Our brains reward us for seeking out what we already know. So why should we reach to listen to something we don’t? --- The act of listening to new music in the midst of a global pandemic is hard, but it’s necessary. The world will keep spinning and culture must move with it, even if we are staid and static in our homes, even if the economy grinds to a halt, even if there are no shows, no release parties, and even artists sink even further into the precarity that defines a career as a musician. The choice to listen to new music prioritizes, if for one listen only, the artist over you. It is an emotional risk to live for a moment in the abyss of someone else’s world, but this invisible exchange powers the vanguard of art, even in times of historic inertia.

“The highest points and most infuriating moments on ‘Goblin’ come from the fact that it’s a vérité depiction of the worst aspects of American boy culture. You know, hating girls because they don’t like you because you’re a weirdo, hating any and all authority figures because they try to tell you how not to be such a weirdo. But most importantly (and scarily), there’s the part that involves lashing out about being viewed as a weirdo, and being summarily rewarded—i.e. seen as normal—for doing so. (It probably goes without saying that girls don’t have the same luxury.) Nobody cares about Tyler the Creator being someone’s role model in 2011. Which in a way, is the scariest thing about ‘Goblin’—too much of his scary fantasizing, for too many boys, is all too normal.”

This Tumblr posts PDFs of poetry anthologies and books of cultural writing and other classic texts, bits of important historical music-related interviews, old, rare, or otherwise important or interesting records, etc. Would that I had the time to take in everything listed here.