A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Music

  • Gretchen Peters, “Jubilee”

    This (beautiful) song seems fitting for a day dedicated to remembering our mortality.   (The whole album’s very good, by the way.) Read more

  • Favorite music of 2015

    I listen to a lot of older music and am by no means a new-music maven. There’s undoubtedly a lot of great stuff that came out this year that wasn’t even on my radar. That said, here are ten albums I really enjoyed. The list is heavy on 80’s-esque synth-pop and country/Americana, for whatever that’s Read more

  • Odds and ends for a Friday

    I realize I’m exactly the type of person you’d expect to like a Sufjan Stevens album, but nonetheless–the new album is really good! Evangelical Christian groups are working on a statement of theological concern regarding factory farming. I’m no longer a vegetarian (and feel vaguely guilty about it), but I’m all for any efforts to Read more

  • Free De La Soul albums for Valentine’s Day

    Legendary hip-hop group De La Soul is offering free downloads of some of their classic albums today. See here: http://www.wearedelasoul.com/ I’m not nearly as familiar with their catalog as I should be, so I’m taking this opportunity to fix that. 🙂 Read more

  • Best of the week

    I end up sharing a lot of links on Twitter, so I thought it might be worth collecting what I think were the stand-out pieces of the week. (“Stand-out” doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with every word, just that these were the most interesting or thought-provoking items I came across). Anyway, here goes: –Elizabeth Stoker, Read more

  • Mazzy Star, “Blue Flower”

    Amazon was having an MP3 sale, and I went back and scooped up the rest of the Mazzy Star catalog. This is a great cut from their debut album, She Hangs Brightly. Read more

  • Favorite music of 2013

    I didn’t listen to a ton of new music this year, and probably listened to as much old music (old country, old jazz, old punk, lots of Elvis) as new. But there were a few 2013 releases I really liked. Here, in no particular order, are the albums I found myself returning to repeatedly. Queens Read more

  • “Lost” Johnny Cash album to be released next year

    This is great news: There’s new never-before-heard music coming from Johnny Cash. Cash’s estate is releasing “Out Among the Stars,” an album he recorded with Billy Sherrill in the early 1980s that was never released by Columbia Records, then disappeared when the company dropped Cash in 1986. Turns out Cash and his wife, June Carter Read more

  • Johnny Cash, “One of These Days I’m Gonna Sit Down and Talk to Paul”

    I sometimes wonder what the people who were first exposed to Johnny Cash via his angsty late-90s output (the “Hurt” video, etc.) think of his super-earnest religious songs. Personally, I love it all. Read more

  • Emmylou Harris, “Wayfaring Stranger”

    Read more