Hi!
It’s been six or seven months since I last sent an issue of this newsletter, but I have something of an excuse because I’ve been writing my ass off for Bandcamp all year. Since I only ever write about what I want to write about, everything I’ve written there—every feature, album review, personal essay, whatever—constitutes a diary of whatever my thoughts and feelings were at the time. All of which is to say that this is a newsletter about music and life, but so is everything I write, and here is everything I wrote in 2021.
Album Reviews
Tele Novella, Merlynn Belle
My favorite record of the year for its quirkiness and sadness and beauty, plus the songwriting is amazing. Even a year later, I’m still hearing and feeling new things every time I listen to this.
Pardoner, Came Down Different
This band will likely never blow up the way they deserve because I don’t think they really believe in themselves, but that’s okay, I will do it for them (until they personally tell me to stop.)
Female Species, Tale of My Lost Love
This review is a little flowery and I don’t love how the first paragraph was edited, but I think the kicker is really good and the band’s story is lovely. And I always enjoy writing about/listening to a 1960s L.A. band.
Features & Stuff
San Francisco Ain't Dead
A scene report about San Francisco’s DIY renaissance with a list of bands and labels to know. This was inordinately difficult to write because I have a lot of shame about having tried and failed to live a happy life in the Bay Area, which I did from 2016 to 2019. It’s too much to get into now (alcohol, drugs, loneliness, self-hatred, you know how it goes) but let’s just say I felt like the biggest loser in the world the day I moved away. Writing this helped me finally process some of that residual sadness, and the fact that it was received so warmly by the community made me feel like less of a total failure. I received an email from someone calling the piece a “redemptive coda” to last year’s Lust For Life issue of this newsletter, which I suppose it was, in more ways than one.
(PS. Malcolm Fraser of the What Is This Music?! podcast also read Lust For Life and liked it and invited me onto the podcast to talk about it. He said I have a lot of “strong opinions.” You can listen to that here.)
What Is Real Is What You Feel: Chastity Belt’s “Time To Go Home”
This year I landed the greatest job in the fucking world and became a Senior Editor at Bandcamp Daily, where I then launched a personal essay series called RESONANCE, partially inspired by the music/life writing I do here. It was a privilege to edit so many beautiful, deeply heartfelt essays from music and non-music writers alike. I encourage you to read them all. My contribution was this essay about depression, water, Chicago, and Chastity Belt—some of which was cannibalized from a Weird Girls newsletter I’ve been working on and off on for about a year and which will hopefully be published in 2022.
The Tape Label Report
Another series I launched at Bandcamp was The Tape Label Report, where we cover a couple of cassette-focused labels that aren’t quite ready for a full profile but who we think are doing cool shit nonetheless. Usually I farm out all the blurbs to other writers but for the October edition, I decided to do one myself and interview Greg Obis from Born Yesterday Records, whom I’ve been a fan/friend of for years.
A (Mostly) Complete Guide to the Many Musical Lives of Glenn Donaldson
Glenn Donaldson has been in every band ever and on the occasion of the release of Uncommon Weather from his latest “group" the Reds, Pinks, and Purples, I thought it would be a great time to talk about all the stuff he’s done. It ended up being a great connection because six months later I would be hitting him up again for San Francisco Ain’t Dead.
Curation Records Wants to Raise Your Vibration
I first spoke with Brent Rademaker of Curation Records for this feature piece about Captured Tracks’ jangle-pop compilation—but I knew about Brent from my days in the Burger scene in L.A. when he would play all the BRGR shows with the Tyde, and of course I’m a big fan of Beachwood Sparks, who isn’t! This interview was memorable because even after I ran out of questions about the label, he kept me on the phone for another hour just because we were having so much fun talking about music.
Teenage Fanclub Pick Their Favorite Records on Bandcamp
I’m not going to harp on here about this lovely and life-affirming interview with Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub because I wrote about it at length in the only original Weird Girls I sent this year, May’s Fannies in the Heartland, which is definitely my favorite thing I wrote in 2021 and probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever written ever. Read that and then read this.
