Episode 7: Amanda Petrusich

In Episode 7 of Known Associates, a podcast brought to you by New Pony in affiliation with Southwest Review, we come to you LIVE from SwR’s annual Frontera Festival in Dallas, Texas! For this very special event, Elizabeth sat down with Amanda Petrusich, staff writer for The New Yorker, who stands shoulder to shoulder with the greatest music critics working today. Her profiles are the stuff of legend, and her books are essential reads for any music fan. In short, Amanda is our platonic ideal for a Known Associate. 

 Over a couple of Lone Star beers on a beautiful Dallas night at The Wild Detectives bookstore, Elizabeth and Amanda discuss the idea of “good” taste, whether such a thing really exists (3:40), and how Amanda cultivated her own musical taste she liked from a very young age (5:06). They then dive a bit into Amanda’s book Do Not Sell at Any Price and what it means to be a collector (6:54). They also talk about critics whom Amanda grew up reading and who influenced her writing, as well as the state of criticism in the current moment compared to earlier generations (10:54). From there, they consider the idea of canons in art, whether canons are important and how they can change and evolve (17:24). Then, they segue into Amanda’s profile writing for The New Yorker and how she approaches her assignments and deals with her subjects (24:00). From there, they have a conversation about the present and future states of journalism and criticism, what this might mean for the next generation of writers, and whether authoritative criticism is as meaningful in the contemporary moment as it was previously (32:50). 

You can find Amanda’s writing at The New Yorker as well as many other publications on the internet and buy her books wherever you buy your books. Subscribe to Known Associates and check out Southwest Review’s website. Pick up a subscription to the magazine while you’re at it!  

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Host: Elizabeth Nelson

Producers: Greg Brownderville, Robert Rea, Hannah Smith

Mixed By: Clay Jones

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Oh hello. It's me, Elizabeth Nelson, and this is my podcast, Known Associates, produced by New Pony. For anyone who is just getting on board this train, I'll do just a quick intro. As I say, I'm Elizabeth, and I am a singer-songwriter for the band The Paranoid Style. I am also a cultural critic for the New York Times magazine, The Ringer, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and most importantly, Southwest Review, the publication who makes this podcast possible. And if this is your first time listening to Known Associates, my podcast, hosted by me, Elizabeth, you've picked a great episode to check out, for it is a very special one. Every year, Southwest Review, the publication Who Makes This Podcast Possible, hosts a festival in Dallas, Texas called Frontera. It's a really extraordinary experience that features a combination of live music, film screenings, readings by some of our best current writers, dance parties, and interviews with the most interesting people. And this year, that interview was between me, Elizabeth, and the incredible Amanda Petrusich. Amanda is probably now best known for her work as a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has published some of the finest profiles of everyone, from Metallica to Lucy Dagas to David Byrne. She's also a renowned music critic who has published at The New York Times, the Oxford American, Spin, Pitchfork, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She's also a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and has been nominated for a Grammy. She's written three books, including Do Not Sell at Any Price, which is an essential read for every music fan. Her list of bona fides and bylines goes on and on, and all of them are so well deserved because she is truly an inspiring writer with a completely original voice, one that I respect very much. I'd argue that she is one of the finest working critics today, and we're so lucky to have her shining a light on the culture, especially when sometimes things feel so bleak. Needless to say, it was my honor to get to talk to her in front of a live audience at the really cool wild detectives bookstore in Dallas. We get into a lot of the issues that a lot of us cultural critics are confronting in the modern age. Discuss the concept of good versus bad taste, what criticism means to us, and so much more. Not surprisingly, she is as generous and inspiring in real life as she is in her writing, and we had an amazing time talking. So grab yourself a lone star beer and strap in. Here's me and my wonderful new known associate, Amanda Petrusich, talking live at the Frontera Festival. So, Amanda, how are you doing? I am terrific. How are you? I'm I am also terrific.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Should we cheers? Cheers. We're drinking Lone Star Beer.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

