Friday, December 22, 2023
The first band you think of when you think of Christmas music is probably not Ladytron. Then again, they have the icy synths, vocals that are enveloped by frosted echoes and wintertime themes. So maybe, while they are most definitely not Christmas music, their sound is appropriate this time of year. "All Over By Xmas" is really more for completionists, but the chorus did get stuck in my head after a single listen, so it's a pretty catchy tune.
Friday, December 15, 2023
Cartwheel, the new album by Hotline TNT on Jack White's Third Man Records, has the distinction of being one of Pitchfork Media's picks for best new music. While I'm not always in sync with the writers of that particular publication on what's fresh, I have to back up their decision in this case. Though Cartwheel occasionally relents in tempo and density, it’s extremely loud at all volumes, a force multiplier for the saddest secrets of its source material—power-pop love songs in love with the concept of love as learned from other power-pop songs about the same thing.
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Years ago, then presidential candidate Donald Trump famously said he could shoot someone on 5th Ave. in New York and his supporters would still follow him. With each new indictment and poll number, his hyperbolic hypothetical proves itself to be more and more plausible. He's broken the boundaries of what any other politician could conceivably get away with many times over with little observable diminishment in the fervor of his fan base.
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Ted Gioia writes about the battle between macroculture and microculture. ChatGPT makes the distinction between the two cultures: In essence, macroculture represents the dominant cultural framework of a society, while microcultures are the distinct subgroups with their own customs and values existing within that broader framework.Gioia believes microculture is taking over after the 20th century was dominated by macroculture, and welcomes the shift. Gioia was always more into microculture and the conceptually adjacent counterculture.
Friday, November 17, 2023
At the beginning of this year, I went through a bit of a thought experiment. I imagined that I had the power to call forth a new album from any band of my choice. What band would I choose? The two names that came foremost to mind were Wild Nothing and Ice Choir, both essentially pseudonyms for single musicians who make immaculate sophistipop (Jack Tatum and Kurt Feldman, respectively). I've learned that although Kurt Feldman is working on some new music, his love for complex and time-consuming video games means that any kind of release may be long in coming.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
I have benefitted from the use of AI recently. When I wanted to buy a complementary DAC and speaker combination, I consulted the "Schiit Talker," Schiit Audio's chatbot. It helpfully steered me away from some speakers that were less compatible with the DAC (but cheaper) I was looking at and towards the Kanto Yu4 set. I've been extremely happy with the DAC + speaker combo since I acted on the advice and purchased the equipment.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
As someone who in college majored in psychology and family and child counseling, I’m a proponent of therapy as an intervention in the case emotional difficulties. However, I am starting to question the potential overuse of therapy. Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic about a study in which Australian teens with no history of mental health challenges were given therapy and actually saw negative outcomes as a result. “Maybe everybody thinking about how anxious or hurt they are might not be the best idea,” says Jean M.
Monday, October 23, 2023
I finally reached the breaking point with Apple Music. I’ve been a loyal Apple Music subscriber ever since the demise of the beloved Rdio streaming music service. I just can’t deal with the bugs across the application and service anymore. Recently, I set my downloads to lossless quality, but I had trouble simply downloading music. I would try to download an album, and the progress indicator would just spin around and around.
Thursday, October 19, 2023
We recently had a training exercise at work which took the form of a quiz on various compliance topics. The quiz was competitive, with each player picking their favorite musician/band as their username, and answering questions for a chance at getting on the five player deep leaderboard (I came in sixth, right behind Metallica). There were so many people who picked Taylor Swift as their username, you could hardly tell who was in the lead.
Monday, October 16, 2023
Fr. Stephen Freeman writes about the modern condition in a way that resonates with me and what I've witnessed in my lifetime. I think we are often disappointed that God refuses to behave as the god of modernity. The extremes of the “prosperity” preachers are only the most egregious examples of modernity’s god. There are others, more subtle. For example, we expect God to cooperate with our political projects (both Left and Right).
