I’m a freelance writer and editor and I also work on various projects related to music, streaming media, record culture, and curation. My main writing gig is rock and pop music critic at the Wall Street Journal. I’m also the Director of Curation at Third Bridge Creative. From 2011 to 2018, I was the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor of the online music magazine Pitchfork. I’ve written about music and culture for outlets including the New York Times, NPR Music, The Ringer, and Stereogum.
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Here’s some of my writing.
Selected Wall Street Journal Reviews
- Tortoise’s Touch
- Dijon’s Baby
- Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
- Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch
- Arooj Aftab’s Night Reign
- Dirty Three’s Love Changes Everything
- MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks
- The Hard Quartet’s s/t album
The Fine Art of (Re)Surfacing: Old Pieces That Feel Kinda Relevant Now
Around 2010, when YouTube was just a few years old and a lot of interesting things were happening in music, I wrote several Resonant Frequency columns for Pitchfork that touched on the digital life that was coming. “Computer Vision” was about Oneohtrix Point Never and How to Dress Well, “Listening to Listening” was about the collapsing distance between listening to music and making it, and “In My Room (The Best Coast Song): Nine Fragments on Lo-fi’s Attraction to the Natural World” is self-explanatory.
I reviewed David Berman’s last record, Purple Mountains, for the Wall Street Journal, and also wrote a remembrance of him for Pitchfork following his death.
For The Ringer I wrote a piece about the indie rock band Duster, with some thoughts about reissue culture, how cults around obscure music develop online, and the difficulty of finding information about music that emerged in the early days of the internet.
Also for Pitchfork I wrote a Sunday Review of Tortoise’s album TNT.
Older Wall Street Journal Pieces
- I reviewed Rosalía’s album Motomami.
- I reviewed Big Thief’s album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You.
- I reviewed the box set for the John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band record, digging into both the set and what it means to remix and recontextualize classic records for a new era.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “G_d’s Pee at State’s End!”
- “Streaming for Audiophiles,” about Spotify Hi-Fi and Hi-Res audio WSJ Version / Text Version
Elsewhere
- a Sunday Review of Movietone’s The Blossom Filled Streets for Pitchfork
- a review of Jeff Parker’s The Way Out of Easy for Pitchfork
- a review of Fennesz’s Mosaic for Hearing Things
- a Sunday Review of the Waterboys’ This Is the Sea for Pitchfork
- I wrote about the new edition of Cat Stevens’ Harold and Maude soundtrack for Pitchfork.
- I wrote about the 20th anniversary of the Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2 for Stereogum.
- I wrote a column called Listener’s Arc for Varyer, which is about listening and memory. They are collected here. You can read pieces on Keith Jarrett, the Caretaker, and a listening diary from 2020.
- I reviewed four museum shows about pop music for the New York Times.
- I wrote about Sons of Kemet for the New York Times Magazine‘s annual music issue in 2019 and wrote about 100 gecs for the 2020 version.
- I wrote the liner notes to the Superior Viaduct vinyl reissues of Alice Coltrane‘s four mid/late-1970s LPs for Warner Bros.
- I reviewed a very interesting compilation of ambient music from Japan for Pitchfork.
- I wrote a review of the incredible Beach Boys The Smile Sessions box when it came out.