We're drinking Lone Star Beer. So we know we're in Texas now. Um, okay. So this I'm gonna start with a really broad question for you. Um is there such a thing as good taste or bad taste, and how do we define it?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Oh my gosh, coming in hot, Elizabeth. Uh I feel like for a long time it would have said no, there is merely taste. There is merely what you like and kind of what works on you and what moves you. Although the deeper I have moved into my career as a professional critic, which seems like an absurd job in many ways, I think the more I have come to realize that I do, I do have standards for art, uh, which which feels like almost a provocative or radical idea right now, where we're sort of living through an era of acceptance. If you say something sucks, people will scream at you on the internet. It can get kind of scary and kind of ugly. Uh, but but there are things that I look for in the music that I love, the the writing, the literature, the film, whatever. Um, I am starting to sort of recognize a through line. I think some of it, you know, to some degree is I I like things that feel pure and real, and I also think I like things that feel a little bit dangerous. And and and if a record's missing that, yeah, I don't know. I so that's sort of how I define my taste. Whether my taste is good or not, I don't know. Uh, but but I do think that we have to apply uh, you know, a sort of rigorous way of consuming and thinking about things. I think that's important.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Um so let me then ask you this like, what was your experience like uh listening to music as a child? Like when did you realize, like, I and I like you said your your taste has evolved over time and and your you know distinction about taste has, but what was it like growing up, a young Amanda Patrusic, uh, you know, listening to music, and when you realized, oh, this is good or I don't like that or whatever?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, you know, I was a really obsessive um consumer of music as a child. Uh I mean, almost to a pathological degree. And I think for me it was this sort of immediate shortcut. It was a way for me to access things that I was feeling that I couldn't articulate, things that I was feeling that I didn't understand. You know, music made that sort of easier for me to comprehend. So I had a hunger for it. I found it really intoxicating. You know, it was almost like an addictive thing. Um and then I think, you know, I came of age in the 90s. Pavement was my favorite band. I was like a real indie rock kid, so there was a sort of ethos and kind of philosophy tied up in it too, where it felt a little countercultural, it felt a little rebellious. That was really important to me as a kid. And I think that has sort of, even though now I listen to a lot of pop music, I love a lot of pop music, that too has sort of followed me into adulthood. But I, you know, like The Clash were the first band I remember really loving. Nirvana was the first record I bought with my own money, my babysitting money. I I liked that. Again, I think maybe it's that element of danger or spontaneity or this sense that like this whole thing could fall apart at any moment that was very thrilling to me as a kid growing up in like a safe and loving home in you know, suburban New York.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

I'm also a suburban New Yorker. So yeah, I I can I can totally understand everything that you're saying in love pavement, love the clash. Um let's go back a little bit into your career though and talk about your book, um, Do Not Sell at Any Price, which is available for purchase. Uh Amanda might even sign it for you. I'll write anything you want in there. Um I I so I don't know if any of you are familiar with this book. It's excellent and I do recommend it highly. Uh, it's it's a wonderful, wonderful book and super funny. Um, but it depicts the real deal record collecting heads. Uh and you go on some wild adventures to meet these, you know, um highly specific um obsessive degenerates who just love records so much. And um, you know, uh are you a collector? Do you have a collector's mentality? Um, what power do you think that these things hold for us? Um I'd be curious to know, you know, are they ideas or are they rare objects? Are they things that you personally collect?

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, regrettably I do collect records. It is an affliction I would wish upon no one, um, but but unfortunately it is mine. Uh I do think, I mean, there's a couple a couple themes that sort of emerge throughout the book, and then a couple ways I've come to think about it since that book was published. I mean, we're sort of living through an era now in which music is is free and sort of ephemeral and limitless. And and I like the idea of a finite collection of things. I find it sort of soothing. It makes me a better listener, I think. Otherwise, there's that kind of paralysis of choice. Um, you know, like when you open whatever your streaming services or you open Netflix and you're like, well, good lord, um, you know, just the sort of limitless options are um unsatisfying and paralyzing. So I like that idea of curating a collection of records that are important to me. I like the idea of the sort of tactile ritual of it all. I like the way they sound. Um, but I think in the collectors I was profiling, I also recognized it's almost a sort of, I say this with love and admiration, but it was a desperation to kind of own a thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

And in some ways I think that was because they loved this music so deeply and so thoroughly, and it meant so much to them that the idea that they could control it in some way, I mean, it's a very American notion, to be honest. You know, I own this thing, it's mine. Uh it the way that it makes me feel is sort of scary, so I'm gonna, you know, have this way of sort of defanging it or controlling it via ownership, um, that would come up a lot. So yeah, yeah, it's um the collector's mentality is a fascinating one. It it kind of interested me uh out of the gate because they are obsessive, and it's in the case of 78s, it's sort of weirdly high stakes because there's no very few masters remain for these early kind of pre-war American vernacular recordings. So the press 78s that were released on these 10-inch shellac discs, um, sort of up until the 50s, you know, those are the only, those commercially sold copies are the only record we have that those songs existed at all. So there is this sense that they're doing this sort of useful work, you know, excavating these songs from kind of certain um certain destruction. Although I think that too would make them sort of nuts.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

