fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
I blame Gordon Lightfoot. Many songs incorporate aspects of storytelling but only a few are truly narrative, such that stripping away their music would leave a clear, functional story. And, for whatever reason, those stories tend to focus on the sea. The first, clearest example of this trend is Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund [...]
A blasting power chord fades into the background as Lisa Loeb whispers the first verse of "Split Second" over a looping drumbeat. A snare roll crescendos into another burst of electric guitar and by the time Loeb steps back from the mic, a full band is thrumming along in mid-'90s pop-rock glory. Moments later the [...]
Apple has a long and storied history of copying its competitors (and then pretending that's not what it's doing). Sticking to that business plan, since entering the streaming audio marketplace with Apple Music, the company has made a concentrated effort to mimic what it deems to be the most important aspects of the market leader, Spotify. [...]
Like many of my peers, I came to love Texas post-rock quartet Explosions in the Sky through their breakthrough third album, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. Across that expansive record, whose five tracks combine for a playtime of over 45 minutes, ethereal interludes loop back on themselves, mutating into towering guitar riffs [...]
"It's not the cold making my legs shake," sings Cody Bonnette at the outset of "Timothy", the final, grueling track from As Cities Burn's sophomore LP, Come Now Sleep. As the song unfolds it becomes clear that what's making the narrator's legs shake is, in fact, grief. Across its nearly 13-minute run time, "Timothy" explores [...]
Across the 26 years (!!) that they've been a band, Jimmy Eat World have written a lot of great songs. So many, in fact, that some have slipped through the cracks and never been fairly recognized for their brilliance. And I'm not talking about songs like "For Me This Is Heaven" which were never hits [...]
Remember liner notes? Before tangible media was sacrificed at the altar of the digital, I used to dig into CD booklets like I'd be tested on the material. (Which, depending on how you feel about nerdily bantering with friends, you could say I was.) One of my favorite aspects of liner notes was finding which [...]
There's a charming seasonality to OWEL's catalog. Back in 2013, the New Jersey band's self-titled debut arrived in the dead of winter with washed-out colors and a song literally warning that "death awaits in the snow." Their sophomore LP, dear me, was released in the fall of 2016 and is soaked in the fading light and [...]
The Queue is a recurring feature in which I discuss some of the music that I've been listening to recently. This week I examine an old favorite, an artist's early release that I'm only now getting into and a slow-burning single. Let's investigate. Between the Heart and the Synapse – The Receiving End of Sirens [...]
If you play guitar—and often enough, even if you don't—there's a good chance you have an acoustic lying around somewhere. Simpler and quieter than an electric, acoustic guitars are the most universal incarnation of the world's most popular six-stringed instrument (sorry, violists) and perhaps the laziest commodification of that ubiquity is the never-ending trend of [...]
Songs & Stories 