#Elmhirst

[laku-incarnate]

Anna Neima, The Utopians: Six Attempts to Build the Perfect Society, 2021.

[nofatclips]

To Believe by The Cinematic Orchestra featuring Moses Sumney

[lovefashion-palianshow]

Photographed in the gardens of Hellens in Herefordshire, Margaret Atwood is wearing a cotton floral print shirtdress by VIVIENNE WESTWOOD.

Text by Sophie Elmhirst Portraits by Alasdair McLellan Styling by Alice Goddard Issue nº 20, Autumn & Winter 2019 Thirty-four

Art by Women - Women in Arts @abwwia

Fashion meets Art - Wrt meets Fashion

[publicacionesdeunachica]

I like they way that you make promises that you can't keep.

[judgingbooksbycovers]

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

By Sophie Elmhirst.

[mitjalovse]

I did claim Tony Visconti could be one of the chief architects of British popular music. However, he didn't work much in Britpop, unless you count his production for several groups that got adjacent to the category thanks to them being present at the time of the genre's heyday. One such example could be Manic Street Preachers, yet he only worked on them after the whole Britpop thing was over, so he didn't really mold their sound in the imperial phase of the style. Still, Lifeblood does show Manics possess a certain something they never let go of even now. They continue to be a group, which rarely seems to be settled into what they represent. What that might be? Oh, this question deserves a whole debate, not just a post.

[pieaterpieater]

10 years since game changer album 'Not Art' by Big Scary was released - to celebrate we've pressed a limited edition transparent orange vinyl, available via our shop or your fav record store. Order limited edition transparent orange vinyl

This album opened many doors for Big Scary and ultimately led to the official beginnings of Pieater. We have much to thank for the music behind the monstera leaf.

'Not Art' allowed Tom Iansek to develop his production skills, he explored sounds, textures, techniques and got to work with some incredible NYC talents first via gospel singers at Broadway Inspirational Voices and then Tom Elmhirst mixing the album. Jo also began navigating the industry beyond solely a musician, foraying into developing management skills and business nous, to make her one of the most talented & well rounded industry professional today. 

We threw a party at our first HQ 'Mixed Business', released in the US with Barsuk Records, toured OS multiple times, got nominated for awards, won awards, played many fantastic festivals, grew the live band with Gus Rigby, Christopher Port, Callum Barter (FOH). We thankfully had the belief of Justin Cosby (Vale) and Mark Dodds at Inertia, Evan Davis at Village Sounds, Grant Gillies at GaGa, Natasha Bowron & Melody Forghani. It was these passionate early team members who helped make the difference to enable Big Scary to grow.

10 years on the music still sounds incredible, my current fav is 'Invest' and I truly can't wait to watch Jo and Tom perform this record again one day. Go give the brilliant ‘Not Art’ another spin, very happy listening 🧡

[longreads]

Longreads editor Carolyn Wells reflects on her year in reading, including stories from D.T Max, Tim Neville, Simon Hattenstone, Abe Beame, Sara Franklin, Sophie Elmhirst, Sally Jenkins, Conor Niland, Simon Akam, Michael Gardner, Hayley Campbell and Susan Dominus: 

As the world grows heavier, delight can be found in the eccentricities and achievements of our fellow humans. Stepping into someone else’s life can be a blessed piece of escapism. It is also an education. “People pieces” have taught me what drives us: our passions and weirdness.

Read “Power to the People” on Longreads. 

[notbecauseofvictories]

today I discovered that this amazing article about a doomed attempt to create a seafaring haven for bitcoin miners, is by the same journalist as this other article I love about people so wealthy they go to therapy about it, and now I absolutely want to know how Sophie Elmhirst finds these people.

[vulturesouls]

Carte-de-visite of Miss Elmhirst, Scarborough, England, 1860s-70s.

Getty Museum

[weekdaygladers]

books i read in 2024

recapping my reads of this year, organized in order in which i read them

stats for nerds like me:

read 55/25 book goal

top 3 genres:

romance

contemporary

mystery

avg. rating: 3.37⭐

all books, ratings and dates listed below the cut

the sittaford mystery - agatha christie // 4.0⭐// read from jan 4 - jan 7

the sunday lunch club - juliet ashton // 2.75⭐// read from jan 7 - jan 13

the christmas bet - meg easton // 3.25⭐// read jan 15

bunny - mona awad // 4.25⭐// read from may 19 - may 28

a good girl's guide to murder - holly jackson // 4.5⭐// read from jul 1 - jul 2

the yellow wallpaper - charlotte perkins gilman // 3.0⭐// read jul 2

a vineyard valentine - nina bocci // 3.25⭐// read jul 2

buried deep - margot hunt // 3.5⭐// read jul 2

tell her story - margot hunt // 3.25⭐// read from jul 2 - jul 3

a murder to remember - brynn kelly // 4.25⭐// read from jul 3 - jul 4

you can thank me later - kelly harms // 3.0⭐// read jul 4

dead girls can't tell secrets - chealsea ichaso // 3.5⭐// read from jul 4 - jul 5