No, as a as a collector of of um vintage clothing myself, uh I could be deemed a hoarder. Uh so I thought this was my intervention. Um, but instead, we're just going ahead with that. That dress is very cute, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

I'm presuming that is a vintage piece, and I love it. Um but it's fun to collect stuff. It's it's fun to want something. I mean, that's the other thing. We're all sort of adrift in life, and you know, that feeling of sort of yearning and desire is also really intoxicating. And then of course you fulfill it and it dissipates instantaneously, and that is a drag. And then you find the next thing that you want.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Very healthy. Um but yeah, but it is but it is kind of fun. You know, it's fun. It sort of sort of gives your your life shape in a way.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

So speaking of relics, um, and I say that with love. Uh, you were in the recent documentary, The Last Critic. Uh about I haven't seen it yet. I also haven't seen it. I just know that you are in it because I was in it and cut out of it, and I'm fine about that. Um but um the the filmmaker Maddie Wishnow was we were gossiping about who was good and who was bad, and he said you were excellent. Uh so and and I believe it. I totally believe it. Um but anyway, so this is a documentary about the life and legacy of the critic Robert Chrisgow. Um and it is uh, you know, a wonderful meditation on the meeting of criticism, from what I understand of the reviews I've read, uh, and its evolutions and where it stands currently. And as you know, a person who grew up in the suburbs of New York, uh, I coveted the voice. You know, I would ride the train into the city and pick up a copy and you know, I'd read it voraciously. I'm sure you had a similar experience. Um and so, you know, I I I'm a fan of Chris Gao and I I assume you are too. Uh, and and um if you could talk a little bit about the legacy of of Chris Gow and what he means to you, um, but also that kind of generation of new journalism critics, whether it's Ellen Willis or Pauline Cale uh or Grail, uh Marcus, um were they meaningfully formative for you as a writer? And were there other writers and critics who had an influence on the writer that you are today?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

These are such good questions, Elizabeth. It's so funny to be in very novel and it's delightful. Uh yes, absolutely. I mean, all of the writers you mentioned, um, and in fact, several uh previous guests on your podcast, too. I mean, Ann Powers, um, Jessica Hopper, of course, uh, you know, four formative voices in in my life. Um Chris Gow is a funny one because his writing, I don't know how familiar everybody is with his work. He was, as Elizabeth was saying, the critic of the voice. He's sort of famous for very short and kind of punchy and like prickly little reviews. Um, he's kind of great with a one-liner. And it's funny because as a stylist, I feel like we're we're quite different writers. And I don't necessarily relate to like the rhythm of his prose, but what I did admire uh and and really aspire to was the way that he thought about music. And he was tough. I mean, that sort of goes back to what we were saying earlier about, you know, perhaps the softening of criticism or this idea of like good taste and bad taste, and can we be definitive about those categories? Uh I mean, Chris Gauss certainly was, and he was he was bold and I think pulled no punches. You know, for me as a young critic, kind of emerging, uh, my my first real job writing. Well, the first piece I ever published actually was in The Village Voice when Chuck Eddy was the music editor there. But the first place I really had a job as a critic was Pitchfork, which at the time was known for a similar kind of style of um sort of lofty, maybe vaguely aggressive criticism. Um and and that was something I had to really learn. Like it is perhaps not my nature. Like I was just a little bit like, is this the only way that we can write about music? Like, does it have to come from a place of like, well, my taste is superior to yours, so I'm gonna I'm gonna teach you a thing or two about how to hear this song? That was not, you know, a kind of instinctive tone or voice for me, uh, but it was really like the prevailing kind of generational vibe. I mean, was that hard for you to sort of write through that? Are you comfortable in that, in that critic's role? Uh you mean like being like snarky? Well, I guess it's a fine line, right? Between being snarky or just being quite like declarative about what what is good and what is bad.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Yeah, I mean, I I I I I think it is it's difficult, like you said, because of the declining state of music journalism with the increasing involvement of you know the Vox Pops with their critiques of your writing and their attacks and uh you know the the doxing and the emails that you might receive if you wrote a negative review. And so it but you know, I feel honor bound if I'm going to review something, to review it honestly. And if I don't, yeah, I you know, I wouldn't go near certain acts just because I don't want to get near that fire. Um because it's hard, man. I mean, but like, you know, I I yes, I I think it's I think it is important to to have criticism. I mean, I feel like when when Pitchfork did um, you know, uh this is some insidery stuff, so I'll try to make it quick. But when when they uh you know kind of got restructured into the GQ of Kanye and Ast of it all, there was a lot of people online that were like, great, this is awesome because Pitchfork, you know, is at that point was, you know, sort of the final answer to rock and roll journalism. Uh, you know, they would give these numerical scores that nobody understood or agreed with, and you couldn't really argue, um, you know, short of, you know, getting angry at somebody on Twitter or something. Um, and you know, I read people who were in bands and who love music saying, this is great, because you can just listen to Spotify. You can just make your own decisions about criticism. And that's where my heart broke a little bit because I'm like, no, we need criticism. We need it to help us, uh, you know, like going back to the good taste, bad kit taste discussion. Now, not everybody's taste is going to be the same, but I definitely do think there is still an argument for keeping journalism and music criticism alive. Now, that's a bigger subject that we don't have to go into, but uh to try to try and answer your question in short form.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah, yes, yeah. And I I think, you know, what the I I teach a class at NYU called writing about popular music, so I feel like I'm often forced to sort of define the critic's job and and kind of the utility of that work. And to me, I think it's so important. I mean, it's important for the artists, I think, in some ways, to have kind of a foil. Uh, although that makes it sound combative, it doesn't necessarily have to be combative. I think ideally it can be collaborative. But to contextualize an artwork, to sort of poke at it a little bit, to kind of try to unpack what it means. I mean, I have read reviews of things that have completely changed the way that I heard or thought about that thing. I I mean records, but also other things too. And I I I the thought of that disappearing seems, yeah, tragic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Um, so let me ask you this though. Um, so we were just kind of talking about the era of Spotify and streaming that we live in, where everything is accessible. And um I I wondered, and I not to brag, I asked Ann Powers about this as well, and and her perspective is great. So check out the podcast known associates uh that's there in the archive. Um, but what is the meaning of a canon in the contemporary age of total accessibility? Um, you know, is it more or less important that there is something that is generally agreed upon as as good or bad? Um, and what do you measure that against? I mean, so like I, you know, you you teach kids at NYU. Um I once guest lectured at Georgetown University, notch brag. Um and uh the notion of the album even was pretty esoteric to these kids. Now I'm not trying to, you know, define everything by a generation, but you know, like if I mentioned the Beatles, they would be like, that's great. But if I was like, oh, you know, revolvers where things really like the lid blew off for everybody, they would just they kind of like what? Like a dog hit on the nose with a pencil. Um and so um it's just like it's not how they consume music. And so, but do we need canon anymore? You know, do we need to have this, you know, critically decided because you know, every five years or something, Rolling Stone will come out with its top 500 best everything ever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