Mary Timony’s Magical Mountain
Mountains was my favorite record when I was 17 and I’m still a bit gobsmacked that the universe moved in such a way to allow me to write this profile of Mary Timony for the Washington Post on the occasion of that record’s reissue. I also interviewed Amy Domingues of Garland of Hours, Christina Billotte of Quix*O*Tix/Slant 6/Casual Dots/Autoclave, and Mira Billotte of White Magic/Quix*O*Tic for the piece, all of whom I’ve been a massive of fan of for years. It also appeared in the print section!!! So that means you have to take me seriously.
(Al Melchior of the You, Me, and an Album podcast read this article, liked it, and invited me onto his podcast to talk about an album of my choosing. So we talked about Quasi’s 1999 album Field Studies. Then we also did another show where we ranked all the Sleater-Kinney albums, which was a lot of fun. You can listen to that episode here. And look for Al’s Resonance essay on Bandcamp in early 2022!)
Piroshka Pick Their Bandcamp Favorites
A thrill to interview the great Miki Berenyi, who vaped and swore through the entire call. I love her.
Swansea Sound Pick Their Bandcamp Favorites
In my unofficial bid to interview every 80s and 90s British indie luminary on Bandcamp (I “got” Tim Burgess and Jarvis Cocker last year), I finished off 2021 by interviewing Rob (Heavenly, Marine Research, Tender Trap), Amelia Fletcher (Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, Marine Research, The Pooh Sticks), Hue Williams (The Pooh Sticks), and Ian Button (Thrashing Dove, Death in Vegas) about their new group, Swansea Sound, and various and sundry indie band things.
Dummy Pick Their Bandcamp Favorites
Not only a terrific band, but truly wonderful people, it has been a joy seeing Dummy amass all the accolades they deserve for Mandatory Enjoyment, and to have played even the smallest role in their success. Joe from Dummy actually requested that they be considered for a Bandcamp Big Ups and we just had to say yes, even though generally the franchise is reserved for much larger bands—and when you read their picks, you’ll see why. Fun fact: I interviewed the band in person in L.A. and we all ordered Vietnamese food and talked about music for hours e.g. a perfect afternoon.
Assorted Weird Girls Shit….
Though it’s technically more “PR” than “music journalism”—well, not even technically, it is—I was absolutely thrilled when one of my favorite groups of all time, La Luz, asked me to write the press bio for their amazing new record. La Luz’s music has been very meaningful to me for a very long time (I’ve even written a bit about it in this very newsletter) so it felt really gratifying to be asked to help them tell the story of La Luz. And, to get a bit crassly music biz about it, writing the bio also led to other bio writing work, which is why you can now find my name on Andy Shauf’s website. :)
And….that’s about it for 2021 (you can go trolling through Bandcamp’s weekly Essential Releases feature for more record reviews I wrote throughout the year.)
Sometimes I feel bad that I didn’t write more for this newsletter this year, but I’m super allergic to any kind of reactive music writer bullshit and I have zero interest in cultivating any sort of celebrity via the sharing of opinions that hinge upon whatever is popular/unpopular at the moment. None of that shit matters in the long run but most importantly, it does not matter to me.
Basically, I only care about what I want to care about and I only help the people I want to help and what I want most of all is to always be honest about music because bad things happen to both the world and to your soul when you lie about music in order to be famous or whatever. So if that meant I only sent out two newsletters this year, I guess that’s how it had to be. But if nothing else, I felt more authentically connected to music in 2021 because I felt more authentically connected to myself, and I’d like to think that really shines through in all the things I wrote for Bandcamp. So here’s to another year of being true and writing about rock music and feelings! And maybe a few more issues of Weird Girls as well. See you all in 2022.
PS. Sorry this newsletter kind of sucks, I wrote it really fast. :(
Really enjoyed this .. drinking muddy coffee and contemplating all our shows being postponed .. I needed a break. 🖤 Dawn from Cor de Lux
Hey stop apologizing that something sucks when it doesn’t. It was great to see you pop up in my inbox