Category: Features

My dad rose from the couch and stomped across the room to the television. Ignoring the announcer’s exhortation – “Don’t touch that dial!” – he dialed through the three channels that beamed out from Nashville to our home in the hills of the Upper Cumberland. Channel 4,...

Hey, cats! What do you want to do tonight? Oh yeah, I know what you want to do. You want to watch the chipmunks on the front porch. In an act that made me question my professionally-questioned sanity, I spread some corn and sunflower seeds outside my porch window. Not...

I am told that the globe is warming. I am told that, by driving my car down to the Shell station to pick up a bag of beef jerky and a six-pack of Bud Light, I am sowing the seeds of our planet’s future destruction, an apocalypse to be preceded by the watery...

Josaleigh Pollett inscribes letters, never written or mailed but spoken aloud in a room without light, staring at an unseen wall, a glass half-empty of bourbon on the side table, messages to the departed, the estranged, the source of her ache. Strangers comprises...

Full disclosure: The first time I visited Feral Conservatives’ Bandcamp page, and saw that the “band” is a little girl with an electric mandolin and a badass-looking guy on drums, I thought “Oh god this is gonna suck.” I anticipated some sort of lo-fi noise rock that...

“You don’t write about popular music. You write about unpopular music.” - Anonymous Donald and Jack, by any and all of the usual standards, are Unpopular. Not unpopular in the sense of having been evaluated, and rejected by, the Great Unwashed or Washed Masses of the...

The Sweets Greatest Hits is a wonderful lo-fi mess of hooks, stuck-in-your-head melodies, reverby guitars, and wistful energy. But through the hum, hiss, and distortion, you hear, feel, and enjoy the unique creativity that drives The Sweets. The Sweets are brothers...