twisted love - ana huang // 2.5⭐// read jul 5

twisted games - ana huang // 2.0⭐// read from jul 5 - jul 8

love at first psych - cara bastone // 4.25⭐// read jul 8

exposed: the ashley madison hack - sophie elmhirst // 3.0⭐// read jul 8

the house on the water - margot hunt // 4.5⭐// read jul 8

after you've gone - margot hunt // 3.25⭐// read from jul 8 - jul 9

call me maybe - cara bastone // 4.0⭐// read jul 9

sweet talk - cara bastone // 3.5⭐// read jul 9

seatmate - cara bastone // 4.5⭐// read from jul 9 - jul 10

maybe this time - cara bastone // 3.0⭐// read jul 10

the bookworm crush - lisa brown roberts // 2.5⭐// read from jul 10 - jul 11

mad love - wendy walker // 4.5⭐// read jul 11

escape from virtual island - john lutz // 3.0⭐// read from jul 11 - jul 12

back in the burbs - avery flynn & tracy wolff // 3.25⭐// read from jul 12 - jul 15

hold your breath - dylan baker // 3.0⭐// read jul 15

home before night - j.p. pomare // 4.0⭐// read jul 15

tell me lies - j.p. pomare // 4.0⭐// read jul 15

if he had been with me - laura nowlin // 4.5⭐// read from jul 15 - jul 16

american girl - wendy walker // 3.0⭐// read jul 16

you only die twice - brynn kelly // 2.0⭐ // read jul 17

the stand-in - lily chu // 4.0⭐// read from jul 17 - jul 18

ice planet barbarians - ruby dixon // 0.0⭐// read jul 19

the summer i turned pretty - jenny han // 4.0⭐// read from jul 18 - jul 19

geekerella - ashley poston // 3.5⭐// read from jul 19 - jul 21

the takedown - lily chu // 2.5⭐// read from jul 21 - jul 22

1984 - george orwell, read by andrew gardfield // 4.0⭐// read jul 22

the comeback - lily chu // 3.0⭐// read from jul 22 - jul 23

twisted hate - ana huang // 1.0⭐// read from jul 23 - jul 24

husband and wife -k.l. slater // 3.5⭐// read from jul 24 - jul 25

will my cat eat my eyeballs? - caitlin doughty // 4.0⭐// read jul 25

one of those flings - lauren blakely // 3.0⭐// read from jul 25 - jul 26

if we ever meet again - ana huang // 2.0⭐// read from jul 26 - jul 29

the kind worth killing - peter swanson // 4.0⭐// read from may 28 - aug 20

our scorching summer - denise stone & kels stone // 2.5⭐// read from may 31, 2023 - sep 17

these violent delights - micah nemerever // 4.25⭐// read from sep 17 - sep 30

funny story - emily henry // 4.5⭐// read from sep 30 - oct 2

good girl, bad blood - holly jackson // 4.5⭐// read from oct 1 - oct 8

as good as dead - holly jackson // 4.0⭐// read from oct 8 - oct 9

lessons in chemistry - bonnie garmus // 3.5⭐// read from oct 18 - oct 20

caraval - stephanie garber // 4.0⭐️// read from dec 26 - dec 27

legendary - stephanie garber // 3.5⭐️// read from dec 27 - dec 28

finale - stephanie garber // 2.5⭐// read from dec 28 - dec 30

holiday lights and cocoa cookie nights - meg easton // 3.0⭐// read dec 31

[ambrossart]

Paper Men Poll: Vote for Your Favorite Characters!

All right, this is the last poll to conclude my break from Paper Men. Get ready to vote for a bunch of characters you probably don't remember. 😂

[nofatclips]

Shadow Town by Sleater-Kinney from the album Path of Wellness

[thesinglesjukebox]

BILLY JOEL - "TURN THE LIGHTS BACK ON"

The theme narrows a little, maybe...

