If you’ve attended services and done some wild worship in the club, you already know. Nevertheless it bears repeating like all good things do: everything you see and hear at a pop show derives from the African-American church. That means the rhythms, the arrangements, the hooks and melisma and harmonies, the cosmic stakes, the relationship between […]
Author Archives: tris
Poll 33 — 2022 Albums, Continued
Album I Listened To The Most In 2022 If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you know what kind of a year I had. If you’re reading this and you’re also aware of Abel Tesfaye and The Weeknd, you might wonder why I was messing around with Dawn FM at all. That couldn’t have been […]
Poll 33 — Singles
Before we get to my singles list, I’ve got something I really want to clarify. Very often — way too often — progressive rock will be described as “white” music; i.e., music defined by its estrangement from African-American traditions and the roots of culture as they are expressed in such institutions as the black church. I’m ashamed […]
The 2022 Arts Annual
(Only on Jersey City Times and NJArts!) Hello, friends. A tumultuous year is coming to an end, and that means it’s time for another Tris McCall Arts Annual. You’re getting this because you’re involved in the arts, or you like the arts, or, for some odd reason, you like me. In any case, thank you for being you. I […]
Understanding The Pop Music Abstract
The Pop Music Abstract is an annual exercise in automatic writing. In the Abstract I attempt to write at the speed of thought about the subject that dominates my rambling internal monologue. I go through the albums of the year in alphabetical order and I type the very first thing that enters my head. I […]
Wolves and rabbits
Hello, my name is Tris, and I do not drive. I have a license, but I don’t have a car. I can operate one if I need to, but as a dweller in a pedestrian-intense area of an East Coast city, I’ve never deemed it wise to have four wheels. Two wheels, on the other […]
Long overdue: A tribute (and individual achievements)
I’m a simple person with simple peeves. Nothing makes me angrier than those lists of the greatest drummers in the history of rock. Oh, I have no issue with the consensus favorites: I love John Bonham, too, and Keith Moon, and Charlie Watts, and Mitch Mitchell, and I’d love it if Ringo would get listed, but […]
Long overdue: My favorite singles of 2021
Taylor Swift has never won our annual Poll. Neither has Hayley Williams or Paramore. Elastica hung them up a long time ago; they got their votes, but they didn’t come close to the top. Fond though we all are of Carly Rae Jepsen, she’s never sniffed a Poll win, either. Yet if I tallied up […]
Long overdue: My favorite albums of 2021
One of the many things that hip-hop has in common with the Internet: before it belonged to the world, it belonged to the nerds. It was nerds who reveled in the minutia of the genre, and nerds who converted hip-hop from the Bronx party music of the yes y’allin’ period to the dense, skills-based, language-intensive, […]
The 2021 Pop Music Abstract
The Pop Music Abstract is an annual exercise in automatic writing which uses the year in music as a prompt.www.trismccall.net/pop-music-abstract-2021 I’ve strung the albums of 2021 together in alphabetical sequence, and I’ve popped off, impulsively as I can, about each. Writing is done as close to the speed of (screwy) thought as I can manage, and since there’s lots […]