And and those, I don't know how you felt about them, but those lists were a big deal to me as a kid, or like the spin record guides, like those were, you know, holy Bibles in a way. And and I would bring them to the record store and buy CDs, you know, and it that was like a uh a kind of extraordinary way of learning about things for me. Uh, you know, or even like I can't think I was 20 years old when that first Interpol record came out. And then that was sort of the thing that led me to Joy Division. Like you could kind of, you know, you could kind of untangle the knots in a way, um, which is not exactly the question you're asking. Uh the idea of canon, I yes, I think it is important that we say like this is a body of work that's really essential to a movement or to a moment or to um uh you know an era uh in some cases. I mean, I think we see that a little bit. I think there are still bands that that are kind of critically anointed. I think geese is a good example, a divisive band, but uh, but a band that critics loved, um, which you know you can sort of draw your own conclusions about the personalities of critics based on how much everybody loves geese, but uh myself included. Uh but yeah, I think that that it is important. I used to resist like making a list at the end of the year because I was like, oh my god, like it's art, you know, like we shouldn't put it in order. I was very annoying about, you know, pretentious about it, really, but now I think it is like an extraordinarily useful exercise and important. Like it is useful to look back and be like, these are the records that reflected our cultural moment and you know, our our year of the Lord 2025. Like, I think that is a critic can't be afraid to do that work. And I think it is helpful um generationally, I think it is helpful for anyone who's sort of curious about music to take those things seriously.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

