This Corrosion

I suspect that any impressionable young person who caught the Sisters of Mercy on MTV (presumably at 2 a.m.) would have instantly become a goth. Maybe Andrew Eldritch and Patricia Morrison didn’t introduce the aesthetic, but they presented it in its highest form, and helped …

These Things Take Time

These things, they do take time, long slow torturous time. What these things are doesn’t matter. The point is not getting what you want. And if by chance you do get the things you want, you find that they’re horrid. That is the entire career …

Terminal Frost

Yes, hello, welcome back. I’ve been on vacation; I haven’t fully sobered up in a week and everything hurts. In that spirit, here is some Pink Floyd, which is on-point because it’s an instrumental and I don’t need to think about what it’s about. A …

Temptation

“I can resist anything except temptation” quipped Oscar Wilde, well over a century ago. Wilde was thumbing his nose at Victorian morality, which worked out really well for him. We like to imagine that we’re well past the era of unctuous moralizing, but we’re not …

Temptation

New Order are the masters of a very specific trick. They make jangly upbeat pop songs that are also incredibly depressing, like bitter pills coated in sour candy. The balance of music you can dance to and music you can mope to is a golden …

Telephone Call From Istanbul

“Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you’re dead…” Well, if you can’t trust Tom Waits for good life advice, then you can’t trust anyone. Meanwhile, I want to see whatever movie is unspooling inside of old Tom’s …

Swing

Here is a random and obscure Jesus and Mary Chain song that came out on the tail of a special extended anniversary edition of their Darklands album. Now, I’m not the kind deep-diving fan who really wants to discuss the relative merits of previously unreleased …

Sweet and Tender Hooligan

Morrissey, with his slightly pathetic fetish for hooligans and delinquents, speaks for all of us who have terrible taste in men. Some people will settle for what’s good for them, but some of us like the bad boys, who are cooler that us, and way …

A Sullen Sky

80’s New Wave is apparently a barrel with no bottom. Every time it seems like I’ve covered every obscure classic, I find another one. If you’ve worn out the grooves of your Joy Division albums, you might enjoy Lowlife. I have never heard of this …

Stretch Out and Wait

Sharp tongued internet wits have said that Morrissey is the incel of the 80’s pop pantheon, and it’s… not wrong. You can interpret his work as the mindset someone who can’t get laid to save his own life but doesn’t understand that it’s because he …