Music & Food | A site about music and food.
June 8, 2023

Paul Simon

Seven Psalms

Hey um, this new Paul Simon album is really good and it’s got big this is the last thing I’ll ever record energy.

June 5, 2023

Knower

Knower Forever

Like Deefhoof songs reworked by Max Tundra and performed by one of those annoyingly talented nerd funk bands, produced and engineered by Mark Ronson (but like good Mark Ronson, not other Mark Ronson) on tape, then filtered to digital and then back to tape, but nobody really likes the vocals so they have Satomi from Deerhoof come back and record them like the original versions, but she’s busy so somebody else comes in and pretends to sings like Satomi from Deerhoof. Album of the year?

Alternate review: Knower? Barely even know her!

May 31, 2023

billy woods & Kenny Segal

Maps

Look, I don’t know how many more times I can tell you that billy woods is the best writer in rap music right now. Or in any music, really.

May 30, 2023

The Murlocs

Calm Ya Farm

The Murlocs are an Australian garage rock (I guess?) band that’s slowly turned into an alt country rock band, and features a handful of members of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, which is crazy because that band already releases like 4 albums a year and how can they possibly find time to be in another band? Much less how can that other band put out an album this good?

Meanwhile I’m really excited to get this album off of the top of this site because the photo on the album cover is absolutely revolting to me.

May 22, 2023

Blood Star

First Sighting

This band is called Blood Star and just, like, nailed it.

May 8, 2023

Avalon Emerson

& The Charm

The story here is that Avalon Emerson is (they say) a famous and successful electronic dance DJ type artist. Boomtss boomtss boomtss boomtss club kind of stuff. I don’t know, not my scene. But she recently wanted challenge herself to make a pop-rock album—seemingly after listening to a lot of Cocteau Twins records. So here we have it! And it’s pretty good! And occasionally sounds like the Cocteau Twins! There’s still some electronic-y dancey stuff here and there, especially towards the end, but all in all it’s a nice little pop-focused debut.

April 28, 2023

James Ivy

Everything Perfect

We’re living in an age, for better or worse, where a 22 year old can find inspiration in a group like Third Eye Blind as a sort of classic-rock touchpoint. I’m almost taken aback listening to this James Ivy kid, because he’s so clearly of a new generation; he’s so clearly Gen-Z, he’s so clearly been raised on a different collection of media than myself. But for all the goofy shit that these Zoomers can do, it’s exciting that they’re able to hear Third Eye Blind, take that bouncy, ringing-G alt-rock-radio guitar pop, and bend it and mixes it without judgement, add some lo-fi breakbeats and bedroom recording scuzz, a little bit of dreamy PC Music haze, and the occasional Sugar Ray record scratch (!), and make a legitimately engaging record. This is somehow what the future of rock music sounds like, and I’m actually happy to hear it.

April 26, 2023

The New Pornographers

Continue as a Guest

I don’t know what to do with the New Pornographers in 2023.

April 11, 2023

Cake

Motorcade of Generosity

I’m having a hard time making sense of this, but: I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Motorcade of Generosity before?

I’ve listened to so much Cake over the years. Duh, they’re great. They don’t have that many albums, and it’s not like I wasn’t familiar with this one. But I don’t know what happened, how did I never bother, at any point, just picking up a used copy of it at Cheapo or something. Because I also just assumed I was familiar with it, like I listened to it as much as any others. But like, nope. Never heard any of these songs! Except for “Rock and Roll Lifestyle,” that is, but mostly because that’s the first Cake song I ever heard, late at night on Rev105 or something like that, way back before “The Distance” happened.

But the rest of the album? “Comanche”? “Jesus Wrote a Blank Check”? “I Bombed Korea”? Completely mysterious to me.

Kind of exciting actually, to be able to get to know some new Cake songs since they’re clearly not about to put anything new out anytime soon.

March 30, 2023

Choir

Songs For a Tarnished World

Before I begin this post, I want to take a minute and recognize how cool it is to name your extreme metal band “Choir.” Just Choir. Not Choir of the Dead, not Hellchoir, just Choir. It’s a very cool move, and it automatically made me want to listen to whatever this band does.

