Longform

The best albums, EPs, mixtapes, and songs I’ve heard this year. And some of the worst.

Plus: kosmiche ambient, UK drill, grainy shoegaze, Chinese cloud-rap, and rawk ‘n’ roll.

My eight favorite moments from this year’s shoegaze convention, and a post-punk-related travel blog.

It’s been 10 years since Title Fight’s genre-bending swan song. Its legacy is fascinating even though I dislike the music.

Bludgeoning hardcore, fried internet rap, warped shoegaze, and Brat.

Photographer Caden Clinton and I ventured into the zoomer pits and Nettspend stampedes of Ken Carson’s rage-rap kingdom.

The punk festival’s tepid return is formatted for millennial nostalgists, not the teens of today.

On Nusic Twitter, Pop Crave is their Barstool Randos tweet like record execs. And gambling is the engine of this new bastard subculture.

Atlantic Records signed a Deftonesy TikTok breakout. What does her trajectory say about the commercialization of nu-gaze?

I investigate why Deftones are more influential on today’s shoegaze than My Bloody Valentine, and why Korn and Glare are in the same playlists.

The Sonic Youth co-founder brought her rage rap-influenced music to Pittsburgh, a city where young rap fans are rarely allowed to rage.

22 blurbs on music I love, and [?] blurbs on music I never want to hear again.

The column where I review any vinyl, CDs, and cassettes anyone sends me.

The metalcore titans’ long-awaited new album soars at a scale only they could achieve. However, its magnitude can be awe-inspiring one moment and cumbersome the next.

Like it or not, this Spotify playlist is one of the main drivers of shoegaze’s current moment. I spent an afternoon listening to its contents and reacting to what I heard.

GBV played 42 songs in Pittsburgh — so I cooked up that many thoughts on what I saw, heard, and felt.

From raver-scene trash to hauntaholic bliss, these are artists I enjoy so much that they make me question my own taste.

The post-modernist hardcore troupe played Pittsburgh. It made me feel some type of way.

Shawn and I travelled to West Virginia to see the indie-punk maestros in a sold-out 250-cap room.

The column where I review any vinyl, CD’s, and cassettes people send me.

I said I’d review any physical media anybody sent me. Here’s the latest batch.

I attended night one of The Hotelier and Foxing’s 10-year-anniversary tour for ‘The Albatross’ and ‘Home, Like No Place Is There.’ I had thoughts.

Reviews of new and new-ish releases from Realize, Pig City, Spy, Caveman and more.

A recent Alex G show got me thinking about his fandom, his evolution, and my favorite artist ever.

Hugo Reyes and I recount our wild experience at This Is Hardcore festival 2023.

On being a 20 years old and the Soda Bomb album that fucked up my life (complimentary).

How being an offline tween during third-wave emo makes me a generational anomaly.

“I’m failing upwards again / I might pull it off / If I don’t fuck this up before it pays off”

Why reading Bruce Pavitt’s Sub Pop writing from the 1980s made me feel optimistic about the value of music criticism today.

My first time seeing the patron saints of ba-ba-ba

What do we do with socially discarded bands when they’re still materially present? And other thoughts on shoegaze’s most controversial band.