[4.15]

Hannah Jocelyn: The first Melodyne’d word of this song -- P L E A S E -- had me worried. This is the latest in a series of '70s and '80s rockers coming back one last time, normally with Post Malone's producer Andrew Watt at the helm. The results can either be pleasant, like the Rolling Stones' Lady Gaga collaboration "Sweet Sounds of Heaven", or abysmal, like Elton John's horribly edited "Always Love You." But Watt's not here; behind the boards instead is industry songwriter Freddy Wexler, a Billy Joel fanboy who convinced the artist to release music again. If the song sounds a lot like "Piano Man" and "Summer, Highland Falls," repeated listens reveal it's not just a cheap nostalgia grab. It sounds exactly like a new Billy Joel song should in 2024, P L E A S E aside, with a tasteful build and some grandiose but lovely lyrics: “Pride sticks out its tongue/laughs at the portrait that we’ve become/Stuck in a frame, unable to change.” Joel occupies a weird place in pop culture -- not as acclaimed as Dylan or Springsteen, but more thoughtful and introspective than the Eagles or anyone else in his imagined supergroup. With "Turn the Lights Back On," it all makes sense. He invented an archetype now filled by musicians like Adele post-21 or even Hozier: pop songwriters with enough depth to earn them a devout following even if they’re not critics' favorites. The liner notes reveal more connections. Eclectic producer Emile Haynie drops in to provide some additional production, the same way he did on "Hello" almost a decade ago, and the song is mixed by Adele's engineer Tom Elmhirst. It's an effective repositioning of Joel not as a "33-hit-wonder", not as a poet, but as one of the great pop balladeers and craftsmen. And my dad loves it, which is all that really matters. [7]

Alfred Soto: Despite the co-writers and a video whose nostalgia bid is as, ah, shameless as Paul McCartney's last year, "Turn the Lights Back On" sounds like any generic thing that might've appeared on Storm Front or The Bridge. Which is the point. [4]

Aaron Bergstrom: A direct descendant of Elton John's far superior "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore," as underlined by their similar music video treatments. While Joel was able to use cutting-edge AI technology to de-age himself in his video, Sir Elton had to make do with the tools available to him back in 2001, which is to say, Justin Timberlake. (Both AI and Timberlake are now trying to make their own music, with limited success.) [5]

Ian Mathers: Get the fuck outta here with this uncanny valley "AI" CGI shit. I'm not shocked boomers would cling to yet another way to deny they're old as fuck now -- it'll happen to all of us, I'm sure -- but it's still repugnant. Despite Joel being away for years, god knows you still hear the hits, so I'm kind of shocked that his voice seems to have lost most of its distinctive timbre. If you'd played me this blind I don't think I could have told you the singer, although the voice would have felt weirdly familiar. And look, respect to the man's undeniable achievements in his craft (which even haters should admit he takes pretty damn seriously) and especially stardom/mass popularity, but partly given the characterlessness to his performance here, my answer to "did I wait too long, to turn the lights back on?" is... yeah, you kinda did. I don't think the reason I loved the ABBA comeback singles and not this is just because I like ABBA and don't care for Billy Joel; I genuinely think they did a better job on playing off their context than he does here. [5]

TA Inskeep: I'd like to keep them off, please.  [1]

Isabel Cole: Billy Joel was one of the few artists my whole family could agree on during long trips in the car; my first concert was his dual tour with Elton John at Madison Square Garden. So on the one hand, the sheer nostalgic sentiment aroused in me by the thought of Billy going back to songwriting after all these years is real, and powerful. On the other, I know whereof I speak when I say that even assessed by the generous lens of someone who was once a 13-year-old girl glad to name Songs in the Attic as her favorite album, this is mid-level Billy at best. Lyrically, so much of his appeal has always been his willingness to indulge—in shamelessness, in sentiment, in spite, in just being kind of an asshole—but this song is too busy wrestling ponderously with its own existence to have that kind of fun; musically, it’s just “I’ve Loved These Days” but not as good. [4]

Rachel Saywitz: It's good, for a budget store "Piano Man."  [5]

Dave Moore: The best thing I can say for this lugubrious comeback ballad, loosely patterned on vintage Billy Joel and a dollop of "Hey Jude," is that it technically clocks in at under four minutes. The worst thing I can say about it is that I am not yet convinced the vocals aren't BillyJoelAI, though it does sound like him really playing the piano (derogatory). [3]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: God, what a trudge — the type of pianoman mewls I thought every Joel song would be as an uneducated youth. But then I heard "Movin' Out," and what a fuckin' joint! (Fun fact: I think a quick browse of Billy Joel's biggest hits has taught me "Movin' Out" is, uh, the only BJ jam I like. Sorry.) [3]

