-
2 weeks ago | 
pitchfork.com | Meaghan Garvey
It’s hard to say exactly what “country” means these days, but even if you can’t define it, you know it when you hear it. “Last Night” by Morgan Wallen—the biggest song of 2023, and the defining country crossover hit of the 2020s—is country to the extent that Wallen sings in a macho Tennessee accent, though its wispy fingersnap beat almost sounds like ringtone rap.
-
2 weeks ago | 
billboard.com | Meaghan Garvey
Hunched over a paper plate piled with oysters and snow crab legs, I realized I hadn’t worn a shirt now in two days.
-
1 month ago | 
scarycoolsadgoodbye.substack.com | Meaghan Garvey
Dear readers — it’s about that time. America’s #1 vibes-based newsletter is now welcoming your hot tips regarding any and all SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE-coded destinations within the Great Midwest. Biker bars, supper clubs, haunted lighthouses, sites of supernatural wonder or distinct abjection, you get the gist. Drop us a line by replying to this email, or hit [email protected].
-
1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Meaghan Garvey
Along the wild western coast of Ireland’s County Galway lies Connemara. Oscar Wilde once praised the region’s “savage beauty,” a phrase you will encounter at least a dozen times reading about its rugged expanses of mountain, bog, lake, and sea, to all of which its 30,000 or so residents appear proudly subordinate.
-
1 month ago | 
thesmallbow.com | Meaghan Garvey
The Small Bow is a reader-supported publication. Please financially back us and help us grow if you can. Today’s essay, from writer Meaghan Garvey, is both a recovery story and a love story. These genres typically overlap, sometimes disastrously, but her spin on them is truly delightful.
-
1 month ago | 
pitchfork.com | Meaghan Garvey
There’s this window of the early 2010s that I’m obsessed with: let’s say from Flockaveli in October 2010 to when Avicii unleashed “Levels” in October 2011. The 2000s were over, but it didn’t feel as if a new decade had begun, and for a weird, autonomous stretch, a few iconoclasts attempted to invent the 2010s by throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. At least that’s my explanation for why the music, fashion, everything from that period felt so… extra.
-
1 month ago | 
yahoo.com | Meaghan Garvey
There’s this window of the early 2010s that I’m obsessed with: let’s say from Flockaveli in October 2010 to when Avicii unleashed “Levels” in October 2011. The 2000s were over, but it didn’t feel as if a new decade had begun, and for a weird, autonomous stretch, a few iconoclasts attempted to invent the 2010s by throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck. At least that’s my explanation for why the music, fashion, everything from that period felt so… extra.
-
1 month ago | 
scarycoolsadgoodbye.substack.com | Meaghan Garvey
The coolest person on Twitter right now is @HighwayyChild, who appeared on my “For You” page sometime last month with a steady stream of gorgeously lonely-looking photos of the American Southwest, shot through the window of an 18-wheeler truck. When I came upon the profile, the display name said “Ray,” so I mistakenly assumed the photos were taken by some soulful trucker dude. Apparently I wasn’t alone. “Y’all think I’m a guy cuz my name is Ray and I’m a truck driver,” she posted back in March.
-
2 months ago | 
scarycoolsadgoodbye.substack.com | Meaghan Garvey
Then I’m throwing dice in the alley,And Officer Leroy comes up, and he’s like, “Hey, I thought I told you —”And I’m like, “Yeah, whatever!”Then up comes Zaphron, and I’m like, “Yo Zaphron, what up?”And he’s like, “Nothin,” and I’m like, “That’s cool.”Cause this is my United States of whatever…Life had become strange overnight. I blamed the lunar eclipse. My cat had stopped eating; her cancer had spread. I cried off my fake eyelashes as we cuddled in bed, her breath coming shallow and fast.
-
2 months ago | 
pitchfork.com | Meaghan Garvey
It was an image of a hand that first drew me to aya—a clammy hand reaching out into the void, holding a wad of crumpled trash like a sacramental offering. The mysterious photo on the cover of im hole, the 2021 debut album from the London-based musician, beckoned me inside her fascinating, sometimes frightening world of sounds, like club music as envisioned by a sleep paralysis demon.
