NOTES ON THE SIGN O' THE TIMES BOXSET, PT. 1. It took me a while to listen to all of the Sign O' the Times outtakes from the boxset released in 2020. Maybe you've had this experience: you know a work of art is going to be so good that you want to hold off… Continue reading Soul Psychodelicide
Recently I was interviewed for our local community paper's book column about my 2017 book, Nothing Has Been Done Before. Read it here! I enjoyed chatting with Mandy Shunnarah about the continuing relevance of "the new" in music culture, and we even took a related detour into musical genres. If you want to learn more… Continue reading Revisiting Nothing Has Been Done Before
I moved from Cleveland to Columbus in 2002 for grad school...and to play music. I'd always felt more kinship to the musicians I knew down here, many of them transplants from nearby Delaware, than the folks I knew up north. The Cleveland "scene," for bands at least, was dominated by industrial and metal; down here,… Continue reading The Columbus Anthology
I created a website full of resources for my new book, Nothing Has Been Done Before: Seeking the New in 21st Century American Literature. Go here and bookmark:http://nothinghasbeendonebefore.comThe site includes audio and visual, a complete discography, outtakes, and more. Those resources won't update much--though I'm still building the annotations for the discography--but I'll update it… Continue reading Nothing Has Been Done Before Has a Website
A day late and a dollar short, as usual, but here we go:My review of the rock 'n' pop writing anthology SHAKE IT UP is live at Los Angeles Review of Books, one of my favorite sites for criticism. A lot of leftovers from this one which I hope to get posted here in an… Continue reading The Latest: Shake It Up and Twin Peaks
My new music column is up at PopMatters today. It concerns pop chanteuse Lana Del Rey's recent single "Love" and listening to her use of nostalgia in a time of Trumpism. In many ways, this is a catching-up-with-things essay, and also very personal since it concerns, in part, my students at CCAD.I should be back… Continue reading Lana Del Rey’s “Love” In a Time of Trump
So I can finally announce the big news I've been keeping hush-hush: Next fall, Bloomsbury will publish my book of music criticism! The working title is NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE. The book explores the concept of the "new" in American popular music since 2000 and argues for a different way of engaging with that… Continue reading Nothing Has Been Done Before To Be Published by Bloomsbury
My new column is up at PopMatters. It's one of those survey-the-land kinds of pieces, reflecting on where we're at as a country. Specifically it considers Fantastic Negrito's song "Working Poor" from his new album The Last Days of Oakland and what the song does--not just what it's about.I want to clarify that my interest… Continue reading Summer of ’16: Fantastic Negrito’s “Working Poor”
Once again I'm trying to keep my pencil sharp by reviewing single tracks from wherever, whenever, most of it fairly new unless otherwise stated. This time around I'm calling it "This Week's EP" because the EP is a lovable form: brief, intense in its focus compared to an LP, but spacious enough for some noodling around. The idea is that the included songs would fit on an EP. If that means six songs, or two, so be it. The point is to write this off-the-cuff, no planning, typos okay, lots of semi-colons, perhaps.
The endeavor to create a weekly update, or even any kind of regular update, on this site has failed before, and I expect it to fail again.
Track 1. "Complicated," Fitz and The Tantrums, from their new self-titled album (Elektra/WMG)
The zenith/nadir of indie pop in the sense of highly compressed synth-crunch made with the "spirit" of indie-rebellion-something-or-other, this song, on the heels of the band's single "HandClap," reminds me of the white-collar bar near the Short North Market called Brothers, a meat market kind of place I wandered into once years ago and will never wander into again. "Kissing like a car crash" is a good lyric, though. My rating: three half-smoked cigarette butts on a sidewalk.
My latest column at PopMatters has posted. It's about Kanye West's new album, The Life of Pablo, and its evolving nature. I was reading a recent essay by the philosopher Boris Groys concerning contemporary art and the internet, and something clicked. West's constant revising of his album has been treated like a novelty, so I… Continue reading Documenting The Life of Pablo
Robert Loss 