Kieran Press-Reynolds is a columnist at Pitchfork. They also write extensively on “political guys” for GQ. I’ve long been a fan and I was excited to chat about their work.
You've done a lot of great vertical videos for Pitchfork based on your column there--I'm wondering if you think that's the way of the future or how you see visuals playing into your own writing.
Yeah I’m having a lot of fun making videos. It can be slightly terrifying because I feel very at ease and free to be goofy while filming with the wonderful video producer Amy Haskour and then I get post-clip clarity and remember it's gonna hit the feed. As long as digital screens mediate our existence in increasingly intimate and perplexing ways, seems like videos will continue to dominate. At least until someone invents an even more digestible form. I wanna experiment with freaking up the videos for the weirder nanocultures, show the ideas through texture and editing rhythm—might dredge up the ol Sony Vegas and play around soon.. I think one of the main issues with short videos is the viewer’s passivity—the clip withers away as soon as the next spawns, and you retain barely any information even if it’s quite educational and well-argued. I’ve been trying to get better at condensing the reporting and arguments without losing the kind of thought-space that emerges out of being forced to sit down to read a piece. Sometimes it feels futile—the form is slop, it’s all feeding the beast. Then again, Zohran accrued an insane support base online partly through shortform media, and now he’s the mayor, putting policies that benefit real people into place. Maybe those Marxist Shambhala shitposts meant something after all…
You wrote a great piece on Clavicular for GQ, maybe the best profile of him. I'm wondering how you reflect back on that---it went so viral. But of course you also wrote for the mag about dark woke and Adam Friedland, it seems like there's a beat for you there.
Thank you. That Clav piece was a doozy. I’m really proud of it. I’d been writing about looksmaxxing for years, and it was wild to see this mainstream manifestation taking over everyone’s feeds doing shit like bonesmashing, and having friends saying they knew young boys IRL who were imitating him. I thought then and still think the essence of Clavicular is distinct from a more straightforward sicko like Steven Crowder—more sad and broken and tied to a kind of post-COVID internet-fucked nihilism, and hopefully something that resolves a bit with time. It’s been strange and encouraging seeing his Australian counterpart Androgenic embrace his trans fans. I get why so many people are upset about seeing this shitty dude spammed on their feeds, especially when it seems to come with a glossy photoshoot or whatever, but I don’t really understand the argument around platforming. Ignoring these guys doesn’t make them go away. Andrew Tate and NELK have tens of millions of followers, direct lines to political leaders etc. GQ, more than any other pub, is supposed to cover what’s going on with men. Most people who write about these guys also don’t have the kind of zoomer’s eye view to understand the little factions and feuds and clipping culture-esque quirks behind their virality. Generally, I have learned a lot working the weird-poliics-guy beat (I was not a Cum Town resident before I profiled Adam Friedland, contrary to what some may believe) with the great ex-GQ editor Nick Catucci, who now does RiffPost.
You've written about digging for music outside the algorithm before, but how do you do your own research for writing scene reports and finding new bands? Is it different depending on whether or not you're reviewing versus profiling? I loved your piece on Ear.
Cheers. I usually read and watch everything out there. There are so many resources even for the smaller and weirder artists I cover—BACKLIGHT, Tone Glow, Hidden Driveway, etc. Thinking about interviews and profiles, I’m really trying to see what’s been asked before, keeping note of unpulled threads, topics they light up at, things I can push forward. I probably use all the ordinary FBI-style psychological profile tactics—for ear, I was digging into Jonah and Yaelle’s SoundCloud likes, stalking their lowkey side projects, trying to put myself in their shoes and imagine what they'd been into growing up. For underscores, it was like an accumulation of years’ worth of mini-moments, rumors, memories I’d seen and knew she had never been asked about. I will scour the Reddit pages for artists, I'll type their name into Facebook and find pictures their mom posted of them giddily unwrapping a box of LEGOs on Christmas in 2009. But sometimes the best research is no research. For reviews, I try not to get bogged down by the music journo game of assiduously citing all the snippets of context an artist puts out around their new record, I wanna foreground my own ideas and perceptions instead of writing a clinical Wikipedia entry. Scene reports can be a mix of the two; a lot of digging through playlists and keyword searching to find older articles, historical grounding to orient the new. Sometimes "research" also means just reading a lot of great and weird prose, criticism or fiction, anything to lubricate my brain to write a colorful piece.
I'm curious how you think about fan culture in the wake of music criticism. I know you mostly write about more under the radar/bubbling acts (Colle, Chanel Beads, Jane Remover) but I'm sure you've had online interactions as a Pitchfork staffer.
I dunno, it all makes sense? For the more extreme stans, it just tracks that they’d derive meaning and community from this sort of ravenous musical jingoism, every in-group needs its villain. Maybe there is also something to admire in there—the capacity for such passion in a supposedly numbed-out generation?—and it is sometimes good to be forced to articulate and defend your opinion. In some sense I have a pretty privileged position: I write a Kanye West pan and the Westingtons spam pictures of me with BuzzBall Blue Raspberry hair, and I can laugh. I know other people have been hit way worse with doxxing campaigns and harassment. The internet makes some people so dumb. It inspires the worst kind of low-effort fandom mimesis and keyboard warrior wailing on all sides. Stans threaten anyone who dares lob a barb at a Barb; stans act super creepy toward Jane Remover because they know it’ll get engagement.
In the wake of so many male music critics, who are your favorite female music writers?
Cat Zhang really set the standard for what I’m doing at Pitchfork. Anna Gaca, as writer and editor—she helps make my reviews so much better. I always enjoy reading Hattie, Lily, Jaime Brooks, Isabelia Herrera, H.D. Angel, Rae-Aila Crumble (first ever, banger Lucy Bedroque profile). Billie Bugara, s/o the Lyrical Lemonade column… going crazy with the video game soundtrack reviews recently. I’m a big fan of the sisters Pelly & Laura Snapes & Mina Tavakoli
Gen Z - Underrated
The Dare - Rated
Playboi Carti - Overrated
Halsey - Abstain
Hyperpop - Underrated
Image: Chagall.
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