This is where I collect fragments, bits, and pieces of ideas that don’t have a home anywhere else. Maybe I’ll spin some of these into something bigger, maybe not. These pages may or may not self-destruct.
The assignment: Every few days, I will write one sentence (or maybe more!) about a song or a playlist. Maybe that way I won’t forget how to write.
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Screaming Females, Glass House
Negative space builds suspense here. First, Marissa Paternoster sings with only a low, thrumming bass to keep her company; she sounds exposed and barely accompanied. Crunchy, heavy guitars answer her, filling the void, and then pulling back. Voice and guitar trade riffs back and forth, building anxiety until they join in a punishing duet. But…
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Amyl and the Sniffers, Hertz
Yes, these guys again, what can I say: when I love a band, I love a band. When I hear wave after wave of guitar distortion, it moves me the same way that 1960s pop productions do, with their walls of sound and overwrought orchestration. It grabs me in the same way as a four-on-the-floor…
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Rasputina, Rusty the Skatemaker
I’m sure it’s been 20 years since I last listened to this song but my body and my voice remember every note of it. Gather round and I shall sing every single word for you. Rasputina was one of those bands that I somehow found on Naptser or Kazaa, in the heyday of peer-to-peer file-sharing.…
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The Distillers, Seneca Falls
I cried when we went to Seneca Falls. It was a quiet, gray day and hardly anyone else was there. There was wall next to the visitors’ center that had the the Declaration of Sentiments etched on it and I stood there and I read every single word: the words of women who had had…
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Playlist: Creepsteen
For reasons that I can neither justify nor articulate, I am embarrassingly fond of late 1970s to mid-1980s-era Bruce Springsteen.* Despite this I really hate Bruce’s original version of “I’m On Fire.” It’s gross. It’s icky and skeevy and the way he mutters about Little Girls and Daddies is upsetting and weird. It’s the muttering…
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Playlist: Barbell Bangers
I’ve been powerlifting. It’s the first and only sport where I have ever, in my whole life, felt like I have any kind of skill and like my body is an asset rather than a hindrance. Mass moves mass; often, a body that is larger is a body that is stronger; and as I’ve been…