fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
As some bands age they become parodies of themselves, a problem that Coheed and Cambria can never have because, since their inception, the band has been too ridiculous to parody. For the better part of two decades, Coheed songs have been telling the story of … honestly, I’m not quite sure. A massive intergalactic war, maybe? [...]
The Execution of All Things isn’t the first or only record to open with a bait-and-switch mix that comes in low, tricking you into turning up your stereo, only for you to get blown away when the proper levels finally kick in. But it may be the only one that has the courage to see the bit [...]
There were six of us in the basement at first. It was a party, so far as a half-dozen high schoolers aimlessly lounging around an adult-free house is a party. The others were drinking vodka sodas; they would haphazardly pour water into the depleted fifth and replace it in the liquor cabinet before we left [...]
To the left of a pair of bookshelves, there’s a print of a fox’s head hanging on the wall. Embedded in the silhouette are words from The Little Prince. “If you tame me, then we shall need each other,” it reads. “To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be [...]
When I reviewed OWEL’s third full-length, Paris, in March of 2019, I could feel the energy of springtime humming throughout the album. It’s bright and vibrant and delicate and brash. It makes me want to go outside, to bloom and breathe, if you’ll accept the cross-scene metaphor. A year later spring was canceled. I packed up my [...]
Presented in alphabetical order. 3 -- Envy on the Coast After the birth of Violent Joy, I thought Envy on the Coast was dead. Apparently, I was wrong. 3 is what it promises: a brief, three-song return, but that's enough. "FLASH BANG" is onomatopoeic, all big punches and explosive bombast; "GHOST" is lead-single material, hook-driven [...]
The next person I meet who is ambivalent about Dave Matthews Band will be the first. People seem to either love or hate this band. Except that can’t possibly be true because nothing about art is binary and, well, I for one am kind of ambivalent about Dave Matthews Band. Crash was one of those albums [...]
It’s fitting that Gates was the first band I saw in concert after the pandemic began. I’ve joked that they’re my musical spirit animal and it’s been so long since they passed The Dear Hunter to become the band I’ve seen the most that I can’t recall how long ago that shift happened or how [...]
During the year that I was a music major, one of my GSIs used Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android” to teach us about complex song structure. Now, I don’t know if that GSI loved OK Computer as much as I—and, one assumes, the rest of my class—did or if she was just leveraging that predictable love to win our favor, but [...]
“Fences” is, pretty transparently, about the misery of being a celebrity. “You’re always on display / for everyone to watch and learn from,” sings Hayley Williams in the first verse. It’s not lost on Williams that this is a privileged position and also that, because of that privilege, because fame is considered desirable, there will always [...]
Songs & Stories 