It’s funny how easily not doing something for a long time becomes a reason for continuing to not do it. How many times I listened to something on the subway, walking to the park, sitting at the little bookstore around the corner from my apartment and thought, I would like to write something about this moment, but didn’t because I thought that it would mean having to explain my long absence, and that would be too difficult. It’s not difficult, of course. I was doing other things, writing this blog meant interacting with Twitter, which was making me too sad and scared, I lacked inspiration. And even if it were difficult to explain, I’m certainly not delusional enough to think that anyone really cares to take me to task over it.

Maybe the real reason I stayed away was that I was becoming someone else, someone who spends their time in new ways, and I was having trouble figuring out how this new person tends to a music blog. For instance, how does a person who is no longer interested in being sucked into the downward spiral of social media engagement contribute something new to the internet? The very premise seems contradictory in a distinctly modern way. Or how to fan away the cloud of worry that had come to hang around this project – anxieties over meeting the expectations of the people in my inbox, wondering whether artists were disappointed or confounded by the nontraditional way in which I wrote about their music. I thought a lot about my favorite blogs – delightfully non sequitur, idiosyncratic, abstract publications – many of which are now defunct or sporadic, and I wondered if they stopped posting for similar reasons. I told myself that I was stepping away for a while to figure this stuff out. Maybe I was really going away so that I would have an excuse not to figure it out for a while. Regardless, it’s been more than a year now, and the uncertainties I was feeling when I left no longer seem very important, or difficult to resolve.

For the sake of a paper trail, here’s my plan, for the time being: 1) I’m going to start posting on here again. This is really the only important part. Feel free to keep reading for some less important caveats / expectations setting.

2) I’m staying off of social media. I don’t like it there. It bums me out. For years before I was on Twitter (X, whatever) I kept up with blogs by thinking about them every few weeks and typing their name into a search bar, spending an hour or two catching up on whatever they had been loving since I had last spent time with them. It was a nice ritual – intimate, communal, entirely devoid of the attention arms race that characterizes even the briefest scroll on Twitter. Maybe a few people will develop that kind of relationship with this blog.

3) I won’t be very actively responding to emails. I’m very grateful to all the people who send music to me and I will continue to go to my inbox to discover new tunes to love and write about, but I already have three other email accounts to keep up with and my correspondence capacity is, unfortunately, at its upper limit.

4) My posting schedule probably won’t be very regular. I will post when I feel inspired to, when I have energy to, and when I have something to say. I’ll take breaks.

5) The aim of this blog is to marry two of my greatest loves – music and writing. It’s an extension of my writing practice, and I try to give it only the amount of structure that is absolutely necessary to keep things on the rails. Which is to say, the writing isn’t really about anything, other than my desire to participate in a little of the poetry and wonder that makes life worth doing. This part isn’t changing really, it’s just always something I feel self-conscious about and feel the need to disclaim every so often. I imagine people showing up to the site and leaving confused and annoyed at having been lured in by a “music” blog that spends most of its time writing little love poems to its favorite songs, some more time going on long existential digressions, and whatever time it has left clumsily attempting to tie it all together, employing musical terms it doesn’t really understand and tangential, connective metaphors that are, at best, a stretch. I like to have something I could theoretically show these imaginary people, to say, See? I never claimed to be doing anything else.

Case in point, this post is already very long and I haven’t mentioned anything about its purported raison d’être – Bess Atwell’s very lovely 2021 album Already, Always. Well, except for an oblique reference way up in the first paragraph. This album soundtracked the better part of last year for me, and whenever I listened to it it made me want to start writing about music again. It is lush and timeless, forgiving, deliberate, all the things I most want to cultivate in a creative practice. Ways I listened to this album: in headphones, walking over a bridge on one of the first spring days; in the dark in my apartment, burning candles and recovering from a bad head cold; flying back to New York after attending the wedding of my oldest childhood friend. I recommend all of them. Further, I hope that however you listen to it, it inspires you to revisit whatever creative endeavor, aspiration, or long lost love you’ve put away however long ago, dust it off, make whatever excuses or explanations you need to make in order to allow yourself to hold it again, and enjoy the magical peace of coming back.

