My Back Pages: 8/2/26
The Strokes, Hibbing, and Ventile
Welcome back to My Back Pages, a weekly digest recapping everything of note from the last seven days—pods, bylines, appearances, plus a few odds and ends.
Let’s get to it.
Pieces of the Week
The Strokes managed to deliver yet another polarizing record with Reality Awaits, a sometimes-meandering, sometimes-shocking collection of AutoTuned, iridescent rock songs. Universally loathed throughout legacy music media, I made the case that the album is, in fact, Good Music.
You can read my take for free right here on Substack:
Good Try, We Don't Like It
There’s a song on Future Present Past, an utterly forgotten Strokes EP from 2016, called “Threat of Joy.”
I also wrote an extensive account of my travels in the North Country to see “Bon Dylan,” Justin Vernon’s Bob Dylan tribute act, as well as Bob’s hometown of Hibbing, MN. Paywalled, but feel free to sign up for the free trial to take a gander:
Pods of the Week
This week on Jokermen, I spoke to Azniv Korkejian, AKA Bedouine.
Last month, Azniv released her new record Neon Summer Skin, a graceful collection that blends Seventies AM pop, bossa nova, singer-songwriter, and about five other genres. We had a great chat about the fertile Los Angeles scene, Lisa Simpson, Leonard Cohen, her mom’s reaction to her recent profile in the New York Times, and much more (including a major tangent on Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon, where Azniv has roots).
Atypical conversation topics for Jokermen, to be sure, but I think it turned out really well.
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On Never Ending Stories, we hit the so-called “Ionic Recordings,” a set of rerecorded tracks Bob Dylan made with T. Bone Burnett during the pandemic. The gimmick here is the medium itself, which Burnett invented in order to present the recordings in super hi-fi. The discs are (supposedly) unique, and they were auctioned off at Christie’s for about a million dollars each. Five of the songs hit the web recently, so we had to weigh in.
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Finally, we wrapped our Death Grips side quest on Jokermen with an accounting of the band’s 30 best songs. Number 1 shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been playing along at home, but we still managed to slip in a few under-the-radar favs. Here’s hoping we can amend the list sometime this year with a few new favorites from the next DG LP…
Chune of the Week
The Strokes: Dine N’Dash
One of the few songs I failed to highlight in my write-up of Reality Awaits—not because it isn’t deserving of love, but because it’s so clearly an instant classic. A delicious, obviously “Strokesian” riff, airtight percussion from Fab, and any number of lines that would fit right in on Is This It or Room On Fire (“Do what you will, you can leave when you want / Leave if you want but I bet that you won’t”). What more could you ask for?
The critical reception to this record continues to baffle me. The day after I posted my take, Pitchfork weighed in with a muddled review that tried to give The Strokes some small amount of credit while ultimately settling for the same negative verdict as Rolling Stone. My brother in podcasting Steven Hyden wrote an extended (and predictably excellent) analysis of both the album and the critical reaction, but other than him (and Barack Obama, I guess?) it’s been difficult to find anyone who even halfway understands what’s happening here.
Oh well—not my problem. Just means more good music for me…
Fit of the Week
I wore this on Tuesday, July 29th to walk my dog with my wife.
It was a sunny day in San Francisco, so I was able to get away with just the beater on top. Typically I’m contending with a heavy stratus rolling in off the Pacific, so it’s always a treat when I get to go out of doors in an undershirt.
Down below I’m sporting the Big Up Pants from gnuhr, one of my favorite discoveries of recent years. Founded by Nur Abbas, a former Yeezy designer, gnuhr (the “g” is silent) specializes in lightweight technical gear with a decidedly futuristic bent that occasionally veers on Cronenbergian—peep the Warp Shorts and their perforated, slightly-disturbing elasto-organic waistband.
The Big Up Pants are made in the USA from 100% Ventile, an old-school technical fabric originally designed for British pilots in the Second World War. Light as a feather but fully waterproof (or at least close enough), it’s the perfect fabric for breezy Bay Area afternoons and evenings. Dig the drawstring cuffs, which can be cinched tight for a cropped fit (as they are here) or left undone for full flow. I can’t wait to put some miles on these suckers.