the strokes go postmodern?

 Hey blog. Today I'll be offering my thoughts on the new Strokes single. I'm not really assessing if its good or bad, just applying some critical analysis!

Let's start with the cover art:

Cute! Retro! Something I could probably make this on Canva! Oh wait! I made something EXACTLY like this (vintage ad-inspired) for a final last semester! Run me my check Julian.....

Or don't. Whatever. I'm chill like that. Anyways, it's undeniable that there is a clear vintage influence here, which informed my listening going in. After twelve seconds of an upbeat, snappy intro, you're hit with Julian crooning with a noticeable Autotune thing going on. Almost jolts you out of whatever expectations you had going in. Interesting.

Julian delivers some on-the-nose lines about late stage capitalism and our current political climate- 

    "The worse reality gets the less you wanna hear about it

      Solidarity can be difficult

      When you got cool stuff to lose"

Yeah Jules, we know everything kinda sucks right now but I love my cool stuff and am unwilling to give it up. Can you just make some peppy songs that don't address current societal ills? God, artists these days. 

Julian goes on to tell a tale of leaving a high-speed, big city life behind in favor of a productive country life, but by the end of the song, he concedes that he misses the city, specifically, the shopping malls. Lyrically, there's something very Nothing But Flowers about this. 

Besides the alienating autotune, there's something else significant happening musically here- 

Oh wait. Sorry. I'm getting a call. 

It was Joe Strummer and Mick Jones. They don't want any sampling credit (because they're punk like that), but they do want listeners to draw connections to their 1979 song, Lost in the Supermarket.

Ok fine I made that up. I'm the one who selfishly wants you to draw connections between Going Shopping and Lost in the Supermarket. I mean, I feel like the song titles alone bear some semblance. Although Julian possesses disdain for the depersonalizing store/mall, he finds himself bored by country life, and tempted back into the same alienating store that Strummer finds himself in, where he is unable to find a "guaranteed personality". 

 

After I initially drew this comparison, and asked my sister and dad for their thoughts, I came to the conclusion that this similarity simply had to have been intentional. The Strokes are no strangers to The Clash- they have a notable cover of Clampdown which is the B-side of The End Has No End single. Also- theres this anecdote, relayed in Lizzy Goodman's legendary book, Meet Me In The Bathroom:

Like any other cognizant musican, The Strokes' knowledge of the geist naturally includes The Clash. Which makes me think that there is something purposeful about these similarities. I don't have a perfect way to describe it, but something vaguely postmodern or ironic seems to fit. 

Actually, there's something that captures the feel pretty well: the end credit scene of White Noise, Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel. The film jolts you in and out of 80s-era absurdities, that seem possible for the time period, but possess an element of permeating covert uncanniness. The film obscures any explict political message by presenting us with various spectacles (and also an AWESOME lcd sounsystem song) to witness instead. 

Certainly, there are similarities between the dramatic irony in the film, and the dramatic irony of The Strokes' recent Coachella performance, where Julian delivers a brief monologue about an impending draft in an 'Amazon Crime' shirt to a disinterested crowd who seems more interested in them 'playing the hits' than any prescient political commentary.

Now, I'm making hasty generalizations about the crowd at this performance (status, wealth, brand associations etc), but there seems to be some sentiment online about how popular music artists should engage in politics. Let me be clear- it is fundamentally impossible to fully separate an artist (or culture in general) from politics. Even if I'm not delivering some Seeger-style folk song, my preferences and tendencies have still been shaped by the conditions I grew up in. (Yes, Kamala Harris' 'You think you just fell out of a coconut tree' line is applicable here) And for The Strokes, that looks like a privileged city upbringing, where inherited social capital eased any barriers to entry. I think the band has been in the game long enough to take some critical distance though. They were dealing with the nepo baby hate (symptom of capitalism, by the way) before it was as common as it is today, and at this Coachella performance, demonstrated some irony by delivering a timely political message to a seemingly apathetic crowd. That's what I get from this whole thing, at least. 

