Elsewhere

Essays and articles

“Where Stars Make Dreams and Dreams Make Stars,” published in Locust Review #12, Spring 2025. Published online April 29, 2025.

“Beyond Reality: On a Century of Surrealism.” Originally published in Against the Current No. 233, November/December 2024. Published online November 1, 2024.

“It Never Stops Exploding,” Locust Review, October 7, 2024.

“The Last Avant-Garde,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 11, 2024.

“In and Against the Dream Factory,” originally published in Salvage #14, Spring/Summer 2024. Not yet available online.

“Controversy Stage Left: The Tragedy of Edward Bond,” Locust Review, April 29, 2024.

“Through the Wreckage: On Joe Molloy’s Acid Detroit,” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 19, 2023.

“Flogging a Dead Android: What Was/Is Cyberpunk?” Originally appeared in Imago #2, 2022/2023. Published online June 6, 2023.

“Radical Memory and Mike Davis’ Final Work: Whose Dreams? Whose History?” Originally published in Against the Current No. 223, March/April 2023. Published online March 1, 2023.

“Music, Space, Time: A Series of Non-Experiences,” 1968 Press blog, October 3, 2022.

“Belonging Nowhere: Cynthia Cruz’s The Melancholia of Class,” Protean, April 20, 2022.

“A Theory of the Imagination and/or an Imaginative Theory: The Case For Critical Irrealism,” originally appeared in Imago #1, 2021. Published online March 16, 2022.

“To Gogh or Not to Gogh,” Popula, March 7, 2022.

“In End-Stage Capitalism, NFT Owns You!” Imago, February 7, 2022.

“Out In the Open, a Hidden City,” Imago, August 31, 2021.

“Uncanny Valleys: Notes On the Future of Los Angeles,” originally appeared in Salvage #9, Autumn/Winter 2020. Published online July 21, 2021.

“As You Were,” Real Life, May 20, 2021.

“Speak of Revolution: A Review of The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook,” Protean, May 11, 2021.

“Monopoly Music,” originally appeared in Jacobin #41, spring 2021. Published online April 27, 2021.

“A New Union of Musicians Is Taking On Spotify,” Jacobin, April 12, 2021.

“Utopische Negation,” Melodie & Rhythmus, March 2021 (translated into German by Bastian Tebarth). Published in English under the title “Refusal Music” at New Politics, April 6, 2021.

“Giving Up the Ghost: On the Legacy of Mark Fisher,” Los Angeles Review of Books, March 19, 2021.

“Musicians Need to Organize Collectively, as Workers,” Jacobin, January 16, 2021.

“Disruptions, or, Something to (Urgently!) Learn,” Solidarity webzine, January 8, 2021.

“Appalachian Nightmare,” Melodie & Rhythmus, January 2021 (translated into German by Bastian Tebarth). Published in English under the title “The Saint of Lost Causes: On the Life of Justin Townes Earle” in Against the Current, number 210, January/February 2021.

“Spotify’s Streaming Model Is Based on Exploitation,” Jacobin, December 8th, 2020.

“The FBI’s War On Folk Music,” Jacobin, November 22nd, 2020.

“Punk Versus Reagan,” Jacobin, November 9th, 2020.

“The Soundtrack To Our Age of Decay,” Jacobin, November 8th, 2020.

“The Political Poetics of Linton Kwesi Johnson,” The Common Reader, November 7th, 2020.

“Apocalypse Songs: On the Music of Algiers,” PubLab, August 7th, 2020.

“Live Free and Die: Notes On American Exterminism,” Historical Materialism blog, July 14th, 2020.

“Pretty Faces Who Care,” originally appeared in Jacobin #37, spring 2020. Published online May 18th, 2020.

“John Prine’s Human Touch,” Jacobin, April 25th, 2020.

“Life Beyond a Plague,” Locust Review, March 25th, 2020.

“Meet the Socialist Power-Pop Band Whose Music Blasted Out at Bernie Rallies,” Jacobin, March 21st, 2020.

“You Say You Want a Revolution,” originally appeared in Jacobin #36, winter 2020. Published online February 19th, 2020.

“Reclaiming Los Angeles,” Jacobin, February 15th, 2020.

“Andy Gill (1956 – 2020),” Jacobin, February 4th, 2020.

“Ballet Against Austerity,” Jacobin, January 15th, 2020.

“Desert Dreams + Commie Cowboys,” originally appeared in Locust Review #1, fall 2019. Published online December 9th, 2019.

“A Forgotten Country,” originally appeared in Jacobin #35, fall 2019. Published online November 25th, 2019.

“The Music of Twenty-First Century Uprisings,” Jacobin, November 21st, 2019.

“How Many More Homeless Subway Sopranos Are Out There?” Jacobin, November 17th, 2019.

“Joe Biden Wants to Take Away Your Music,” Jacobin, August 31st, 2019.

“Who Cares What Army?” originally appeared in Jacobin #34, summer 2019. Published online August 27th, 2019.

“David Berman and the Re-Enchantment of Life,” Jacobin, August 21st, 2019.

