Open in app

Sign In

Write

Sign In

Shallow Rewards
Shallow Rewards

807 Followers

Home

About

May 10, 2016

A Note at Priscilla Alden’s Grave

Twenty-three is a strange age, particularly if you’ve been fortunate enough to forestall adulthood with higher education. Leaving home is about the only real change you’ll experience, because college tends to be a gritty reboot of grade school. Generational backstories and conflicts are compressed to an overlong, slow-motion title sequence…

Music

4 min read

A Note at Priscilla Alden’s Grave
A Note at Priscilla Alden’s Grave
Music

4 min read


Nov 1, 2015

Ride: Waves

You can count the great shoegaze bands on one hand, because most of those blurry, twirling romantics were terrible in concert. Even compared to their most talented contemporaries — My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints, Swervedriver and Chapterhouse at the start — Ride were far and away the most exciting live…

Music

4 min read

Ride: Waves
Ride: Waves
Music

4 min read


Nov 1, 2015

OX4: The Best of Ride

Ride were plain gauche in 1990. Their sloppy first EPs borrowed as liberally from the Cocteau Twins’ mid-period work as that unbearable C86 racket, but in 1990, the rest of pop music was so bad that it didn’t matter. Wizened critics couldn’t bear another technically substandard batch of shambling mopes…

Music

5 min read

OX4: The Best of Ride
OX4: The Best of Ride
Music

5 min read


Oct 16, 2015

1 Mile North: Minor Shadows

Pensive electric guitar has a limited history, which makes sense: it’s a limited mode of expression. In the ’70s, Fripp and Eno brought cosmic rock and new age down to earth, stopping short of total academia a la John Cage, but their guitar works — No Pussyfooting (1973) and Evening…

Music

5 min read

1 Mile North: Minor Shadows
1 Mile North: Minor Shadows
Music

5 min read


Oct 16, 2015

Radiohead: Hail to the Thief

Nothing really matters, Anyone can see. Nothing really matters To me. When I head out to my local record shop, during my designated lunch break — an act Thom Yorke would surely turn into some fatalistic, Orwell-lite meditation on routine and alienation — I’ll mingle with teenagers, bike messengers and…

Music

7 min read

Radiohead: Hail to the Thief
Radiohead: Hail to the Thief
Music

7 min read


Oct 16, 2015

Cat Power: You Are Free

Liz Phair was a grifter. Using sexuality as a weapon, she turned the tables on obsessive boys and set their hearts aflutter with brazen lyrics like her dead-to-the-world, faux-hooker praise for doin’ it doggie-style: “That way we can fuck and watch TV.” Forgiving “Explain it to Me,” Phair was in…

Music

7 min read

Cat Power: You Are Free
Cat Power: You Are Free
Music

7 min read


Oct 2, 2015

How to Disappear Completely

On the fatal narcissism of the Sports Guy. I can’t do a podcast about this, because it’s the most podcast-y notion I’ve ever had, but I was thinking about Bill Simmons’ new gig at HBO — where he’s at as a media personality in 2015 — and what strikes me…

Bill Simmons

5 min read

How to Disappear Completely
How to Disappear Completely
Bill Simmons

5 min read


Aug 15, 2015

You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound, Dog

On Robert Christgau’s move to VICE Robert Christgau is the same age as my father. Actually, that’s inaccurate: he is four months older than my father. This morning, Christgau announced the migration of his authorial brand from this site — Medium — to VICE Media’s music arm, Noisey. His inaugural…

Music

7 min read

You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound, Dog
You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound, Dog
Music

7 min read


May 14, 2015

Someone Take the Wheel

The Death of SPIN Magazine On the 30th anniversary of SPIN magazine, Byron Coley — the “underground” editor almost solely responsible for establishing the magazine’s credibility in the early days — is absent. Where is Legs McNeil? …

8 min read

Someone Take the Wheel
Someone Take the Wheel

8 min read


Mar 3, 2015

The Future of the Future of Music

From its inception in June of 2000, the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) has championed itself as an artists-rights nonprofit. …

Spotify

7 min read

The Future of the Future of Music
The Future of the Future of Music
Spotify

7 min read

Shallow Rewards

Shallow Rewards

807 Followers

Town decrier.

Following
  • Matthew Perpetua

    Matthew Perpetua

  • John DeVore

    John DeVore

  • Ryo Miyauchi

    Ryo Miyauchi

  • Quinn Norton

    Quinn Norton

  • Eric Sandler

    Eric Sandler

Help

Status

Writers

Blog

Careers

Privacy

Terms

About

Text to speech