Buy Already, Always on Bess Atwell’s site, here, or at your favorite record store.

The post ALBUMS // Bess Atwell – Already, Always appeared first on Hullabaloo.

Light falling angularly around a crystal room. Long shadows moving prismatically and rivers changing direction midstream. A punctured tire leaking brightly colored steam into the milk blue dusk. The unexpected lurks in the usual places, twitching its fingers around a velvet trigger. There is something mercurial in this clock, persistent as it is.

Buy here

The post TUNES // Crystal Murray – BOSS appeared first on Hullabaloo.

The final showdown between two skyscrapers.
Glittering and glass. Menacing.
Sequined grin of shattering
A cold long falling,
Obsidian darkness all the way down on every side.

Buy here.

The post TUNES // Sevdaliza – High Alone appeared first on Hullabaloo.

I decided to finally get serious about learning Spanish this year. I realized over the last few years that it is really quite easy to never do new things if you’re not inclined to – which I’m not, particularly. I am a creature of habit. Of knowing what I like, of seeking old comforts in difficult times, of favorite songs on repeat. But recently (call it the pandemic, call it growing up, call it a good natured fear of turning into my dad) I’ve begun to see the shortcomings of this way of living. I’ve watched my world shrink in avoidable ways, and gained a new appreciation for newness, for its scarcity, for inviting it into my life, in all its hard edges and discomfort and difficulty. I’ve been listening to new albums every morning. I’ve been reading the novels my friends recommend to me. I’ve been writing poetry. And I’ve been learning Spanish. It’s something I’ve always meant to do. I love the way the language sounds, and I love the feeling of seeing the world through the dizzying kaleidoscope of an unfamiliar grammar. But I never seemed to get around to it, until now.

All of Hermanos Gutiérrez’s songs are without lyrics, so as language learning tools they’re not that helpful, but I like putting them on anyway as I study my little workbook, reading through the bite sized titles and smiling at this new world of meaning cracking open to me. This one is called Cerca De Ti, which means ‘close to you’.

Buy Hermanos Gutiérrez’s music on Bandcamp.

The post TUNES // Hermanos Gutiérrez – Cerca De Ti appeared first on Hullabaloo.

There is a place back home, behind the house and in between two lilac bushes, where all the pets from my childhood are buried. Monty the cat who was already eleven when I was born. A goldfish and a hamster both (inexplicably) named Becky. Jody, a kind eyed mutt with white socks who loved nothing more than going on “walks” with us even though we lived in the woods and she was free to walk wherever and whenever she pleased. And the cat I got from the neighbor as a kitten, a free spirit who used to disappear for three months at a time and come back missing half an ear, or a patch of fur, and demand to be fed four times a day until she saw fit to up and leave again. I always think of that spot as it looks in summer time. The lilacs bursting purple and buttercream, with a heady fragrance you can smell all the way from out in the field. It’s funny how many things about my childhood are wrapped up in that smell. The plushness of new grass. The squeak of trampoline springs. Kitten claw scratches on tanned arms. Filling the hamster cage with fresh sawdust on Saturdays. Swimming with the dog across the river. They’re too sweet – the lilacs – almost. Too sweet to last, certainly. So sweet that they hint at their own demise, the decay to come, the fading into memory.

Bellows’ Next of Kin releases March 23rd. Preorder it here.

The post TUNES // Bellows – Death of Dog appeared first on Hullabaloo.

During the last few years, I have sometimes imagined myself as a passenger at sea (my apartment, having roughly the dimensions of a ship’s cabin, lends itself amiably to the metaphor). The shore is a memory and I am bobbing. Blue. Rudderless.

I have a feeling that despite the meticulous calendar records, a careful x scratched over each sunset, I will wash up somewhere suddenly and be surprised by how much I’ve changed and the ground has stayed the same, or maybe the other way around. That, either way, I will have fallen out of time with what I remember my life to be.