I think similar conclusions can be drawn from Going Shopping. Rather than lamenting about the ills of The Modern Age, I believe that this song purposefully makes use of gratuitious Autotune, and draws notable similarities to Lost in the Supermarket to demonstrate that our current socio-political situation is not unprecedented, and that this battle has, in fact, been fought before. Instead of asking ourselves What Ever Happened? to a political system that seemed to be Under Control, newly mobilized should listen when The Adults Are Talking to realize that these Games are not new, and that generations must not work Alone, but Together, for the best chance at a Happy Ending. 

I have some more thoughts about this that aren't coherent enough to type up yet. Anyways, excited for the new album! Reality Awaits!

March Albums of the Month!

 Hi blog. Happy end of March. I turned 22, accepted a big girl job, and got to celebrate a very exciting political victory this month. And as usual, I listened to a lot of music. Here's a recap and some brief notes.

Brighten the Corners- Pavement

Seeing them at Shaky Knees ATL <3

Ivy Tripp- Waxahatchee

She's not quite in her current alt-country niche yet on this one, but honestly I might like her heavier, angstier stuff better. If I had listened to her albums in chronological order I could've been a completely different person. 

The Weather- Pond

I think I got this recommendation from TikTok. Power of the Internet I guess. 

Halcyon Digest- Deerhunter

I listen to this a lot! Kind of like an Animal Collective-lite, this album is wholly entrancing, and can be listened to passively, like while studying, or with full and demanding attention. Its beauty is versatile, introspective and rewarding. There are some insane live performances from this album.

The White Stripes- s/t

Help(2) - War Child Records

Lovely mix of covers and originals. We need more big charity albums like this. 

Kiss All The Time Disco Occasionally- Harry Styles

2026 release! This was fine. I might end up seeing him in September with my mom and sister. His first album is the best, obviously.

Father of the Bride- Vampire Weekend

Listened to this on the drive home for Spring break.

Clube da Esquina- Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges

1972 Brazillian baroque pop! O Trem Azul is a favorite.

Sports s/t

2026 release! 

Fragments- Tremours

This group opened for Gary Numan when I saw him over spring break. Cool stuff. 

Transmitter- Cut Worms

2026 release!

Stankonia- OutKast

Listened on the drive back to school after spring break. Thought about my upcoming move to Atlanta. Gasoline Dreams, B.O.B., and Xplosion are my faves.

Pick A Bigger Weapon- The Coup

Prepping myself for 'I Love Boosters'. There are some very funny lyrics in here, and also a B.O.B. reference. 

7- Beach House

Best Beach House album <3 

It's Glass- Dutch Interior

2026 release! Ground Scores is the standout.

You Will Never Know Why- Sweet Trip

Air Supply sounds almost EXACTLY like a Stereolab song. I kind of associate this band with Panchiko for some reason. Maybe its the white album covers.

The Pearl- Harold Budd and Brian Eno

Ambient study music!

Workers Playtime- Billy Bragg

Listened at work. The Short Answer is the standout.

The Magnolia Electric Co.- Songs: Ohia

I want this creepy owl tattooed on me so bad. Like many other music snobs on antidepressants, I have an intense emotional connection to this album. I wonder what Phoebe Bridgers thinks about this album. I first heard Farewell Transmission in 2021, on a BBC Radio 6 show that Phoebe was guest hosting. 

Modern Vampires of the City- Vampire Weekend

My favorite VW, and a Top 5 all time favorite for me! Seemed like an appropriate listen as I finish up writing my senior thesis on religion and authority. 

Kill My Landlord- The Coup

Live at Union Chapel London- Billy Bragg

I listened to this after I saw that Wilco Solid Sound festival tickets were going for like $1,000. 

Immunity- Clairo

Decided to listen after a new music announcement from Rostam. Forgot he produced this.

Mind Palace Music- @

Animal Collective-lite for sad girls with sensitive eardrums. I could listen to this eighty more times and still find something new to love. 'Major Blue Empty' is genuinely jaw-dropping.

