Hello there. I’m the rock and pop music critic at the Wall Street Journal, and from 2011 to 2018, I was the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor of the online music magazine Pitchfork. I’ve also written about music and culture for outlets including the New York Times, The Ringer, and Billboard.
Here’s some recent writing:
- For the Wall Street Journal, I reviewed the new Bruce Springsteen record Letter to You,which I like more than I expected to, Oneohtrix Point Never’s Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, which is my favorite record of his since R Plus 7.
- I’m writing a monthly column for my friends at Varyer, an agency in Chicago founded by Chris Kaskie and Mike Renaud, friends i worked with at Pitchfork. Listener’s Arc will have some things in common with my Pitchfork column Resonant Frequency. I wrote the first one about Bill Callahan, thinking through the different ways I integrate music into my life.
Going back further:
- 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.
- I reviewed four museum shows about pop music for the New York Times.
- I reviewed the first three nights of music programming at The Shed for the Wall Street Journal.
- I reviewed the new album by Fennesz, Agora, for Pitchfork.
- I wrote about Sons of Kemet for the New York Times Magazine‘s annual music issue.
- 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.
- 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.
- Also for Pitchfork I wrote a Sunday Review of Tortoise’s album TNT.
- For the Wall Street Journal I reviewed the brilliant new Jessica Pratt album, Quiet Signs.
- Also for the WSJ I reviewed Jeff Tweedy’s solo album WARM.
You can send me an email or find me on twitter or LinkedIn.