And I think it's important too to realize that, you know, like the canon is going to evolve too. And I was thinking, you know, a little bit about um not to mention her name too many times because she might appear, but Ann Powers and uh her turning the table series with NPR, which I'm I'm sure you probably participated in in some capacity, which by the way, turning the tables was where um women writers uh and and NPR, um I think it was all women writers, but um, they basically reframed the canon using only women artists, uh, which was amazing and awesome. And they came up with a list and uh and you know, just rewrote what, because you like usually if you looked at a canon or or listened to the big 100.3's, you know, top 500 party songs, you know, it was always, you know, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, throw Joni Mitchell in, they're fine. But you know, like it was always kind of the same thing. So it really did kind of reshape the canon. And I I wonder, you know, like if if you think that that's you know a positive thing that we you know can all do thinking through like how do we add geese into the canon?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Well, you make such a good point too, which is that the way that canons have been established historically is is incredibly messy and sort of ugly and perhaps racist and certainly misogynistic. Like there's a lot of ugly stuff tangled up in that too. I thought about this a lot when I was writing my book about 78 collectors, because in part the sort of history of the blues that we know now, the way that we think about that music, particularly like pre-war Delta Country blues, you know, that's totally written by collectors. It's the records that they wanted. Those are the records that survived. And that is a particular story, you know, that those, like we think of Robert Johnson, who I love, Charlie Patton, Skip James. Like these guys are extraordinary artists, but it's also a very um sort of lonesome and anguished, and this kind of wandering, lone, troubadour. You know, I think collectors are related to that a little bit. So like that becomes the story of the blues, right? Because it made sense to the guys who were telling the story of the blues, you know, or ultimately who were the ones who preserved that history. Um I think that's very true with genre, which is something I've thought about a lot, something I talk to my students about quite a bit too. This idea that that genre uh as a kind of useful construct is dissolving entirely. And in some ways that's troubling, and in other ways it's amazing and liberating, and and genre itself has crazy racist roots. You know, that the way that we would categorize certain types of music as for this kind of person or that kind of person. So, in a way, what you're describing, this sort of the dissolving of some of that I think is overdue and and great. And something like turning the tables where it's like, well, let's rewrite this, let's look at this a little more objectively. Let's let's include everyone who has made you know a killer record uh in in this conversation or in this list. Yeah, I think that's important work too.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