In ‘Bubblegum,’ time has a theoretical quality, of landscape passing through the windows of a moving train, a blur of the tantalizing but untouchable reality. It is a waltz across memory and dream, and gentle fingers through the hair of the two, unbraiding them from each other. Uncertainty remains, stubborn and sunny, even after all the pieces of chronology have been laid out like glossy museum exhibits, one after the other. The sum is mismatched with its parts. Documentation is swallowed by mystery.

The song’s lyrics are brief, lovely, and blurry; snapshots in a shoe box under a bed. (I am seventeen years old. I am alcohol. I am wine in the bathroom stall.) I can’t help but follow them where they lead, often into my own mind. I am thirty-one years old. I am coffee mugs and half unpacked boxes. I am chewed up pen caps. I am winter, aching for spring. I am lost at sea.

The post Quinn Christopherson // Bubblegum appeared first on Hullabaloo.

Hullabaloo has been on a sort of unannounced hiatus for the last sixish months. It was unannounced because I didn’t plan to take a break, but I started a new writing project and before long I realized that it had consumed, ravenously, every spare moment I had, including the ones I generally try to set aside for thinking about music. It feels good, though, to have something to fall into so obsessively, so I’m letting it take me on whatever journey it has for me (though my goal is to get back to posting regularly soon). I did find some time to write my annual collection of haikus for some of the songs that made themselves a part of my life in 2021. My list is coming a bit late, I know. Nonetheless, I hope you’ll find something on it that ushers you lovingly into this new year.

∇

Genesis Owusu // Gold Chains

silver mist rising
pulsing in the quaking air
over the city

//
\\

∇

Indigo De Souza // Hold U

a thousand kinds of
blooming happening at once
all pink and hopeful

//
\\

∇

Hand Habits // More Than Love

growling velvet night
a twisting adventure in
this smoldering blue

//
\\

∇

Hamilton Leithauser & Kevin Morby // Virginia Beach

the rowdy light of
a flickering campfire and
laughter in the wind

//
\\

∇

Jazmine Sullivan // Pick Up Your Feelings

blur of headlights in
rain, wipers blinking away
the downpour like tears

//
\\

∇

Cassandra Jenkins // Hard Drive

one floating feather
twisting in the clear water
on its way to sea

//
\\

∇

Sun June // Seasons

garden hose filling
the little pool in the yard
on the hottest day

//
\\

∇

The Weather Station // Robber

shadows writhing in
timelapse across the endless
roving meadowgrass

//
\\

∇

Clever Girls // Come Clean

unbroken ribbon
of clear water hitting the
churning rocks below

//
\\

∇

Mono Neon // Invisible

balloon kept aloft
by a sea of hands in an
endless swimming pool

//
\\

∇

MUNA feat. Phoebe Bridgers // Silk Chiffon

speed on the freeway
between two traffic jams, the
belief in real joy

//
\\

∇

Delacey // Drama Queen

satin majesty
kingdom made of wine stained lace
and dusty leather

//
\\

∇

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul // Blenda

fragments of meaning
stars shooting at each other
over the dark sky
//
\\

∇

Madi Diaz // Resentment

last light bobbing in
the waves, receding from shore
a blinking goodbye

//
\\

∇

Valley Maker // Instrument

in the sky again
that blue so blue it almost
shatters like cold glass

//
\\

∇

Nilüfer Yanya // stabilise

splintered bones knitting
themselves together and then
back apart again

//
\\

∇

Big Thief // Certainty

crushed petal fragrance
underfoot, that jangly fall
air in all its nerve

//
\\

∇

The War On Drugs // Living Proof

a sound like fresh snow
falling and leaving the world
both ancient and new

//
\\

∇

Faye Webster // In A Good Way

a summer bike ride
a slow dance with the streets of
this sweating city

//
\\

∇

Wild Pink // The Wind Was Like A Train

sweeping race across
the plains at dusk, sunset neck
and neck with the breeze

//
\\

∇

Julien Baker // Ziptie

drip drip conversing
between the leaky faucet
and the darkened room

//
\\

∇

Double Grave // Across Montana

where the rocky crags
soften to rolling hills and
night comes like a blush

//
\\

Adia Victoria (feat. Kyshona Armstrong, Margo Price, Jason Isbell) // You Was Born To Die

