“Criticism of unprecedented fullness…”—Kirkus Reviews

Tangled Threads and Golden Needles

 

September 20: Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, the Future of Roots

September 6: Drive My Car: Soulsters Cover Lennon-McCartney

August 9: Moondog Matinee's garage band gold; M. Gessen on Navalny; Nate Chinen on music books

July 26: MAGA as outsized Marvel comic satire; the Eagles go C&W; Schubert dances

July 12: Notes on Woody Guthrie; hifi's biggie small; and rock drumming

June 28: The last of the Good Old Puffer Trains, the Kinks aren't like anybody else

 

 

The No-Fun Zone of Hotel California

A Canadian catches up with California’s Golden Hour

I liked Robert Gilbert’s “On the Inconvenience of Hating the Eagles,” so I pinged him and asked him why he stopped before Hotel California. We tussled. I wrote up my take, and he wrote up his:

Until a few weeks ago, I had never owned, let alone listened to, an album by the Eagles. And in all honesty, had Tim not proposed a back-and-forth between us after my piece a few months ago on my Substack about my ambivalence about the group, that would have remained the case. But there I was, going onto Amazon, searching for a CD copy of Hotel California, hitting Add to Cart, and then Proceed to Checkout, and then (did I wince by this point? Yes, I did) Place your order. The next day, a copy of the album was on my doorstep…

Tim Riley on Joe Walsh in Listening Sessions

Riley on Riley

The Music Journalism Insider interview
What was the best track / video or film / book you’ve consumed in the past 12 months?

Oh that Dan Charnas book, Dilla Time, such a bomber. That made me hear rap in a completely new way and I still barely grasp the nuances of Dilla’s achievement. But last year had many terrific entries: I wrote about Chuck Berry: An American Life, by RJ Smith, and Lightning Striking, by Lenny Kaye, but there’s also Rap Capital, by Joe Coscarelli.

What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?

More diversity, obviously. What we need is 600 years of Margo Jefferson and Danyel Smith and Hanif Abdurraqib and Nelson George and Jeff Chang to “balance” the scales. Us white guys have screwed things up royal…

Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (1988)

Riley offers a new, deeper understanding of the Beatles by closely considering each song and album they recorded in an exploration as rigorous as it is soulful.

"In Tell Me Why, a labor of loving obsession, Tim Riley minutely examines the music of the Beatles... Song by song, he notes the subtleties of craft and inspiration that keep the Beatles' recordings contemporary, illuminating music so familiar it's often taken for granted."

Jon Pareles, The New York Times