Contra- Vampire Weekend

Thesis. Also I've always thought this girl looks like Bridgit Mendler. 

Existence is Bliss- DEADLETTER

2026 release! British post-punk type stuff. Reminds me of Dry Cleaning and something else Cate Le Bon produced. 

Girlfriend- Grace Ives

Another 2026 release! I liked this a LOT- reminds me of how listening to Chappell Roan in her early days felt. Avalanche and Fire 2 are standouts.

Mutations- Beck

I'm such a Beckhead its not even funny. He has an album for every possible mood or emotion. Lazy Flies was my fav!

I Got Heaven- Mannequin P*ssy

Creature of Habit- Courtney Barnett

2026 release! Barnett is one of the most important ladies in indie rock. Her writing style (and undertones of angst) remind me of Sleater-Kinney. Bonus points for Waxahatchee feature. Favorites were Stay In Your Lane, Site Unseen, and Mantis.

Hot Rats- Frank Zappa

Study music!

Strawberry Jam- Animal Collective

I thrifted this CD over spring break. This album is overwhelming in the best way possible. Prepare yourself. The songs read like wise fables and bedtime stories, and sound like hazy childhood memories. The whole thing is worth your time, but my favorites are Unsolved Mysteries, For Reverend Green, Fireworks, #1, and Winter Wonderland. This album, and really any AnCo evokes the same emotions as Cueva de las Manos and other works of cave art. I don't really have a better way to describe it. 

Nothing's About to Happen to Me- Mitski

2026 release! This album had an air of Southern Gothicness to it. Think Yellow Wallpaper, or A Rose For Emily.

To Pimp A Butterfly- Kendrick Lamar

Recording Academy should be ASHAMED and EMBARRASSED that this didn't win Record of the Year.

In Filth Your Mystery is Kingdom- Dagmar Zuniga

2026 release! Reminiscent of Broadcast, but with folkier, softer production. Calm, but engaging album!

Bon Voyage- Melody's Echo Chamber

Everything Charlotte Gainsbourg wishes she could be.

Chloe and the Next 20th Century- Father John Misty 

Someone should make a movie for this album (or I'll just watch all the music videos in order). Favorites include Chloe (I don't know how to get the umlaut sorry), Goodbye Mr. Blue, Q4, Funny Girl, and The Next 20th Century. 

And that's it! cya later blog

Ways of Listening (Part 1?)

Disclaimer: I wrote this back in December when it was 'Wrappification season' proper, but never got around to posting it then. Please excuse my tardiness.

Hi blog, long time no see. I’ve been thinking a lot about spectatorship lately, or, more broadly, the way we interact with media. As someone who interacts with media many, many times a day, this heightened interest comes as no shock to me, but has likely been spurred by the Wrappification season. The ‘Wrappification’ season is what I am now going to call the time of year where media platforms and services offer a summary of your yearly interactions, and try to frame it as taste. What may have started as a creative original idea from an (uncredited?) intern has now permeated almost every platform imaginable. But as more and more of my metrics are regurgitated back to me, I become less and less impressed with what they actually tell me. Are my preferences and tastes solely reflected by how many times I listened to a certain song or artist? Certainly not! 

As platforms and their associated algorithms exert an ever-increasing amount of control over what we consume and when, it becomes all the more important to realize that taste is not dictated by data alone. My main argument here is that an increased prevalence of the ‘Wrappification Season’ leads to less meaningful conceptions of taste, less meaningful interactions with media, and a degradation of the individual from a dignified spectator, solely to an observer (or consumer). 

Before I get ahead of myself, let me introduce a pretty important guy.

This is French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. You can’t talk about taste without mentioning him! In his seminal work, ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste’, he seeks to “determine how the cultivated disposition and cultural competence that are revealed in the nature of the cultural goods consumed, and the way they are consumed, vary according to the category of agents and the area which they are applied.” (1984, 13) His findings made an important relationship clear: the link between cultural practices (what people do and how they do it) and educational capital and social origin. Essentially, he thought that the selections we make as consumers cannot simply be reduced to matters of personal discernments, they are expressions of upbringing, occupation, and social class. Tastes are social, and are acquired through conditioning relative to social origin and trajectory, but are experienced as something natural and personal.