For more from Southwest Review, visit the website for weekly content. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe to the print magazine. Six dollars per issue, twenty-four dollars gets you a whole year. You didn't just fall off a hay truck, you know that's a bargain. You can also follow Southwest Review on Instagram, X and Blue Sky. Okay, so let's let's shift, let's turn the tables. Um how about that for a segue? Um I want to talk a little bit about your your more recent writing. Um, because you've written so so many wonderful pieces, so many uh pieces that have inspired me, um some really astonishing profiles, um, your your story about fish, where I learned a term about how to consume narcotics. Uh boof. The term is booth. Read the profile if you if you uh don't know what that means, because I found it eye-opening. Uh but also uh you've you've you've profiled Metallica, you've you've profiled Beck. I mean, you're it's you know, your your tastes are pretty Catholic in terms of who you'll write about, which is fantastic and and uh you know, I think a credit to you. Um But I I wonder how do you balance your experience as a critic and then as a reporter? Um do you prefer doing one over the other? Do you enjoy doing a music review just straight up, or do you like getting out there in the field? Um and then, like, do you have any memorable experiences besides uh the whole boofing?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Uh for the record, I did not boof anything. Allegedly. Uh no. Um, yes, I I am have been uh very fortunate to be um at a magazine, The New Yorker, that takes profiles very seriously. The New Yorker credits itself, erroneously or not, with inventing the form. Uh so it is a place where I'll get, you know, nine months and 10,000 words to spend time with a band to try to sort of make sense of their lives and their work. Um that is such a luxury, and and I am so lucky uh to be in that position. But I have come to really love writing profiles. I like the challenge of reporting. I mean, writing is such a solitary exercise. I think in part I was drawn to it because I am an introvert and I like that. Like I like being alone in my room in my sweatpants, you know, uh just clacking away, having ideas. Uh, you know, that was very appealing to me. I I like that reporting and profile writing is challenging in that uh you're really sort of out of your comfort zone. Uh but it's been a it's been a blast. The fish profile was a wild one. It's not something musically that I necessarily resonated with, but I was curious about the subculture, which is sort of vast and self-sustaining and exists entirely outside of the architecture of the modern music industry, and has also been wildly successful and wildly successful for decades. And it was a fun band to write about because they have not been taken seriously historically by the music press. So it was uh sort of fortuitous to show up and be like, I really want to talk about this. I, you know, and no one had really done it before, and I think they were all eager to talk, and that that helps, you know, it sort of helps uh I don't know, the transactions get easier when the people are hungry to talk. Uh but yes, I've really loved doing that work. It's funny, it's like a weird social interaction too, because you show up and like at first it sort of feels like you're on a bizarre first date, you know, but but then like your loyalship is to your readers, you know, but but you're sort of, I don't mean to make this sound kind of mercenary and manipulative, although perhaps it is. Perhaps journalism should be to some degree, but you know, you're you're accelerating an intimacy with your subject, you're trying to get to know them really fast, you're sharing things about yourself sort of strategically, you're you're talking and talking and talking and talking, and then you're gonna turn around and write about it for a magazine. And if you're doing it really well, the person you're interviewing sort of forgets that you're gonna turn around and write about it for a magazine. So that's complicated too, because you become close to the subject, and then I think you walk away and you want to protect them a little bit, but but you can't because you know, again, your loyalty is to your reader and you want to be honest and clear and you want to tell a real story. When I first started writing profiles for The New Yorker, I um one of the first ones I wrote for the magazine was a profile of Britney Howard, who at the time was, well, they're back, at the time was the leader of the Alabama Shakespeare, and then she had left and put out some solo records. And I'd spent some time with her in Los Angeles, she was performing at the Grammys, and then I'd spent some time with her in Nashville, where she lives, and then we'd gone back to her hometown in Alabama, and I just I liked her so much. She was so she's just a great hang. She's thoughtful, she's smart, she's funny, we had a great time. And I remember filing the piece, and my editor was like, You you she's like a real person, like you have to complicate her somehow on the page. You you like her too much, you know, was sort of the editorial directive. And I think he was right, you know, because people are messy and complicated and weird, and I think the best profiles make that clear.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I well, and I and I think it's a gift, I really do. And you know, um, I I'd love to know like, did you ever profile somebody who was difficult, a recalcitrant? And and how did you, you know, work your way into their heart? Or I mean I know most artists, like, you know, not to blow your minds here, but they're pretty eager to please, you know, especially if if the you know critics from the world. You know, I mean, yeah. But but, you know, like how do you, you know, do you have what's your technique to like get into you know that zone? And you know, if or if you had somebody who was just so difficult that it was just it became impossible. And then do you have to write about like, oh man, this person, you know, who a lot of people admire, like totally sucked. Totally sucks. Yeah, it happens.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Um maybe more than you'd think, or I don't know, maybe exactly as much as you'd think. Um yes, yes, for sure. I have had a few times, and I'm kind of a people pleasy person, like it's awkward for me. I've had to learn the reporter's trick of like asking a question and then not having the person respond or having them respond in a very kind of terse way and then just letting it ride. I have to do this as a teacher too. Like, you know, every professor does that too. You sort of let a question kind of hang very uncomfortably in the air for what feels like a thousand years, you know, to just to sort of let the person uh you know, you know, kind of allow them space to open up, or you hope that they'll open up. But yeah, some people have been interviewed a ton. They will kind of kick in very quickly to like I'm almost muscle memory, sort of rote, boring, probably not totally sincere response. Uh, you know, the second I'm interviewing someone and they say something and it sounds familiar and I know it's because I've read it before, it's like my heart sinks because I'm like, oh, okay, we're in like the bullshit zone a little bit, you know. And you I some of it I think is just a function of hanging around long enough, like you're just there enough and you're talking enough that you kind of get all that stuff out of the way. It's like throat clearing, you know, like all right, say your sound bites, like say the stuff that you have prepared, say the stuff you've said a million times already, and then like guess what? I'm still here. You know, I'm sorry, but I'm still here. There's a little bit of that. Um, yes. And then I think, you know, you mentioned a profile I wrote in Metallica, which was a lot of fun. And I um was very fortunate to have great access to that band. I I think it was like 10 months of reporting um all over, you know, in in lots of different places. But some of those guys are tough. Like Lars was tough, I bet. You know, sort of for sort of famously um tough. And I and again, like interviewed a million times, kind of, you know, only wants to sort of say so much, like has his own ideas about the band and what it means. Like those, it's hard. I think part of it, you just stick it out. You just keep asking, you know, if if one line of questioning is not going anywhere, you've got to be ready to pivot, you've got to be ready to make a joke, maybe talk about something else entirely, talk about yourself, like whatever it is. You need to find sort of some way to kind of soften someone and make them feel comfortable enough that they can be vulnerable around you so that you can then betray them in a magazine.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

