#zachary lipez

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

If, on other songs, Karen O.’s use of lyrical repetition serves to achieve a primal, beyond-language rock-lexiconical potency, the singer takes care to do the opposite on “Maps.” Every line’s meaning is maintained, each imbued with a spurned lover’s (deluded) belief in the power of debate to change someone’s feelings about them. Each “wait” or “they don’t love you like I love you” isn’t a separate thought, exactly, but they are sung like they might conceivably build on each other in a coherent argument, with which the singer might—somehow, against all other logic or evidence—still get what they want.

Zachary Lipez, Yeah Yeah (Yeah), Cool Cool (Cool): Fever To Tell at 20

[jgthirlwell]

JG Thirlwell: Constantly Evolving

By Zachary Lipez “The music of J.G. Thirlwell is, in part, about letting go of preconceptions.”

An interview with JG Thirlwell by the illustrious Zachary Lipez was just published in the National Sawdust blog, discussing the new JG Thirlwell string quartet album 'Dystonia'. 'Dystonia' is available now on Bandcamp.

[jaygabler]

Happy new year! If you didn't stay out all night on New Year's Eve, chasing an ex-girlfriend and pursued by an ex-wife, you can live vicariously through the fictional protagonist of 131 Different Things.

The novella with photos is the fifth collaboration among photographer Nick Zinner, writer Zachary Lipez, and designer Stacy Wakefield. Zinner has a unique vantage on nightlife: he's a guitarist who's one-third of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and also plays in the hardcore band Head Wound City.

I reviewed 131 Different Things for The Current’s Rock and Roll Book Club.

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

Fever To Tell does not fit neatly into any of the Rock and Roll subgenres. Like the band that made it, the album is too strange for garage, too abrasive for new wave, too eager to please for no wave, too trashy for post-punk, and has a relationship to punk that can best be compared to ex-lovers who don’t talk, don’t follow each other on social media, but who don’t wish each other any harm either.

Zachary Lipez, Yeah Yeah (Yeah), Cool Cool (Cool): Fever To Tell at 20

[hazlittmag]

How Am I Going To Make Fun Of The New Radiohead Album Without Listening To It?

My fondest musical memory is being a teenager and slow dancing in a dark, dirty kitchen to Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine.” I was dancing with a man, not because I was experimenting but because all the girls were taken and the cough syrup was kicking in pretty hard and I really wanted to slow dance like everybody else. The kitchen was filthy, actually, broken furniture amid smeared pasta and its days-old hard encasing red sauce, and if the light wasn’t broken, it eventually would be. But the stereo worked, and Redding’s eternal pauses between the words “these” and “arms” and “of” combined nicely with the gravity-sucking effects of the Robitussin to make all of us slowly, so slowly, circling each other in the debris feel real romantic, or at least instantly romanticized. And it was an old soul song and we knew what was up, nostalgia shooting forward and backward on the timeline like The Flash. It’s why I’m patient with today’s indie/DIY insta-history kids: I get wanting epic moments so bad that you psychically will them upon your own life.

Keep Reading

[hazlittmag]

I’m sympathetic to these evildoers for sure. Born into relative privilege, Jewish, cis and male, I probably could have been powerful, rather than just being a passive beneficiary. I could have focused on reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic, rather than cough syrup, cocaine, and comic books.

Laughing at the Dead: A Guide

[hazlittmag]

I am sorry for what I tweeted. I am sorry that you’re offended. I am sorry that the gods of context have abandoned me now, in my time of need. Maybe the tweets are old, but maybe they are young—I love the elderly and newborn puppies in equal measure, so does it really matter? Regardless, these screengrabs of me saying that 'DIY, like the Jews and Pavement, is bad, very bad' are truly unfortunate, especially in light of my new album coming out.

An Apology/Explanation Re: Recent Tweets That Have Come to Light

[wordsinbooks]

My New York is your Detroit or Chicago or Pittsburgh or anywhere else where defeatism has the sexual sheen of jeans on Kurt Russell. New York is my dead-end street, and I dig the topography. I will never leave New York because I am, in my heart, provincial. And I have found my province of choice.

Hello to All That: Why I'm Staying in New York Until I Die