Bourdieu’s thoughts on music were pretty clear, he wrote that, “nothing more clearly affirms one’s ‘class’, nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music” (1984, 18). At the time of writing, Bourdieu thought of music as more of a ‘pure’ knowledge, as compared to viewing art in a museum, or going to a restaurant to eat cuisine, because music is marked by less of an outward display. But, times have changed. I can’t determine if Bourdieu would have anticipated the rise of Spotify Wrapped, and other music-related outward displays of cultural capital (I guess posting a song on your Instagram story would count here– I do this often), or the rise of cultural omnivorousness, but it is clear that his argument must be reevaluated in light of these new developments.

Let me reverse back to cultural omnivorousness. It’s a little hard to imagine, but only a short time ago (in the grand scheme of things), popular music was not as, well, popular as it is today. The ‘talk of the town’ was usually classical music, as high class, wealthy individuals attended  exclusive (and expensive) performances, and engaged in criticism. But, yet again, the times changed! This time, specifically, access to music changed, in the form of CDs, file sharing sites, and, you guessed it, streaming services! I’m going to start referencing some really cool research papers here, but as the democratization of music gives consumers more opportunities to listen to different songs, artists and genres, it begs the question– does their cultural taste expand too (Nelson, 2022)? To me, the answer is obviously yes. Luckily, my own personal observations are supported by some pretty big names in the field of sociology. As influential as Bourdieu was, and continues to be, sociologist Richard Peterson introduced somewhat of a competing idea in 1992. Peterson identified the ‘blurring’ of traditional lines between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture- and pointed to the emergence of a kind of ‘cultural omnivore’, who were usually young, highly educated, affluent professionals.

“As a long-term professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University with a strong interest in both arts and music, Peterson was in an ideal position to develop the concept of cultural omnivorousness. He believed that earlier cultural divisions no longer described American tastes in music and the arts. He suggested that cultural omnivorousness was a product of major political, social, and economic changes that had taken place in the United States between World War II and the 1990s. Thus, the cultural omnivore was said to make fewer distinctions between cultural genres than at any point in American history. For example, a cultural omnivore might enjoy both classical (highbrow) and country (lowbrow) music and might enjoy foods ranging from gourmet offerings to street-corner hot dogs. 

Research on cultural omnivorousness suggests that it is a direct result of the democratization of the arts, which has made elements of highbrow culture more accessible to the rest of the population and redrawn lines separating different genres, and of social mobility. Socially mobile individuals have been influenced by more than one culture at different points in their lives. Thus, cultural omnivores do not recognize rigid racial, ethnic, or gender barriers. Contrarily, the univore is inclined to express preferences or engage in activities that are associated with his/her own social class. Numerous studies on cultural tastes and activities have been conducted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Spain, and Sweden.” 

Thanks for bearing with me blog. Let me introduce a few more really awesome research papers. In his paper titled, “Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Development” Nick Prior asks to what extent Bourdieu’s claims about social stratification and music consumption are still relevant and whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with the specific ways we interact with musical forms. In light of developments in technology and overall taste (the rise of the cultural omnivore), the article argues that Bourdieu’s claims are not all that relevant. So what are music sociologists to do? A few new perspectives are also alluded to in the article, 

“For Tia DeNora, sociologists have been too quick to discard the musical properties of music. They’ve ignored the multifarious ways that music ‘‘gets into action’’ (DeNora2000, 8), including how it activates our memories and emotional states. To take music seriously means to avoid reducing it to an indicator of some hidden structural social force or distinction strategy. Music is more dynamic than this, for DeNora. It modulates emotions, evokes senses and equips identities. In the flow of everyday life, music affords an‘‘inner sonorous life’’ (DeNora 2004, 217), acting with and upon our phenomenological worlds, colouring our loves, desires and feelings. Drawing on insights from interactionism and ethnomethodology, DeNora argues that if we ground our sociological analysis in the local situations in which music is used, we are able to properly recognize music’s powers (DeNora 2000). This means shifting the level of examination from a general sociology of music to a specific sociology of people doing things with music; from the idea of con-straining social structures to the constitutive effects of musical meanings.” 