“Why the Clash Matter,” Jacobin, May 13th, 2019.

“Fuck Your Decorum,” Red Wedge, January 7th, 2019.

“Shake the City: Experimental Theses on Space and Time, Music and Crisis,” originally appeared in Red Wedge #5, spring 2018. Published online December 11th, 2018.

“True Grit: From Weird Mascot to Eldritch Revolutionary,” Red Wedge, October 19th, 2018.

“Riots and Reality: Sorry to Bother You and Radical Irrealism,” Red Wedge, August 3rd, 2018.

“After Left Melancholia: A Winding Walk Through the Wreckage,” written with Adam Turl, originally appearing in Red Wedge #4, winter 2017. Published online April 30th, 2018.

“Review of China Mieville’s October: The Story of the Russian Revolution,” Chicago Review, January 22nd, 2018.

“Words, War, Words: Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer,” originally appeared in Red Wedge #3, summer 2017. Published online October 31st, 2017.

“Bono Kills the Planet,” originally appeared in Jacobin #26, summer 2017. Published online August 15th, 2017.

“Laughing at Rich Kids,” Jacobin, May 4th, 2017.

“A 21st Century Popular Avant-Garde,” Red Wedge, March 3rd, 2017.

“The Ghost Ship is Our Triangle Fire,” written with Adam Turl, Red Wedge, December 16th, 2017.

“The Resistible Rise of Donald Trump: Two Performances,” Red Wedge, November 25th, 2016.

“Freedom’s Call,” originally appeared in Jacobin #24, fall 2016. Published online November 8th, 2016.

“The Comedy is Over,” Red Wedge, October 29th, 2016.

“Slaves of Futures Past,” Red Wedge, October 4th, 2016.

“Dancing on Phyllis Schlafly’s Grave,” Red Wedge, September 6th, 2016.

“Alton Sterling’s Right to the City,” Jacobin, August 7th, 2016.

“Hollywood’s End Times,” Jacobin, July 30th, 2016.

“Super Official Marx,” Jacobin, July 8th, 2016.

“All Power to the Imagination,” Jacobin, May 9th, 2016.

“The Prince Position,” Jacobin, April 24th, 2016.

“Metal’s Bleeding Edge,” Jacobin, March 17th, 2016.

“Donald Trump and the Aesthetics of Fascism,” In These Times, January 28th, 2016.

“The Man Who Fell to Earth,” Jacobin, January 20th, 2016.

“Fellow Traveler Frank,” Jacobin, December 29th, 2015.

“The Metamorphosis at 100,” Jacobin, October 31st, 2015.

“New Anthems of Resistance: Hip-Hop and Black Lives Matter,” In These Times, August 21st, 2015.

“Review of Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time,” Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, June 10th, 2015.

“On Barrel Rolls and Judge Dredd: The Aesthetics of Being a Cop,” Red Wedge, June 9th, 2015.

“The Shape of Baltimore’s Segregation,” Red Wedge, May 7th, 2015.

“Towards a Communist Futurism… But What Kind?” Red Wedge, March 20th, 2015.

“The Spirit Politic,” Red Wedge, October 29th, 2014.

“Songs of Emptiness,” Jacobin, October 7th, 2014.

“Change the People,” originally appeared in Jacobin #14, spring 2014. Published online, June 1st, 2014.

“Fred Ho’s Far Out, Radical Journey,” Jacobin, April 21st, 2014.

“RIP Oderus Urungus,” Red Wedge, March 24th, 2014.

“On White Thugs Like Michael Dunn and the Scapegoating of Hip-Hop,” Red Wedge, February 15th, 2014.

“The Sound of the Small C,” Jacobin, January 30th, 2014.

Fiction and poetry

“An Attic in Prague, 1939,” originally appeared in Locust Review #10. Published online at That Ellipsis…

“Artists for Mutually Assured Destruction,” originally appeared in Locust Review #9, summer 2023. Published online October 3rd, 2023.

“The Republic of Dreams,” originally appeared in Locust Review #8, fall 2022. Published online February 24th, 2023.

“A Farewell to Love Poems,” originally appeared in Locust Review #7, spring 2022. Published online September 19th, 2022.

“Weekly Planner,” originally appeared in Locust Review #6, fall 2021. Published online February 3rd, 2022.

“On Hearing the News That George Floyd’s Murderer Was Convicted,” originally appeared in Locust Review #5, summer 2021. Published online December 21st, 2021.

“Two Minutes Past Midnight,” originally appeared in Locust Review #4, winter 2020. Published online October 9th, 2021.

“Suburban Lightsick Lullaby,” originally appeared in Locust Review #3, winter 2021. Published online June 10th, 2021.

“Permission,” originally appeared in Locust Review #3, winter 2021. Published online March 17th, 2021.

“We,” Radical Art Review, September 30th, 2020.

“To Mayakovsky While Australia Burns,” originally appeared in Locust Review #2, spring 2020. Published online May 6, 2020.

“Soluble Futures: Flint,” originally appeared in Locust Review #1, fall 2019. Published online December 19, 2019.