slow footprints left deep
in the mud of memory
taunting and hard edged

//
\\

∇

heka // (a) wall

river unfreezing
sun and slush in the eddies
the dark miles away

//
\\

∇

Turnstile // Holiday

cavernous raving
miles of thrash and blank joy
echoing upward

//
\\

∇

Illuminati Hotties // Pool Hopping

splash of sound falling
around the afternoon like
laughter in the sun

//
\\

∇

Al Riggs // Long Light Mantle

cowboy reflected
in a puddle of rain at the
gray day rodeo

//
\\

∇

Wallice // Hey Michael

the serene cat in
the window yawns and flexes
her very sharp claws

//
\\

∇

Mom Tudie & Maya Law // Gold

stumbling sun paints a
jagged warmth against closed eyes
moving through the trees

//
\\

∇

Maddie Ross // Vroom Vroom

the world rendered in
a candy red lipgloss shine
by the bucket full

//
\\

∇

Lando Chill // Big Light

driving a new road
the sun breaks free and flashes
down the center line

//
\\

∇

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard // Dreams

ominous messages
in the carnival hued clouds,
listlessly cheerful

//
\\

∇

Nnena // Fun

wet blues and purples
bleeding together in a
sky thick with new rain

//
\\

∇

Olivia Rodrigo // Brutal

brief sledgehammer in
those apathetic months when
nothing else got through

//
\\

The post Hullabaloo’s Year In Haiku // 2021 appeared first on Hullabaloo.

The absent minded thrum of nails on a desktop, a drum machine for ticking out the time. Stubborn daydream keeps reaching through the window for the horizon. Philodendron arms curl in time lapse, towards the slants of sunlight coming through the bedroom window. The warm thrill of turning the camera off during your boss’s boss’s presentation, and, completely unwatched, fishing a piece of tomato skin out from between two front teeth. Stretching arms overhead, yawning loudly. Every day is the last day of school, fluorescent lighting and mid-June heat. A deadly combination. Release, when it comes, will be blinding and green. A walk to the water. Two pairs of feet spilling off the blanket’s edge. Grass, sandwiches, laughter.

Written with social anxiety in mind, In a Meeting viscerally captures the tension between two oppositional states of being, existing in the midpoint between fear and comfort, daydream and reality, inside and out. koleżanka will release their debut album, Place Is, on July 30th on Bar/None Records. Preorder here.

Watch the video below:

The post TUNES // koleżanka – In a Meeting appeared first on Hullabaloo.

There’s an old school country classic buried, maybe even hidden, somewhere in the center of “True,” a song about a heartbreak road trip through the South that ends up sounding less like the open road and more like a dirt path through tangled woods. It’s a familiar setup but skirts’s songwriting is sensitive, earnest, and confident in carefully diffusing any sense of cliche without compromising the nostalgic roots of the song either. In fact, every classic folk-country bedrock is here – the swaying country waltz, the plunk of a saloon piano, the swells and twists of a steel guitar. But “True” weaves those images and sounds more like a patchwork or a collage around itself rather than indulging the arrangement in neater and more obvious roles. The swing of the rhythm peeks through a tangled bramble of drums; electric and steel guitar slowly overtake one another like vines. It’s a song that’s more like a birds nest than a house – a carefully gathered collection of sounds tangled like a lattice around it. It’s organized just enough to be deliberate but carefully refuses to untangle itself too far. 

“True” is the second single off skirts’s upcoming LP Great Big Wild Oak, due out July 30th via Double Double Whammy.

The post TUNES // skirts – “True” appeared first on Hullabaloo.