Reading AM/PM, the first collection of short stories from Austin’s Amelia Gray, one can’t help but be impressed: across a series of flash fiction pieces, Gray evokes wonder and dread; romanticism and despair. And slowly, as you make your way through AM/PM‘s stories, patterns begin to emerge as characters recur and situations evolve — a … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Thursday Agitation
Me @ Volume 1- A Quick Technical Note for the Weekend
- Afternoon Bites: Stephen Fry, Geoff Dyer on criticism, the Month of Letters challenge, and more
- The Week In Reviews: Jay-Z at Carnegie Hall, the journalism of Charles Dickens, Edward St Aubyn’s prose, and more
- Afternoon Bites: Hanksy Speaks! Chabon on comics! Straub on Walhberg! and more.
- Coming Soon to a Lower East Side Near You*
June 4, 2009, Author: , 1 Comment
Tags:: Amelia Gray, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Amelia Gray
Categories: Books, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Amelia Gray, Thursday Agitation
May 7, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Ryan Catbird
Categories: Music, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Thursday Agitation
For seven years, the man known as Ryan Catbird has been writing about a particular corner of whip-smart indie rock — including, in recent days, Royal City and Golden Triangle — at his blog The Catbirdseat. Through an affiliated record label, he’s released music from the likes of Manishevitz, Moviola, and Jason Zumpano. Even more … Continue reading
April 23, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Dan Friel, Parts and Labor, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Dan Friel
Categories: Music, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Dan Friel, Parts and Labor, Thursday Agitation
Dan Friel‘s music acts as a literal definition of the oft-used phrase “noise pop”. His solo work, including 2004′s Sunburn and last year’s Ghost Town, achieves a near-perfect medium of frayed sounds and memorable hooks. As a founder of Parts & Labor, he has seen the group evolve from the aggressive abstraction of their early … Continue reading
April 16, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Jon Solomon, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Jon Solomon
Categories: Music, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Jon Solomon, Thursday Agitation
Over the years, Jon Solomon has released an abundance of striking music. My Pal God, the label through which I came to know him, has encompassed everything from precise, experimental rock to retrospectives of offbeat pop groups to compilations of skewed holiday music. More recently, Solomon began a new label, Comedy Minus One, which has … Continue reading
April 3, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Nick Antosca
Categories: Books, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Thursday Agitation
Reading Nick Antosca’s second novel Midnight Picnic was one of the most intense experiences I had last year. A surreal ghost story (of sorts), set in both a surreal landscape and an immediately, tragically contemporary America, it moved towards its conclusion with an unknowable but clearly present logic. Via email, we discussed process, Antosca’s work … Continue reading
March 26, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Music, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Tracy Wilson
Categories: Music, NYC, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Music, Thursday Agitation
One of the highlights, for me, of my zine-editor days came when I found myself in the basement of Brownies circa 2000, moderating a conversation between Tracy Wilson and Caithlin De Marrais. At the time, De Marrais was making music as one-third of Rainer Maria, while Wilson’s band Souvenir had begun playing shows around New … Continue reading
March 19, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: kieron gillen, phonogram, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Kieron Gillen
Categories: Books, Comics, The Thursday AgitationTags:: kieron gillen, phonogram, Thursday Agitation
Phonogram, the collaboration of writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie, is both a surreal urban fantasy with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and a detailed critique of the same. Its first volume, Rue Britannia, covered Britpop with side trips into the music of Scout Niblett and the Afghan Whigs. The Singles Club, currently … Continue reading
March 12, 2009, Author: , 1 Comment
Tags:: featherproof, Jonathan Messinger, publishing, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Jonathan Messinger
Categories: Books, The Thursday AgitationTags:: featherproof, Jonathan Messinger, publishing, Thursday Agitation
The titles published by Chicago’s Featherproof Books to date have ranged from art-world satire to graphic design showcases to surreal evocations of the South. Their “Light Readingâ€� series of minibooks includes work from Kevin Sampsell, Elizabeth Crane, Patrick Somerville, and Nathaniel Rich (and, full disclosure, me). 2009 finds Featherproof expanding, with both Paper Egg Books’ … Continue reading
March 5, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Light Boxes, Shane Jones, Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Shane Jones
Categories: Books, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Light Boxes, Shane Jones, Thursday Agitation
Shane Jones‘s novel Light Boxes is a strange and haunting work, alternating surreal descriptions of a winter-bound society with starkly tangible descriptions of that society’s daily life, and encompassing a storyline at once epic and deeply intimate. Its tone, bringing together metafictional elements with folk-tale lyricism, at times recalls Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman and the recent … Continue reading
February 26, 2009, Author: , Leave a comment
Tags:: Thursday Agitation
the thursday agitation: an introduction
Categories: Housekeeping, The Thursday AgitationTags:: Thursday Agitation
Today brings the first installment of The Thursday Agitation, a weekly series of short interviews on The Scowl. First up will be Christopher Weingarten, my onetime editor at Paper Thin Walls, to discuss (among other things) his 1000 Times Yes project. Said interview should be up within a few hours. For the record, I’m using … Continue reading