think the rainbow-colored, eight-note

Merch is Dead, Long Live Merch

On Tuesday, GQ ethered my entire identity with a thinkpiece entitled "The End of Merch." In it, fashion editor Samuel Hine argues that the era of the graphic tee, the dad hat, the branded mug, is over, with these shallow signifiers of one's cultural taste ripe

Neil Young, Patron Saint of Individuality

I'm sitting in a second-story pool hall looking down at Austin Street on a drizzly evening in Forest Hills, Queens. I was in the market for a place to grab a couple of reasonably priced beers before entering the nearby stadium, but I wanted to avoid the asses-to-elbows

Steve Albini and the Hardest Drum Break of All Time

The first drum break I ever truly loved is the one that opens Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks." Thunderous, echoey, swaggering, it rewarded me for sticking around until the last track on the band's blockbuster fourth album, an LP that my mom received

A "Profile" of Enumclaw

I spent a day with the Tacoma, Washington indie rock band. I wrote about it. Getting emotionally invested in an artist is a tricky proposition when you're a music critic. Of course every writer wants to wax poetic about the art that affects them most, but if you

Why Are So Many Musicians Obsessed with Charles Manson?

“Is it a conspiracy that the music is telling the youth to rise up against the establishment?… It is not my conspiracy. It is not my music. I hear what it relates. It says 'rise,' it says 'kill.' Why blame it on me? I didn’t

Why Cindy Lee's "Diamond Jubilee" Feels Like a 2010 Success Story

An investigation of the year's most talked-about indie rock album, with assistance from veteran music critic Ian Cohen. The album presents itself as a relic. It's not on streaming services, and to download it you have to go to an ancient-looking Geocities page. Its primary inspiration

The All-Timers #4: Joni Mitchell's "Amelia"

In this series, I write about one of my all-time favorite songs. There's no rhyme or reason to the order. Check out past editions here. Paul Simon, rocking a khaki suit, aging pageboy cut, and spray-on-looking-ass beard combo, fresh off of a performance of "50 Ways To

Bad News for People Who Love "Good News for People Who Love Bad News"

If you know me well, or even if you don't but you've read my writing or follow me on Twitter, you might be surprised to learn that Modest Mouse was akin to a bargain-bin buzzband for me in my earliest years of following them: I liked

On Discovering a Perfect Song Late at Night

As much as I wish that every pivotal first listening experience would come with a fittingly breathtaking backdrop, that's rarely the case. Who's vacationing through the Alps on a glorious spring day thinking, Time for some new music discovery? More often than not, transcendence pierces through

In Defense of John Frusciante (Does He Need Defending? Probably Not, But I'm Still Gonna Do It)

Don't worry, he's alive and well, and he hasn't done anything cancelable (that I'm aware of). I'm writing the type of glowing career retrospective usually reserved for obituaries or image rehabilitations simply because I was already spending a lot of

The Blind Spots #2: Late-Period Peter Gabriel Albums

Welcome to The Blind Spots, a recurring series where I engage with an artist's discography (or a part of that discography) with which I'm woefully unfamiliar. My first installment was all the way back in October, and in it, I ranked The Rolling Stones' post-1981

Having Your Pop and Eating It Too: Why Charli XCX's Album Rollouts Are So Annoying

An analysis of the British popstar's public persona, with assistance from writer/DJ/publicist Jacqueline Codiga. On Monday, British culture magazine The Face published a profile of Charli XCX, the 31-year-old musician who, over the course of 12+ years of bonafide hits and wildly experimental fare alike, has

The All-Timers #3: Playboi Carti & Lil Uzi Vert's "Shoota"

In this series, I write about one of my all-time favorite songs. There's no rhyme or reason to the order, I just pick whatever I'm feeling in the moment. The past editions have been on New Order's "Your Silent Face" and Viktor

Why Was "The Grey Album" Such a Big Deal 20 Years Ago?

The headline "Underground Rap Producer Remixes The Beatles" might get 40 retweets in 2024. Why would we be interested in hearing a guy whose only claim to fame was a Jemini album chop up samples of the canonical greatest band of all time? We have AI for that!

