Though the musical components of Sun Kil Moon’s Benji rarely amount to more than Mark Kozelek’s voice and acoustic guitar, its lyrical universe is incomparably vast, spanning countries and decades, populated by dead relatives, high school friends, indie-rock peers, serial killers, and corporate-franchised eateries alike.
Amanda Hess: Why Women Aren't Welcome on the Internet (Pacific Standard)
Ignore the barrage of violent threats and harassing messages that confront you online every day.” That’s what women are told. But these relentless messages are an assault on women’s careers, their psychological bandwidth, and their freedom to live online. We have been thinking about Internet harassment all wrong.
Beyoncé seized the powers of a medium characterized by its short attention span to force the world to pay attention. Leave it to the posterchild of convention to brush convention aside and leave both sides feeling victorious.
David Graeber: On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs (Strike! Magazine)
This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work.
Ryan Leas: Slow Burn, Slow Fade: Inside The Walkmen’s Final Days (Stereogum)
Somewhere along the line, something went wrong. Things fell out of place, or failed to fall into place to begin with. The general assumption is that Johnny Marr’s set went absurdly long, and that nobody forced Kurt Vile to shorten his in order to get things back on schedule. On subsequent days, photographers and others in and out of the backstage scenes will repeat a rumor that the Walkmen bringing their own sound man along contributed to the issues and the confusion, but no one really knows what that means. Whatever the cause, things don’t go right. Having flown in that morning from their various hometowns — New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York — the Walkmen arrive in Austin on Friday, November 8, for a high-billed set at Fun Fun Fun Fest, and are able to play only six songs.
Last month, Isaac Fitzgerald, the newly hired editor of BuzzFeed's newly created books section, made a remarkable but not entirely surprising announcement: He was not interested in publishing negative book reviews. In place of "the scathing takedown rip," Fitzgerald said, he desired to promote a positive community experience.
Mark Richardson: A Window That Isn't There: The Elusive Art of Bill Callahan (Pitchfork)
Callahan’s power as a songwriter comes from observation. He finds things that don’t initially seem notable and then puts them under a microscope until we see something new. By imbuing simple objects with symbolic power and laying them out clearly, he can create an image or a feeling that seems closer to the person hearing it.
Britt Julious: For fashion, if it's all white, it's all right (WBEZ 91.5 Chicago)
Kanye West’s obsession with the fashion industry is an important one and his comments must play out on a world stage. While seemingly humorous, in fact, they highlight the very real barriers between what is and is not considered fashion.
Rawiya Kameir: M.I.A.’s ‘Matangi’ Is a Defiantly Personal Reclamation of the Brown Girl Narrative (The Daily Beast)
It’s fairly easy, and indeed tempting, to write M.I.A. off as a faux-radical who relies on the borrowed aesthetics of revolution to sell records. But that superficial reading belies her truest political work: her commitment to self and the exploration of identity in a world and industry that is more comfortable with easily digestible predetermined narratives, particularly when it comes to racialized people.
Jerry Saltz: On Kanye, Kim, and ‘The New Uncanny’ (Vulture)
Those attacking “Bound 2” as crass kitsch employ preestablished taste hierarchies that often exclude people like West. They assume he doesn't know where his work is coming from or what he's doing with his sources.
Cecily Carver: Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Learning How to Code
You’ll hit this wall no matter what “learn to code” program you follow, and the only way to get past it is to persevere. This means you keep trying new things, learning more information, and figuring out, piece by piece, how to build your project. You’re a lot more likely to find success in the end if you have a clear idea of why you’re learning to code in the first place.
Ann Powers: Holding Music History In Your Hands: Why Archives Matter (NPR)
“‘Archives are not just places people go for information; they can and do change our approach to, and determine the questions we ask of, music, the music industry and musical scenes.’”
Eric Harvey: I Started a Joke: "PBR&B" and What Genres Mean Now (Pitchfork)
"PBR&B" spread because lots of people were talking about these particular artists, but the artists themselves were left out of such conversations. That's how it usually happens: Their work is left to be sorted like cereal boxes, independent of their own agency. Artists are sometimes asked by fans and inexperienced journalists to describe the "type of music" they make, and they’re often rightfully itchy about making these distinctions themselves. It’s not so much that there’s a right or wrong to genres, but it’s more the case that genres are power moves, able to define music far beyond any artist’s own wishes.
Elizabeth Plank: Why We Love Angry Men, But Hate Impassioned Women (PolicyMic)
In other words, a man is angry because he cares, while a woman is angry because she's an emotional wreck. Men who are angry don't only get more respect, status, and better job titles — they also get higher pay Despite the fact that men can use anger to achieve status, women may need to be calm in order to come off as rational. You know, so that people don't think they're PMS-ing, or whatever.