(emphasis added)

The article also references Antoine Hennon, who (in my opinion) respects the dignity and critical facilities of the music listener, as he views them as never passive, and engaged and inventive in the ways in which they let music enter their lives. His alternative to Bourdieu draws on Actor Network Theory’s recognition of the agency of objects, and the ongoing adjustments that occur as music exchanges its properties with us. Within Actor Network Theory (which is an approach to social theory that sets everything in the social and natural world in a constantly shifting network of relationships), music taste is not a property, but an activity- a dynamic set of engagements which unfolds moment to moment. Like DeNora, Hennion asks us to shift from a sociology of distinction to a ‘phenomenology of dedication’, where music is a ceremony of pleasure, a series of little habits and ways of doing things in real life.

I think this is a nice way to evaluate our own relationship with music. Interactions with music are certainly not created equally. Here are some examples:

• Attending a concert and hearing the group play your favorite song

• Flipping through different radio stations (does anyone actually still do this?) until you find a song you like on your commute home from work

• Mindlessly listening to the background music playing in the grocery store

• Searching the depths of the Internet for a one-off version of a song or cover you like (heres one of my favorite examples of that)

• Pressing shuffle on a playlist created for you by your streaming platform of choice

I’m sure the list could go on. But, underlying all of these ‘ways of listening’, are the distinct choices regarding what you are actually listening to. Sometimes, it is your choice, but other times, it might be the DJ’s choice, the corporate executive’s choice, the band manager’s choice, or even, the algorithm’s choice. Our friend Bourdieu had a name for this group of decision makers: cultural intermediaries. In his book, Distinction, Bourdieu presents cultural intermediaries as a group of taste makers, whose work is part of an economy that requires the production of consuming tastes and dispositions. I’m leaving quite a bit out, but if you’re craving more information on Bourdieu’s thoughts on cultural intermediaries check this primer out. 

Recognizing these intermediaries, and more importantly, recognizing the different ways we interact with music becomes all the more important in a world full of cultural omnivores, no longer bound by traditional barriers to access, or notions of class. So, taste in music is perhaps no longer a matter of what specifically we consume, but how we consume it– i.e. who, or what is making those consumption choices for us. And increasingly, it is the streaming platforms and algorithms themselves! 

An article by Jack Webster states that, “Through the provision of personalised playlists and recommendations, music streaming platforms are seeking to alleviate the labour involved in finding relevant music, attempting to perform as a ‘taste-maker’ for each individual user. In contrast for those who have a more casual relationship with music, the judgements made by music streaming platforms about what is ‘right’ for them might not be so contentious.” 

I’m going to say this is Part 1 because this is my blog and its just for fun. Part 2 soon. Or not. 

Old Union Art Project

Hey blog. Still reeling (get it) about the Oscars, don't worry. But my late night contemplations (really it was more like early morning) regarding Boots Riley has adequately motivated me to share parts of a final project from a class I took last semester called Economics and Literature. I made 60's inspired advertisements for union membership. These pictures are cropped really badly. Prepare yourself.

Some inspo:

Think Jenny Holzer truisms, Guerrilla Girls advertising, mandatory workplace compliance posters, and vintage thought-provoking ads. 

Ok I lied. This first one clearly isn't about union membership. It's meant to loosely explain minimax- a decision making rule. Look really close if you want to read an attempt to explain this concept but from the point of view of someone really trying to sell it to you.

 Union girls are It girls. That's it.

This one was my favorite!! The next ones are a little less vintage ad inspired and more similar to Guerrilla Girls/Jenny Holzer.

Words borrowed from Jenny.

This one is very clearly inspired by GG! I love how their work directly asks audiences to engage and contemplate <3

#savetheunions I'll revisit this eventually I think. For now thats it. Bye blog.