There’s a particular sub-sub-genre of metal which Choir belongs to, which I don’t have a specific name to pin it to. I’m sure somebody else out there has an answer to that, since metal loves to decimate and categorize itself to death. But their music fits within the bounds of some other bands like Mylingar and VRTRA—huge, massive, cavernous, cosmic, but not in a spacey way more in a gargantuan terrestrial kind of way. It isn’t atonal or dissonant, but it’s almost beyond melody. You couldn’t hum a single one of these songs or sit down on your guitar and recreate the riffs. It plays out almost like jazz, while not for a moment making you think it’s jazz. It’s more like modern dance; there’s tempo and movement, but everyone seems to be doing their own thing, until suddenly they all change to the next movement on a dime. And the sound itself is, like all those adjectives I already used, huge. This isn’t some bedroom 4-track black metal bullshit. This sounds great, even if it sounds completely exhausted by sound. There’s reverb everywhere, there’s some deathy vocals in there but they’re buried to just be part of the soup.

This is all to say, I like it.

March 28, 2023

MSPAINT

Post-American

You see this group is called MSPAINT and you see that shitty cover art and all you can think is “ugh this is some sort of vaporwave project.” And you’re about half right, but also totally wrong. Because the other half of MSPAINT is a hardcore band. And that’s like the top half.

It’s a vaporwave project! It’s a hardcore band! It’s a vaporwave project! It’s a hardcore band! It’s a hardcore band that has a lot of keyboardy synthy programmed stuff in the place where the guitars usually are. But don’t worry, they’ve got a lot of distorted bass. (And it actually, between being those two things, kinda reminds me of that early 00s indie rapper Gold Chains?)

Aside from trying to determine what this band actually is, all you really need do is listen to the track “Delete It.” It’s far and away the best song on the album, and it is one of those songs that s0 perfectly sums up an artist that it fucks up the rest of the album entirely. You don’t need to hear anything else on this thing. “Delete It” does it all.

June 8, 2023

Call Me Pasta!

Manhattan

Spaghetti and meatballs

Manhattan

There’s not a whole lot of “fast casual” pasta to be found these days. But I lucked out randomly and found this place Call Me Pasta! deep in the Financial District, kinda near nothing in particular, just a counter with two seats and a kitchen mostly pushing takeout orders. It doesn’t seem to be a chain, it doesn’t seem to be connected to any other bigger entity; just a little place trying to be cute and modern, making homemade (!) pasta for damn-near Noodles & Co prices. And it’s good! Legit, really good spaghetti, clearly homemade, a nice sauce. The meatballs weren’t incredible, but they were certainly better than some generic frozen thing you might expect to get.

Call Me Pasta? Call me impressed!

June 8, 2023

Campania

Brooklyn

Meatballs

Brooklyn

My New York meatball quest hasn’t been a prime concern by any means—the burger quest, pizza quest, Italian sandwich quest, and various other AAA level quests have taken priority over it. But when  I’ve checked into it recently, I’ve noticed Campania get mentioned a number of times as being a Best Meatball level meatball, particularly in the “Best of Brooklyn” uh, magazine vote? Which is lucky for me, because Campania is just down the road from me! A sit-down, nice but not that nice coal-fired pizza place with a pretty decent pasta menu as well. So I’d been itching to get there and see what these meatballs were about.

But then I was in Staten Island a while back, and saw not one but two other Campania locations, which really got me wondering what the deal was. Is this actually some chain? Is the Bay Ridge location even the original, or should I really be going to Staten Island for the real deal? Meanwhile! I saw the winners of Best of Brooklyn were announced, picked up a copy of the publication itself, and was dismayed to see how weirdly fake the whole thing is. Half these places are in Bay Ridge, how on earth are they getting voted “best” of anything? It’s sponsored by some bank, I have no idea what’s up with it. Just so weird. Like, Bay Ridge Pizza is unquestionably not the best pizza in Brooklyn.

But so anyway, I finally got to Campania. And, wow, y’know, these are some good meatballs. Much like my JG Melon post from last week, I can’t say there’s anything special about these meatballs. But they are ideal. They are exactly what you want when you order an Italian meatball. Best in the city? Uh, hmm, let me eat some more and I’ll get back to you.

May 31, 2023

Alma

Brooklyn

Enchiladas, stuffed pepper

Brooklyn

Enchiladas: excellent but not photogenic. Stuffed peppers: photogenic but not excellent. View from the roof deck: excellent and photogenic.

