In this newsletter:
People on the internet didn’t read something, once again.
Everything is folk music.
20 minutes of pure sonic bliss.
Chicago experimentalists reunite for more experimentalism.
NACHO MAYHEM
It’s not especially notable at this point, but it bothers me every time.
Yesterday, a review of Lady Gaga’s new album MAYHEM went live on Pitchfork. It was written by Rich Juzwiak and it got an 8.0. Obviously, he liked it. I’ve never been a Lady Gaga fan—she’s not my thing and that’s fine—so if not for this kerfuffle I probably would have skipped the review, despite enjoying Juzwiak’s writing. But I didn’t, because a corner of Twitter got up in arms about the quote that Pitchfork’s social media team decided to highlight for promotion:
This tweet went semi-viral because a large amount of people were annoyed/mad/confused by the pull quote in it about nachos. I saw a lot of variations of “this can’t be what music writing is” that I can only assume came from people who read that tweet in isolation, didn’t bother to read the rest of the review, or just wanted to be sort of irritated by something at that moment.
If they’d actually clicked on the review, they’d see in the first paragraph Juzwiak frames his review with the fan-chatter and context around “Lady Gaga’s reheated nachos.” This was not something I was previously aware of, but I became aware of it simply by reading the. first. paragraph. of a review. This is apparently too much work for some people.
When I see this kind of misplaced outrage—and I see it often—I mostly feel confused. If you don’t care enough to read the review, why care enough to get mad about it? If a line about nachos doesn’t make any sense in isolation, it doesn’t mean it’s bad, it just means you lack the proper context, and if you don’t care enough to learn the context, then what are you even doing in the first place?
There are a lot of reasons that cultural criticism is in trouble, and most of those reasons have nothing to do with the regular people who tend to at least passively consume cultural criticism, but this is one area where we can get better. Otherwise we’re going to go further down the rabbit hole of half-assed writing: written to please everyone, but read by no one.
FOLK YEAH
I really like this quote from GothBoiClique artist Fish Narc, who has gone from being an integral part of Lil Peep’s musical career to making ramshackle PNW indie on K Records (trust me, if you grew up in the Pacific Northwest, this musical journey is totally natural, even if it seems weird from the outside).
This is a great way of looking at the fruitful period where artists all over the PNW were making sonically disparate music that tended to get lumped together when it probably shouldn’t have. It gets right to the heart of the aesthetics of a scene that were at first hyperlocal, then impossibly global, and then hyperlocal again. The DIY scene he’s talking about did a great job of separating itself from the more craven aspects of what the Seattle music scene briefly became when it went global—but no one tried to pretend all the grunge stuff never happened, instead they went further into esoteric modes of sound, cobbling together a sound from the ashes of attention.
Fish Narc’s album Frog Song is a deeply enjoyable listen. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does its thing really well. It reminds me of the years I’d travel up and down a portion of Washington State, between Seattle and Olympia, past the paper mill stink of Tacoma and into the woods of The Evergreen State College, with meth labs dotting the edge of the campus, creating a border.
It’s gloomy—Pacific Northwest Gloomy—in LA today, so I’m listening to “Crystal Ball” and “Never Better” on repeat, somehow missing the drive I grew to despise.
CALM DOWN
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s new record Gift Songs is out March 21 on Mexican Summer. I’ve been living with the whole album for a little while now, and it’s already a 2025 highlight. I recommend the whole thing when it drops, but for now enjoy first single “The Milky Sea,” which is 20 minutes long, built on what I think is a shaggy loop of light cymbal, piano, reverb, and a subtle synth wash that engages with the push and pull of the muffled thud of the kick drum. It’s immediately calming, but never complacent. Listening to it is a spiritual experience that does no diminish upon repeat listens.
FORGET TIME
Speaking of spiritual experiences: Ten years ago, Chicago kosmiche experimentalists Bitchin Bajas teamed up with Chicago spiritual jazz experimentalists Natural Information Society for Automaginary, an album I totally forgot about until the two groups announced their second collaborative album, Totality, with the single “Clock No Clock,” which builds and builds, layering upon itself, basking in the push-pull between organic and synthetic.
this is the first i’m hearing of anyone reheating nachos. wild
Jefre track is pretty transcendent