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
The first time I went to an Orthodox Christian Church, it was with a group of confirmation students from my Presbyterian Church. Not knowing the tradition, we just happened to end up at "Forgiveness Vespers," the service that kicks off the Orthodox Season of Lent. At this service, parishioners line up around the perimeter of the church sanctuary and walk around the circle hugging each other and asking for forgiveness. This was a rather intimate tradition for 8th graders who didn't know anyone at the church to be participating in.
Saturday, October 7, 2023
I've been writing recently about my new appreciation for physical media for my music collection. I've hit a few snags, though. As the absolute cost of obtaining music goes down in that you can get almost anything included as part of your all-you-can-eat streaming music plan, the cost of physical copies of that same music keeps increasing.[1] Just today, I received a CD I ordered from Bandcamp. When I opened the package, I couldn't help but feel a bit left down.
Friday, October 6, 2023
Karaoke Night by soccer mommy When I went to the Hopscotch music festival a few weeks ago, two of the bands that I went to see were Soccer Mommy and Pavement. Pavement played the first day, Soccer Mommy the third. After Sophia Regina Allison, the woman behind the stage name Soccer Mommy, took the stage, she mentioned getting really into the festival and staying the whole weekend (something not all the artists did).
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Matter continues to add features that make a subscription to the service even more valuable. The latest is an enhancement to their recent podcast support. Matter will not intelligently (some might say artificially) break podcasts down into chapters. This is something that used to be done organically with podcasts, but seems to have fallen by the wayside as podcasters potentially worried about people skipping the now ubiquitous ads. It's nice to have this capability back.
Friday, September 22, 2023
This article about the lifecycle of tricks in skateboarding really brought back memories for me. It heavily references the early nineties, the period I was most active in skateboarding. As noted in the piece, it was a time of big pants and small wheels. Lucas Wiesenthal, who wrote the piece, focuses on a few particular tricks, one of which is the pressure flip. Wiesenthal relates how quickly tricks came into vogue and how, just as quickly, they went out.
Monday, September 18, 2023
Last week, I spent some time serving at a soup kitchen. This soup kitchen no longer serves soup, but I guess no one can decide on something more appropriate to describe the establishment. I ended up serving donuts, which were the dessert du jour, the last thing on the line before drinks. Previously, I had served drinks, and people could pick sweet tea or lemonade, but now, the only drink offered is water.
Thursday, September 14, 2023
The moment when I became a catechumen in the Orthodox Church is captured on Instagram. There are a few comments about our group of catechumens. One reads, "may they persevere to the end." I believe I've heard this before in the same, or similar contexts, so I think it is a pretty common saying under these circumstances. When I first read it, I wondered why there was such a strong statement of hope in our ability to run the race.
Monday, September 4, 2023
If the soundtrack to the movie Kids isn't my favorite film score, it's certainly close to it. I listened to the cassette I had over and over on long drives to and from college my sophomore year after my recovery from lymphoma. I had incredibly mixed feelings about the movie itself, owing to the overwhelming nihilism it depicted, which was only enhanced by both Larry Clark and Harmony Korine's congenital knack for taking things to the extreme.
Monday, September 4, 2023
Jason Morehead laments the way content is disappearing from the internet. He brings up the way technology news site CNet deleted a whole swath of older pieces. In the grand scheme of things, deleting old tech articles may not seem like a big deal. But what frustrates me is that there’s no real good reason for it, just as there’s no good reason for Disney deleting titles to save money. Not when they’re shelling out stupid amounts of money to executives, anyway.
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Recently, a musician with the adopted name of Oliver Anthony became famous overnight for a song he performed entitled "Rich Men North of Richmond." The song, which reveals the frustrations that many feel at those with money and political influence, resonated with a lot of people, catapulting Anthony into the spotlight. It probably doesn't hurt that Anthony has the kind of Appalachian folk hero looks that match the subject matter of the song.