That's the goal.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Um, yeah, I I mean that that that's that's so fascinating because you know, and then like, you know, um our mutual friend Grayson texted me the other day uh to say that he had an incredible interview with uh a little liver puddle known as Paul McCartney. And I was just amazed because he had a 40-minute interview with him and he said it went for 80, so it meant like he somehow got behind somebody who is so famous. Like, and I'm Metallica, I kind of think of as being equally famous where it's like they've got their answers down. So I mean, if you're if I guess if you have access, that's helpful. But um disarming people kind of like it.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Like I I came to really like Lars, and I think part of it, like I liked that it was hard. Like it, you know, it's a little bit of a challenge. Maybe it's that like terrible thing people do where they're dating where like someone's like playing a little hard to get, and you're like, okay, you know, you're you're sort of whatever, along for the ride. Um, yeah, I think it is a very odd, um, it is a very odd interaction and very singular and and confusing.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Um, okay, so you know, we're talking about current criticism, but you know, I think something that you're wrestling with, I'm wrestling with, probably people in the audience are wrestling with, is the the present state of music criticism, but then also the future. Um and I think it's fair to stipulate that there are some real challenges and potentially real opportunities as well. Um so obviously there are a diminishing number of places for young critics to find their legs or even be paid to do so. Uh we've lost all weeklies, we've lost a lot of newspapers, we've lost a lot of cultural criticism. And I think this is sad. You know, it's like taking out the minor leagues in baseball. Um and you know, Substack is fine for what it is or what, you know, whatever blogging platform you prefer. We are subs, uh, you know, we're not um sponsored by Substack, but I've just brought it up. Uh it's a it's a it's a fine replacement for you know writing your ideas down, but it's not really for the editorial process, which I think is really important for journalism. Um like you were just saying, you know, your your your editor said, I think you like Brittany Howard too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Um editor, by the way, who I love, he's like a dear friend of mine, and he's a brilliant editor. He he is like a no-man, you know. It's like it's just you're you're and I I've grown so much as a writer because of that. I remember getting a note very early on in my career at the New Yorker that just said, make more interesting. And I was like, oh, but it's you know, but yet make more interesting. That's the work, right? Like that's the job. Yeah, I think uh that is the thing, the drawback of of places like Substack or just you know, tweeting a lot or being very active on a message board, all of those things are cool and great, but it's uh to having like a relationship with an editor who's gonna kind of check your worst tendencies, both recognize and check your worst tendencies, I think so crucial for a young writer.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

And so what would you like recommend? I mean, not that I think that you have all the answers, Amanda, but you know, like how do we, you know, keep a kind of journalistic infrastructure, you know, of of the editorial kind, or is it just, you know, maybe like people will hire an editor for their self-stuck or something?

SPEAKER_00 34:58

I w I wish I did have that answer. I mean, I think maybe it comes, you know, like so many things, you can kind of take a lesson from like DIY spaces or sort of indie spaces where it's like very collaborative and community-oriented, and like you find a friend who's a really smart reader and you have them read your stuff. You know, for a long time when I first moved to New York, I had like a writing group, you know, where we would read each other's work. Um, you know, no one got paid for it. It was like we'd hang out and drink and whatever, you know, submit our essays in advance and and sort of tear each other apart and build each other up as necessary. And that was like an extraordinarily useful thing for me. Um, you know, that that's not professional, like that's a little more social, but I think I think that's what you have to do for a while. I I do think it's really important to not just publish things unedited. Like I think that system of checks and balances is is at least for me, my God, I have been stopped from humiliating myself so many times by a good editor or a good fact checker. It's again such a privilege of working in a place like the New Yorker, but I think even for me, like as a younger writer publishing in The Voice, I mean, just having great editing early on, I don't I don't quite know how we replace that, but I think it has to exist.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

I I I mean I agree with you, and if if if the two of us together, I think we can maybe figure it out and put it back together. Um But it brings up another question that I I think you know is gonna counter everything that I just said, which is that, you know, there used to be this role of the critic as auteur, you know, whether it was Chris Gao or I mean, still alive, um, you know, Grail Mark is still alive, Lester Bang's dead, uh, you know, you know, Pauline Cale. Like these were, you know, just minted authorities on a subject. And, you know, as criticism becomes more populist, we are losing that, you know, those voices of critic as a tour. Now, I'm not saying it's gone completely, you're here, you know, Jessica Hopper exists and powers exist, Robert Chrisgow still exists, Grail still exists. I mean, there we still have the critic as a tour. I I don't know though, is it like as important to have you know these defining authoritative figures? Um and you know, there might be the end of the line for the critical authority at some point. And as journalism gets pared down and becomes less remunerative, um, what are what are we losing in the proposition of critic as author? And um, you know, like what's your you know most optimistic and and pessimistic interpretation of of what we are losing, but also what we're gaining?

