fiction and creative non-fiction from brennan quenneville
One day I was listening to my music catalog on shuffle, as I often do, when PVRIS's "You and I" came on and was followed by Paper Route's "You and I." After a quick search revealed that I also had Fightstar's "You & I" lurking in my library, I thought that it would be fun to [...]
When it comes to post-rock soundtracks, the focus is usually on Explosions in the Sky because their music has been featured in several films while Tides of Man is often overlooked because, well, they haven't. But just because Tides of Man hasn't written the soundtrack for a film doesn't mean they can't write the soundtrack [...]
Five years ago I wrote about an Artifex Pereo song that appeared to lift one melodic line and half its lyrics from an old NOFX song. Rather than intentional theft, what I suggested may have happened was a case of cryptomnesia, a fascinating word which describes an odd phenomenon. Cryptomneisa is when you learn something, [...]
In the 22 years since "Brick" made him a recognizable figure in pop music, Ben Folds has explored his art in an awful lot of ways. He's recorded albums with his band, as a solo artist and with William freaking Shatner. After he unexpectedly became an a cappella icon, he hosted a singing competition with [...]
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 [...]
