By Kelly Ginger Constantly on tour, it might seem like High Places no longer has a home base – but don’t be fooled. They’ve recently broke free from Brooklyn and have settled nicely into their new West Coast home in Los Angeles. Yet, I don’t think it is necessarily place that defines this band, and they wouldn’t want it to. That would be too stationary, and if one were to define this band it might be by movement, or change. […]
Conversation: Agriculture Reader No. 3
A warm and welcoming term, “agriculture” at its simplest cultivates and gives way to growth, in turn providing food and other fundamental necessities. And the writing in this annual arts journal, as well as Joey Parlett’s artwork, is in this sense fantastically cohesive and naturally grown, cultivated with care from the minds of thirty talented contributors. Nearly every piece embraces an introspective, philosophical undertone, while at the same time maintaining a naturalness characteristic to writing that has sprung organically from […]
Conversations: The Desk Set
If Animal Farm were based on Animal House, this punk house in Madison would be the result: a group of ten or so mostly drunken University of Wisconsin students living and thriving in a communal environment, getting hammered, listening to Dillinger Four and chasing after various liberal arts degrees. I spent a night there while visiting an ex. She took me to a party where over the course of an evening I sampled snippets of conversations ranging from how to […]
Conversation: Franz Nicolay
It seems safe to say that The Hold Steady are the greatest American rock n’ roll band right now. Craig Finn and his Springsteen-esque observations on the punks and fuck-ups are a third of the holy trinity of rock scribes, along with John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats) and Will Sheff (Okkervil River) in the renaissance of hyper-literate song-crafting. However, I am sure there is an old adage that goes something like, behind every great songwriter is, well . . . […]