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah, yes. Um that's a really interesting question. I mean, I mean, I think it is the uh, well, in a in a sense, we're reviewing things more than ever, right? Like I you get an Amazon package and then it's like rate your delivery, and it's like a picture of a box in front of your front door. I'm gonna write a review of this? Like we're, you know, I I think criticism is so omnipresent in a way. There's like Yelp reviews, there's Amazon reviews, like whatever it is, it's everywhere all the time. We're ranking things constantly in a way that I feel like we were not, you know, a generation or two ago. Uh but that idea of a singular voice, um, an authoritative voice, we are also living, not to go too, not to zoom the camera too far out, but in a sense, we are living through a kind of anti-intellectual era, right? And people are resistant to the idea of expertise. People are resistant to the idea of authority. Uh, I mean, I think we see this in the way some people react to science. I mean, there's this sense that like anybody can land the plane now, you know, and and it's simply not true. So for me, I think what gets lost when we lose those sort of superstar writers, I mean, they're incredible, like someone like Graham Marcus, an incredibly smart critic, an incisive listener. He's heard everything, he's thought about this stuff more than anyone else on earth, but also a beautiful writer, like an incredible stylist. I mean, to me, the the sort of pleasure of reading that prose is not insignificant either. Like in a way, we're losing criticism, but we're also losing literature. You know, and maybe that sounds lofty to sort of include criticism in the kind of uh literary canon, but for me, I think some of that writing, it's you know, it's it's polemical and it's descriptive and it's poetic and it's uh trenchant, you know, it's all these things. So I think that's what sort of what I would miss most of all.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Criticism is an incredible blank page in a way for a writer to kind of do some really interesting things stylistically with language, with ideas. Uh I think that gets lost in addition to the more sort of qualitative elements, or or the idea of establishing a canon or sort of figuring out like what art is is vital, whereas what art is maybe more, I don't know, kind of there for the wrong reasons. Uh all of that would get lost, I think.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

I I I think you make a really important point as criticism as literature. And if you go back and and look through, you know, I mean, um a lot of Grail's books, especially, but um, you know, I I I picked up a copy of the um Rolling Stone uh record guide from eBay the other day, and just reading through it and you know, consuming Dave Marsh's uh criticism, you know, but but you learn like the the vocabulary and the language of criticism and or just going to Robert Chrisgow's weird-looking website and like reading his castle reviews. Um worth checking out uh just for the design.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Um you know, even somebody like Lester Bang's like that that writing is wild, you know, it's kind of feral and it's imaginative and it's wild, and I don't I don't see how it could have been produced under any other rubric, like under any other umbrella in a way, you know, and it's I so yes, I miss that. That stuff, uh those early when it was still kind of the early Wild West days of rock criticism as a form, was really funny and it was very voicey and it was weird and and I don't just sort of alive on the page, and I I yeah, I love that stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Um, well, I know that all of these folks have a rock concert to get to shortly. Uh so I do not want to take up much more of your time. Ryan Davis. Very exciting. Ryan Davis streaming. I mean, so yeah, I read Amanda's uh profile of Ryan Davis. Uh and um I think that's probably in the archive somewhere, but excellent, excellent. If you're if you're not prepared for what we're about to get into, I'll be giving you a little time to get on New Yorker.com. Um, but thank you so much for doing this. It's such a pleasure to just sit and talk with you. I would do this for another two hours. Um yes, Elizabeth, you are amazing. Thank you so much, and thank you guys too. Yeah, thank you guys so much for coming out and sitting and in the heat and drinking the beer and having the fun. Now buy the books. Uh yeah. Thank you so much. There you go. It doesn't get much better than Amanda Petrusich, am I right? She's the best. I guess I didn't get to ask her from one suburban New Yorker to another what her definition of upstate New York is. But I can only assume that she correctly knows that the answer is anything over the bridge. If you're not already a regular reader of her writing, I'd absolutely encourage you to check out anything she's written for the New Yorker, particularly that Metallica profile that we discussed, which is fascinating stuff. Or if you're still searching for your ideal beach read for this summer, do not sell at any price is totally worth diving into. But really anything that she's done is a worthwhile read. She's just a truly fantastic example of what great journalism is. Anyway, thanks again to Amanda for taking the time to do the live show and for being such an incredible guest, and thanks to Southwest Review for putting together Frontera and suggesting we do the live episode as part of such a special festival. And thanks to you for listening to Known Associates. And thanks to New Pony for letting me do the show. Thanks to Clay Jones for mixing the episode, and thanks to Greg Brounderville, Bobby Ray, and Hannah Smith for producing it. Like Hoboken's own, Francis Albert Sinatra says, I'll be seeing ya.