May 30, 2023

Poppy's

Brooklyn

Cardamom roll

Brooklyn

Cardamom rolls are the new cinnamon rolls in the bougie foodie (foodgie as I will hereby call it) corners of town. This is both an insult and a disgrace. And oops also delicious.

May 30, 2023

JG Melon

Manhattan

Cheeseburger

Manhattan

Finally, a burger that lives up to its Best Burger In The City hype.

There’s nothing notably unique about the JG Melon burger; it’s not made in a special way, it doesn’t feature any wild toppings, it’s not any more expensive than any other burger at any other pub in this part of town. It’s not smashed, it’s not butter crusted, it’s not a prime rib chuck mix. It’s a tavern burger with cheese and onion and pickles, and it’s damn near perfect.

May 22, 2023

Walter's

Mamaroneck, NY

Hot dog

Mamaroneck, NY

Off a quiet, unremarkable county road in Mamaroneck, about halfway from the Bronx to Connecticut, is a 100 year old hot dog stand housed in a beautiful old faux-Chinese pagoda. Why is it in a Chinese pagoda? I don’t know. But it’s surprisingly well constructed, actually some beautiful details and iron work for a place that just sells hot dogs and shakes. It’s on the national register of historic places!

And as far as these goofy old hot dog stands go, this was a good dog! Split and grilled flat, grilled bun, not bad!

May 8, 2023

Lucia Pizza of Avenue X

Brooklyn

Pizza

Brooklyn

Lucia Pizza of Avenue X, which you can tell by the fact that it’s on Avenue X (and even if you don’t live in Brooklyn, I imagine you can guess what the existence of an Avenue X entails, distance-wise) is in the middle of nowhere. Or rather, it’s in Sheepshead Bay. So, it’s a long way from anything. But it caught a little bit of buzz earlier this year when it was featured in the New Yorker, as one of a couple new pizza places with direct ties to Naples. I honestly don’t remember what exactly Lucia’s connection is—it seems very New York, other than the Napoli scarf hanging up in a corner—but I’ll take the magazine’s word for it. Point is it’s delicious authentic pizza. What’s wild to me is the location; it’s truly just, like, down there. People consider trips to Di Fara Pizza an adventure, and that’s on Avenue I! You’ve got another 3/4ths of an alphabet to get through!

But the pizza here is great. Really, if this place opened in [insert other fashionable Brooklyn neighborhood here], it would have lines out the door. The crust is super light, the sauce is tasty. Just a great slice. Here in another unfashionable south Brooklyn neighborhood, I don’t quite live “close” to it, but I at least live close enough that I feel like I can use Lucia as proof that, hey, there’s good things down here sometimes.

April 28, 2023

Dominique Ansel Workshop

Manhattan

Chocolate Caramelia Triangle

Manhattan

I work pretty close to the Dominique Ansel Workshop, which is a little shop connected to Ansel’s commercial kitchen where they (I think?) sell some new experiments. There are no cronuts here, which is a bummer because I still haven’t had a legit Ansel cronut. But everything I’ve ever had here has been excellent. This one here, well, it’s a triangle. Like a croissanty triangle filled with a “caramelized chocolate” creme filling.

Look, I don’t know how much to say about it this, it’s a delicious sweet croissant filled with chocolate made by a world famous baker. Yeah, it’s fuckin good.

April 26, 2023

S&P Lunch

Manhattan

Meatloaf sandwich

Manhattan

Eisenberg’s closed, which is sad in theory, but not that sad, because honestly Eisenberg’s wasn’t all that great. We could still be sad if the classic old lunch-counter interior was gutted and turned into a fucking Sweetgreen or something, but in fact—thanks, oddly enough, to the guy who plays Cousin Greg on Succession—it was bought and saved by the owners of Court Street Grocers. Very little has changed except for the fact that the food is better, and there are a few very Brooklyny looking weirdos working behind the counter along with some holdover Eisenberg’s oldtimers. Honestly kind of a miracle considering how these things usually work out.

April 26, 2023

Modern Apizza

New Haven, CT

Pizza

New Haven, CT

Modern Apizza is one of the big-3 pizza (sorry, apizza) places in New Haven, along with Frank Pepe’s and Sally’s. It’s probably considered third of the three, but I’ve gotta say, this pizza was exactly as good as Sally’s was. And Sally’s was some of the best pizza I’ve ever had.