cry baby pod

and some killer records

Well, it’s finally happening. I’ve really wanted to do a podcast on popular music studies for a long time, not least because there kind of hasn’t been one, at least to my knowledge. Will Robin’s great Sound Expertise featured musicology as a discipline, Mac Hagood has done the same for sound studies, and Joseph Sannicandro’s long-running Sound Propositions investigates experimental music in an audio/documentary format. These fields overlap with popular music studies to a certain extent; but there hasn’t really been a place for sustained and repeated engagement with the scholars who are studying popular music across its forms, formats, and genres. I hope cry baby can be that place.

As with this newsletter, I also hope that it reaches beyond academia, looping in people who are just interested in thinking about popular music in new ways. That might be a tough sell, but I’m hopeful. I think the work has to come first. In the meantime, please be in touch regarding any and all feedback (what do you like/not like? Do you want to be on the show? Do you have a topic suggestion or question about popular music?).

So far I’ve got episodes on music merchandizing (with Alyx Vesey—out now!), jazz/not jazz (with AJ Kluth, likewise!), punk/hardcore, and minimalism. There’s lots more on the horizon, including hip hop, indie, popular/dance music, and much more. Please stay tuned, share with your friends/students, and keep in touch. Episodes drop on alternating Mondays, as they say, wherever you get ‘em.

Recs

In the category of records everyone just agrees are great, the following two entries, for me, absolutely hold up. On Wednesday, read Ann Powers, who I agree with about this being the band’s best yet; it’s harsher and more abrasive in places, with ballads that don’t lose any of their pathos for being heartbreaking.

For Carpenter, well, there’s been no shortage of discourse, and I largely see Man’s Best Friend continuing to extend themes explored on her previous two records. I think that’s great, particularly since people apparently need more time to really sit with what she’s doing.

In the category of records fewer people have heard, I’d like to recommend two that are both absolutely heart-wrenching in their approach to folk-inflected grunge (or vice versa).

I’ve written about Daffo before and am just so happy to finally hear their debut in full. The music feels thoughtful and compelling, not overwrought by any means, but full of unexpected details. Gamberg’s voice adeptly finesses some of the same acrobatic, country-western flipflops that Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman has become famous for, and the riffs that structure heavier tracks hit just as hard. I could see a tour with those two going gangbusters.

Finally, Leith Ross is new to me but: holy christ. “Grieving” is one of the most poignant things I’ve heard in years. A song about how “grief is love run backwards,” Ross observes people loving out of order, saying everything meaningful to friends and loved ones only at their funerals. Thus, Ross vows to switch things up, to mourn what hasn’t gone yet, before it’s too late.

So I never will stop grieving
Everything that’s yet to die
I think I’ll love after I’m dead
And I’ll grieve while I’m alive
I think I’ll love after I’m dead
And I’ll grieve while I’m alive

Cry fucking hard my dudes.