September 2024: The best take on Welch and Rawlings, the rise of Chappell Roan, and more
Howdy!
Back when I worked in college radio, the end of summer and beginning of fall typically marked the richest time of the year for new music, or at least the last big push before the barren winter. This year I’ve found the same for music writing. I read a ton of great stuff and don’t have room for it all, but August was a treat with many of my favorite writers taking on some of my favorite musicians.
Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings Bring Out The Best
As if it wasn’t treat enough to have a new record from Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings (Woodland, their first in four years, and most substantial since 2011), the best writers in the business gave us a record review and interview with Welch and Rawlings at The New Yorker.
In the record review, Hanif Abdurraqib connects his childhood experience with Magic Eye style illusions with the way that Welch and Rawlings’s stories can be so specific, yet reveal something completely new when you take a step back. I love how this review - in just 1200 words! - weaves together personal experience, thematic and musical analysis, and storytelling to give the reader a greater appreciation for the artwork.
In these songs, living means reckoning with a sense of irresolution—with a series of questions echoing into the dark and returning to us unanswered.
(Bonus: I missed Abdurraqib’s review and mini-profile of Mdou Moctar last month, but it’s also worth your time).
Going more in-depth, Amanda Petrusich has a lengthy interview with both Dave and Gillian. This is the most I’ve seen either talk about the tornado that ripped through their studio and their emotional state thereafter. The way both answer questions - slowly, thoughtfully, as if they’ve had much time to reflect - reveals a bit of how they can write such affecting music.
I love the way Petrusich doesn’t rush through the tragic event. Many interviewers might ask one question about it and move on, not wishing to make the subjects dwell on it, but she asks empathetic and curious questions from all angles: from asking for more details about how they saved their belongings to how such an event adds meaning to an already important space. From there she is able to launch into a deeper conversation not just about the record, but about their values (and confirming that a vinyl release of Time (The Revelator) is finally coming!).
(Bonus: Petrusich also wrote a profile of the up-and-coming MJ Lenderman and, as she is so good at, she really captures the appeal. “When listening to Lenderman and Katie Crutchfield, the musician behind Waxahatchee, harmonize on the chorus, I often feel as if my feet have briefly lifted off the ground.”)
Chappell Roan is Analog
I’ve been reading a lot about this year’s breakout star, Chappell Roan, but I haven’t found much all that compelling, at least not enough to share here.
Then I came across Catherine Zimmer’s piece in Avidly, “A Feminomenology of Chappell Roan”. This essay grabbed me with a compelling connection between analog and the Chappell Roan character. This detailed, academic, and philosophical analysis goes deeper than I’ve seen and by the end, had me feeling like Zimmer had pegged the specific nuance that has made Roan rise.
What she ends up offering us is a pop performer that’s able to acknowledge, not just in words but with actual logistics, that life is hard and confusing because of the material conditions of being a young, queer person in this country, but to do so with the capacity for love and joy and fun. And it turns out this is something that we really wanted, maybe needed, to see, hear, and feel.
What Happens When Hardcore Grows Up?
In 2023, Norman Brannon relaunched his influential hardcore zine, Anti-Matter, as a substack. This month, he published a substantial interview with Tim Kinsella (Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz, and many more).
I’m not very familiar with Kinsella or his work, yet he’s so compelling in this interview (as one commenter put it: “I have never cared for any of his bands but man, this guy rules. Must re-listen.”). I kept thinking of all the musicians we’ve lost at a young age and all the perspective we’ll never have. What a blessing it is to have older hardcore artists able to look back and provide perspective.
I do think that not enough people talk about how so much of what people make is determined by their resources. A teacher of mine taught me forever ago that when you have an idea, you have to think: What would this be if I had unlimited resources? If I had all the money and time and resources in the world? How would I express the same idea if I had ten minutes and nothing else right now?
Another Hip Hop to Country Car Wreck
Writing a great negative review is a difficult task. Craig Jenkins at Vulture has a brilliant one for Post Malone’s country album.
I’ve shared Jenkins’s work often in the newsletter and there are few better at dissecting an artist. His critique here is like a razor’s edge: So sharp you don’t feel the cuts until you look down and see yourself torn to shreds.
But it’s hard not to think of Cowboy Carter, the fearlessly imperfect pivot Post appeared on this year, where an R&B-pop shape-shifter splashed through several varied and colorful permutations of country music in roughly the same amount of time Trillion spends painting everything Solo-cup red.
and
Some people break chains, others are better at building links.
Damn.
See y’all next month. Thank you for reading!
Justin Anderson-Weber
