Articles By: Anthony Easton

Of Teeth, Nails, and Other Things That Fall Out

Billy Bragg Tooth & Nail (Essential) Billy Bragg has always been better at compartmentalizing than his reputation as a political songwriter might suggest. This isn’t to say his political work from the late 1970s isn’t iconic; it’s just that his songs about sex, love, romance, and marriage...

May 14th, 2013 | Music | Read More

Brother Seed’s Traveling Pro-Nation Show

Alasdair Roberts A Wonder Working Stone (Drag City) The last time I wrote about Alasdair Roberts for Burnside, I mentioned the Canadian connection to Scotland. Since then, Quebec has defeated its federalist premier for a Quebec nationalist, and Scotland has proposed a date for an election determining...

February 26th, 2013 | Music | Read More

Rihanna Becomes Uncomfortably Numb

Rihanna Unapologetic (Def Jam) Chris Brown beat the shit out of Rihanna. He was arrested for it. He doesn’t seem very apologetic about it. Defying tabloid scolds and genuine feminist concern, Rihanna keeps showing us images of them together—in public and in private, in the club and in the bedroom—in...

January 8th, 2013 | Music | Read More

Transcending the Mundane Yet Again

The Mountain Goats Transcendental Youth (Merge) Mountain Goats leader John Darnielle always reminds me of poets like the Anglican George Herbert or the Latter Day Saint Eliza Snow — people who ended up doing theology through the back door, whose ideas and concepts about the nature of God were presented...

October 23rd, 2012 | Music | Read More

Tornado of Testosterone or Punching Bag?

Josh Turner Punching Bag (Universal Nashville) One reason I am a queer theologian is because I am interested in how bodies work in space with other bodies. Now this might mean sex, and it might mean family — or god, or church, or communion. I can cage to the fact that my continued interest in country...

September 21st, 2012 | Featured, Music | Read More

Ancient Scottish Music Goes Global

Mairi Morrison & Alasdair Roberts Urstan (Drag City) There is a bar called the Caledonia, on the far edge of College Street, in Toronto. It’s a new bar, and I had my first outdoor drink of the season there a couple of weeks ago. There, one of the bartenders chided me gently, because I ordered...

April 26th, 2012 | Featured, Music | Read More

Grinning Like an East Nashville Cat

Todd Snider Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables (Aimless) The idea of Nashville as slick and inauthentic, the place with dudes in 300-dollar blue jeans stringing tourists along and shucking them out of money, is well known; and so reviewing a Todd Snider album is an exercise in trying to avoid writing about...

April 6th, 2012 | Featured, Music | Read More

Sinéad, Ireland, and the Meaning of Hair

Last month Sinéad O’Connor tweeted that she hated Ireland. The woman was intractably connected with Ireland and, unlike other great writers, she had refused to exile herself — she did not become fashionably English like Wilde, or conveniently French like Beckett or Joyce. She even evaded the call...

October 25th, 2011 | Featured, Music | Read More