A fantastic new crop of recommendations this week from No Fences Review, including tributes to MonoNeon and Dan Penn, Florence Dore and Garrett T. Capps, plus tributes to St. Louis soul singer Gene Jackson and country songwriting legend Don Schlitz. W/ @charleshughes2.bsky.social
“That’s all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. I don’t know whether good times are coming back again. But I know that won’t matter if we don’t survive these times.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Some amazing performances of Hag songs here, from Candi Staton and kd lang and Willie and Tanya and more, if I do say so myself
Fantastic stuff from @cantkill.bsky.social. Nobody better for this task.
Over at the Wall Street Journal, I reviewed Scott Meslow's excellent new 'Twin Peaks' survey "A Place Both Wonderful And Strange", which narrates the show's amazing journey from midseason network replacement to canonical instance of uniquely American art. Gift link below. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...
In honor of both Merle Haggard's 4/6 birthday, and also the tenth anniversary of his death, I picked a dozen 21st c. covers of Haggard songs for Good Country. (Think of this as a companion to the 20th c.-only list I did last week for No Fences Review, link to that one in this one)
See? You're not crazy. The packages are getting smaller and more expensive.
www.democratandchronicle.com/story/grocer...
A Bros. Hildebrandt!
I'm gonna give us full credit for Oasis' induction to the Rock Hall this week.
"Orban conceded so therefore Trump is no threat to US democracy" is quite the admission of not being a serious person.
Similar to "Jan. 6 didn't work so the extended two-month campaign that preceded it was not an attempted coup."
Third time voting for them, third time’s the charm. Fingers crossed Joy Order’s induction cracks open a door for so many other deserving post punk/college rock acts but I will not be holding my breath
Oh yes, he’s smart until he runs into ideas he doesn’t like or get…
This reminded me of Barzun’s actually very helpful use of > and <, and his book rec asides, in From Dawn to Decadence. He is tired of people not using his books the right way!
WU-TANG FOREVER and ever in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Forever
GTR, GTR (Arista). entirety of review: SHT.
this month is the 40th anniversary of the release of "GTR" (ill-fated supergroup w/Steves Howe and Hackett). which also means it's the 40th anniversary of this review of it, by JD Considine in Musician
The latest round of earworms, obsessions, recommendations from No Fences Review includes cuts from Raye, Flea, and Luke Combs, from WITCH, Momo Boyd, the New Pornographers, The Sequence and more! W/ @charleshughes2.bsky.social
Congratulations to Sade for their well-deserved induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2026! | Explore more here: album.ink/Sade
Trump breaks the First Commandment and in doing so completes the entire collection.
First thing I thought of was this article from @jonbern.bsky.social www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...
This year's additions to the Rock Hall of Fame set to be announced tonight, so reupping my thinking/ballot
If you have any information at all on these plans, now is the time to share it. Reach me on Signal at marisakabas.04
Any reasonable lawyer who has read the memo knows that this is not what it requires, so Mizzou is just performing racism to satisfy racists. Also this rhetorical slip was absolutely made easier by people who conflated DEI with race/affinity spaces and I hope everyone is learning their lesson.
Today is both Merle Haggard's birthdate and the 10th anniversary of his death... I honor one of America's great songwriters by picking 10 of my favorite cover versions of his songs, by Charley Pride, Johnny Cash, JD Crowe, Johnny Rodriguez, Bettye Swann and more. At No Fences Review
Yes. Merle was quite conservative, especially in his hitmaking years, but became what sounds to me like a liberal: He criticized W relentlessly, wrote a campaign song for Hillary, celebrated Obama's win, and told RS he didn't trust DJT: "I think he's dealing from a strange deck"
Over at @pitchfork.com, I review Age of the Ram, Charley Crockett's concluding volume of his Shooter Jennings-produced Sagebrush Trilogy.
I mean it, if you want to know what books a writer whose post you see has written, you can almost find that yourself in their bio so you don't even have to ask! We put them their for your convenience.
Re-upping for any weekenders looking to get away from... everything... for a few trivial moments
Someone sent me this.
