Author: paulsbrizzi

OK it’s a bright and shiny new year and I should really let it go but can we just talk about how, like, it could be any random day between Halloween and New Year’s and you’re feeling crappy and you just wanna pick up a few cold remedies at CVS, but you inevitably get assaulted…… Continue reading January ’23

Last Night a Best Albums of the Year List Saved My Life Back in the day, a year-end best-of list would be about records that most people were familiar with, so readers could take it in and weigh it against their own opinions. Nowadays there are seriously like 100,000 records released in a year (and…… Continue reading December ’22

Apparently I missed out on the many pleasures of Goat back in the teens, but they’re from the far north of Sweden, they have a tasty origin story involving Swedish Voodoo practices that nobody seems to believe, and they’re committed to absorbing influences from across the world (notably North African desert blues) and time (70s…… Continue reading November ’22

Back in the heady days of mid-Obama I got into this bizarre boyfriendesque situation with a cute guy with good taste in music and a lot of emotional damage. He was always on the verge of breaking it off, and I was DETERMINED to make it work. We were fans of Factory Floor, a groovy…… Continue reading October ’22

Last month I put my Alaska Air Skymiles to work and took myself on such a nice little va-K-K. It took me away from my important duties as appreciator of new records, but I came very close to seeing Bauhaus play at a castle in Berlin. In the end my plane wasn’t gonna land in…… Continue reading September ’22

Back in the late 80s early 90s Cranes were my religion — I bowed at the black altar of Alison Shaw’s terrified little goth child vocals crying out against her brother Jim’s great squalling slabs of textured guitar horror. I used to go on weekly expeditions to Aron’s and Bleecker Bob’s to find the good…… Continue reading August ’22

What seemed like a harmless little crush on “Selling Sunset” eventually turned into a full on obsession. I didn’t take it the least bit seriously at first, but as the story unfolds over multiple seasons it takes on a sort of Shakespearian dimension, with at its core a good vs. evil battle for the crown…… Continue reading July ’22

I’ve been dipping my toe into PC Music stuff from time to time for some time now; the knowledgeable philosophical crowd over at Tiny Mix Tapes can’t seem to get enough, but I always come away with an impression of sassy and gleaming production wrapped around nothing very remarkable. I saw Charli XCX on stage…… Continue reading June ’22

I had read about punk in Time Magazine back when I was still in high school in Italy and it sounded scary and gross and random. Bands actually spitting on people! By the time I started college I was into the kind of new wave they played on the radio — KLOS, LA’s smooth and…… Continue reading May ’22

I always watch the Oscars with my besties Crystal Declined and Mocha Chocolotta. Those are their drag names. They’re not drag queens, not actively anyway, but we use each others’ drag names as a kind of sisterly playful put-down. It’s all very old school, sort of playing at being Boys in the Band-era homophiles. My…… Continue reading April ’22