Making Sense of (and Predicting) the Talking Heads Tribute Album

In the past six months, Talking Heads have been making more headlines than you'd expect for a band that's lain dormant for 33 years. Their all-time classic concert film Stop Making Sense returned to theaters last September for its 40th anniversary, which prompted the band'

Justice, Tame Impala, and the State of FestivalCore in 2024

This feels inevitable. Justice, the electronic duo who emboldened French Touch/nu-disco tropes with leather jackets and arena rock ambitions in the mid-2000s, have tipped off their comeback with a lob pass to Kevin Parker, the Aussie psych-cum-pop auteur who has admired big-tent dance music since day one. With their

Emergency Inbox Infinity (Pitchfork Edition)

I'm breaking from my usual Friday release schedule because I had to write about this immediately. As I begin to type this it's been about two-and-a-half hours since media reporter Max Tani broke the news that Pitchfork is set to be "brought into the GQ

The All-Timers #2: New Order's "Your Silent Face"

It's come to my attention just now, while scrambling for a topic for this week's newsletter amidst a recently assigned tight deadline, that I've never written a word about New Order outside of Twitter. That feels weird because I've considered them one

My Top 10 Albums of 2004

What a year, am I right? A lot to be disappointed by—Shrek 2, Bush getting reelected (Howard Dean was ROBBED!), Livestrong bracelets, Justin Timberlake ruining Janet Jackson's career, the ongoing Iraq War, Gwen Stefani's "Harajuku Girls"—but also some good things! Can'

Inbox Infinity's Best Albums of 2023

Writing the introductory essay to a year-end list feels like writing a preamble on a cooking blog. I'm not going to take the time to program in the "SKIP TO RECIPE" button that I love so much; instead I'll keep this short. Music criticism,

The Best New-To-Me Albums of 2023

List season is upon us. Despite 2023's insistence at dragging on for another few weeks, sites and writers everywhere have begun rounding up all of their favorites from the year and sharing them with the masses. In a couple of weeks I'll do the same, but

The All-Timers #1: Viktor Vaughn & Apani B's "Let Me Watch"

Today is December 1st, which means it's officially garbage time for music writers. Time to pad those stats, put in the bench players, and maybe eventually drop a year-end list. My version of "bench players" for the newsletter are recurring features, one of which (The Blind

I Called In Sick From Your Classic Album Playthrough

Somehow it didn't dawn on me that I was finally experiencing a "Classic Album Playthrough" set as it was intended until I was already inside the venue last night. I've attended probably a dozen similar tours, where artists resurrect their best-loved material and dutifully

Hotline TNT & Golden Apples Made Two Very Good Indie Rock Albums

I'd begin by saying 'They don't make them like this anymore,' but it's much more likely the case that things like this never stopped being made and I just didn't know where to look for them, or that, thanks to

Robbie Robertson Can Score The Hell Out Of Movies

When Robbie Robertson died this August, I learned an incredible fact about him. I'd always assumed his parents named him "Robert Robertson," which is patently silly, but that type of thing does happen—I have a friend whose grandfather's legal name is Jack Jackson.

The Blind Spots #1: The Late-Period Rolling Stones Unlistenability Test

This is my sixth newsletter, and I've decided to start my first recurring series of essays, a good sign that I'm settling into the Weekly Newsletter Lifestyle. It's called The Blind Spots, and it'll involve me doing deep dives into the discographies

Don't Stop In The Rain

Welcome to Inbox Infinity, a music writer's attempt to recapture excitement via his Gmail inbox. Send me your music. "The Big Three" As of this Tuesday, the Number One song in the country is Drake and J. Cole's "First Person Shooter." I&

Let's Remember the BrandCore Collabs of the 2010s

Welcome to Inbox Infinity, a music writer's attempt to recapture excitement via his Gmail inbox. The first three essays I've written for Inbox Infinity have either been depressing or sappy, so for a change, let's talk about something fun. While I was working on

SponCon & On & On...

Welcome to Inbox Infinity, a music writer's attempt to recapture excitement via his Gmail inbox. On Monday, Complex ran an interview with Donald Glover. That, in and of itself, is newsworthy, because even on the rare occasion that he sits down for a print Q&A, there&

Nostalgia x Infinity

Welcome to Inbox Infinity, a music writer's attempt to recapture excitement via his Gmail inbox. Submit your music for consideration here. "'I don't trust anybody's nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling

Inbox Infinity

A music writer's attempt to recapture excitement via his Gmail inbox.