Getting Started

Lists that no one asked for

I realize that substacks usually only work for people with a wide readership. But you know, my book got a terrible review in the Brooklyn Rail once, so I’m gonna go for it.

I’m hoping that this format can help me to write a little bit differently about my research interests, and might by extension help me reach more readers. I am extremely lucky that I get to study and teach my favorite music professionally. But academia can be lonely indeed.

By way of introduction, I’m starting off here with some lists, which I hope will give you a sense of what you might expect out of this newsletter. I also hope you find something interesting among them, but either way, I encourage you to let me know.

Stuff I’ve Written (About)

• Anyone who knows me knows that I’m getting really interested in the concept of crushes, specifically as they appear in indie music as a form of social critique. But digging into that history also got me thinking about love songs in general. And because I think that all songs are, on some level, love songs, this also got me thinking about everything in the whole world. Readers can definitely expect more on the sentimentalism of music, the politics of the crush, and all the sounds that get me weepy (see below).

• My review of Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism seems to have been well-received by the couple of friends who read it and told me they liked it.

• I love the Cleveland Review of Books, and I’m really proud of the two essays they let me write about not books. The first is a rather lengthy piece on Wes Anderson’s French Dispatch and the second is a review of one of the best albums/groups I’ve ever heard: Fred Moten, Gerald Cleaver, and Brandon López. That group has a new record out. You should get it.

• This essay on Ke$ha and Great Recession-era pop music is probably the most widely read thing I’ve written. I teach it almost every year in conjunction with Anne Helen Petersen’s famous essay on burnout, subsequently expanded into a book.

• I wrote three (3!!) essays for the now-defunct blog at the LA Review of Books, and it’s so defunct that all the posts have disappeared from the internet. I’m going to re-post those here in due time.

• On the peer-reviewed side of things, I’ll briefly describe a few pieces with the caveat that they’re probably paywalled for you. If you’re interested in reading, I have some of them up on researchgate or you can just email me (please do!!).

  • This one’s about how music theory has damaged jazz education and how we might continue to change that unfortunate fact.

  • This one is a case study on my second book’s titular concept, Big Feelings. It demonstrates how Soccer Mommy performs queer and feminist affects in her music and how they resonate with a larger indie rock revival happening since at least 2017. This article and the book from which it comes are efforts to document what’s important about that movement.

  • In 2023 (though it says 2021) my great friend Christine and I published a special issue of the journal American Music Perspectives. It features the work of PhD students and early career scholars, all of whom wrote incredible pieces for this project. I am really proud of how this came out, and I think more people should read it.

• Here’s that aforementioned book, which to be fair, is quite academic, emerging as it did directly out of my dissertation. Also to be fair, it basically intentionally makes moves that will frustrate any of the parties who might be interested in reading it. But while its structure and tone make it a challenging book in some ways, I’m still really proud of how it came out. If you’re interested in Michel De Certeau and Sara Ahmed, or Eric Dolphy and Ingrid Laubrock, or all of the above, I hope you’ll find something of interest here. Did I mention that it’s free?

• Slightly more accessible/pithy takes on improvisation can be found here, here, here, and here. Early articulations of the Big Feelings idea are here and here.

Stuff that Reliably Makes Me Cry

I’m beginning this vaunted category off the top of my head, with every intention of expanding as I continue to weep my way through the world. But for now, in no particular order:

• Fred Rogers’ testimony before congress in 1969 is just an unbelievable moment in my view, partially because it discloses a bygone era where some ignorant politicians were capable of listening and partially because, while on the surface, Mr. Rogers is appealing for funding, what he’s really doing is an extension of his program: here is on TV again, albeit in a different setting, teaching people about the importance of feelings. Rogers was more radical than people often give him credit for, and though it shouldn’t be radical to insist that children learn how to manage their emotions, capitalism’s fundamentally patriarchal logic renders that aspiration potentially revolutionary, especially for men. Expressed here is a kind of care for young people that is as tender as it is uncompromising. A model.

• So Much for the Afterglow, particularly the opening. In our era of 90s nostalgia, I am appalled by the lack of critical reappraisal taking this album into consideration. And yes, I acknowledge that much of my reaction is caught up in how personally meaningful this album was to me as a kid, when I spun it and What’s the Story Morning Glory threadbare in my Discman, in the back seat of a station wagon, or practicing the drums. But it’s not just that. The album itself is also about nostalgia, about addiction, divorce, and longing for the deep connection of relationships that have long since fallen apart. SMFTA is an upbeat, surf-adjacent rock album that stages grief and joy together, avoiding the kind of narrow-minded “woe is me” brand of wounded entitlement more common to 90s white boy alt rock by actually discussing issues that affect people. The lyrics do talk about romantic love and its loss, but also concern for one’s family, siblings and parents alike. There’s a depth to the pain here, which makes the sunshine it reflects all the more glaring.

• The Zombies, “The Way I Feel Inside.” This is a perfect song. Pretty as crystal, but unusually structured—just enough to prevent it from being straightforward. This is important, because the feelings it talks about are complicated. I love you, but am too unsure of myself to say so. I need reassurance, and I am sensitive enough to perceive that now is not the right moment to tell you. Whether this is because I’m correct or because I’ve mentally spun myself around into an impossible position can never be known. The bravery listeners might feel the narrator lacks is omnipresent in the performance itself: solo voice and soft organ, only, transparent and bizarre, gorgeous and brief.

• The Beach Boys, “God Only Knows” remains the greatest love song because it is haunted by the inevitability of its own fulfillment, the unbearable truth that even in the best case, when the love in your life is as beautiful as this song sounds, you will be without one another in the end. This song and its singers know that already, and have rendered in music what it feels like really understand how beauty is dependent on ephemerality, how we only know the desperation of love because of what it feels like to imagine losing it.

That’s probably too much for now. Cry hard.