Katherine St. Asaph: I dislike the term "overproduced" in criticism; it's often a way to sneer at pop without having to say something so gauche. But when you have a swelling string section -- a mercilessly effective cheat code to make a listener moved -- and yet that listener cannot be moved because she can't fucking hear it over everything else in the arrangement, your song is overproduced. When you autotune everything about your singer's voice except the notes that he actually flubbed, your song is -- well, not overproduced exactly, but produced poorly. Can't imagine how I'd feel if I were even a Billy Joel fan! One singular point because I learned something: it's not just the de-aging "AI" (scare quotes), Billy Joel really did look kinda like Harry Styles back then. (Harry Styles would probably love to remake this. It would still be a [1]). [1]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This absolutely shouldn't work on me. I, of sound mind and body and possessing no strong relationship with the music of Billy Joel, ought not to have any reaction to this at all. It's a Billy Joel song that is once again about the romance between the performer and the audience, hitting all the marks he last hit 30 years ago. If nearly everything else he's done leaves me inert, then this should do the same. Yet something about its twilight glory, the way Joel puts himself through his own paces, moves me nonetheless.  [6]

Brad Shoup: I know I'm not the first person to interpret this as a metaphor for Joel's relationship with the public. For me, he's always been a sort of pop midpoint, and I've never been able to budge him. Everything he's ever done has been... fine: the bangers always fuck up somewhere, the groaners are never that embarrassing. So leaving things off with "The River of Dreams" (my favorite) wouldn't have been a bad way to go. This is confident schlock. The snare smacks like a worn copy of "Bridge Over Troubled Water"; he does a little "Piano Man" twirl before the orchestra goes for broke. I don't think he waited too long; I think this song was within him the whole time, for better or worse. [5]

Nortey Dowuona: I understand the hatred. For us, being smooth and easy on the ears is a crime. To refuse the challenges that push the artform of popular music and music culture, or worse, to fight them tooth and nail, is enough to make you an enemy in our eyes. But I do understand the actual reason to simply play to the middle of the road: to connect with everyone since you have learned, possibly later or earlier, we are a rare and bold breed, despite the infighting, backbiting and slimy behavior I will not detail here. Billy Joel has waited long enough -- he at the height of his popularity was despised and condemned, a figurehead for the stultifying demands of white yuppiedom. Unfortunately he was wrong; the fire was started, and will never stop. We, as a far more revered and loved writer said, made our choice as a species, and it's just a question of how long it takes to play out. Billy once wrote of New York being destroyed and its citizens fleeing like rats to Miami, reminiscing over their glory days. But now in 2024, New York refuses to go away. Our mayor, as Wiki and MIKE said, is a cop, and millions are homeless and starving, struggling to keep afloat and trying not to crumble every time a blank, greasy-faced kid with worn-out clothes playing with a iPhone 14 who could afford to give you $5 shakes his head to ignore you. I understand the hatred. But I can't feel it because the hatred feels pointless, empty, a target for those old timers who have fled the sinking ship and their ancestors who only know to despise the old place from stories and memories. He might've waited too long to turn the lights back once since the wires have rotted and the bulbs are broken, but not because the city is empty. It's full of your fanboys and their grandchildren, who now feel the sour bitterness that drove you to flee and cannot choose any other feeling. It's not too late -- it's never too late. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[publicacionesdeunachica]

I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet.

To go over everything.

They say that time's supposed to heal ya.

But I ain't done much healing.

[jessicafurseth]

Reading List, Into the Summer double edition.

[Image: Poem by Morgan Harper Nichols, via 90sanxiety]

*

"Any time you are feeling shame over life choices, ask yourself who is benefitting from it (likely not you)." The 9 Essential Lessons My Summers Of Solo Travel Have Taught Me [Glynnis MacNicol, Vogue]

"Dirty, hedonistic, happy and bra-less - it beats journalling after a long day of pilates." Brat girl summer [Zoe Williams, The Guardian]

London's best outdoor spaces, according to National Park City founder Dan Raven-Ellison [Kate Lewis, BBC Travel]

Trekking Across Switzerland, Guided by Locals’ Hand-Drawn Maps [Ben Buckland, The New York Times]

“The completeness of this record is dizzy, stupefying: I’m using 43.87 gigabytes of data. The only way to navigate that vertiginous expanse is through the conduit of the Gmail search function. I type the names of my husband, my best friend, my girl gang out of college, my former roommate, my late uncle; some of these people long lost to me now, but eerily present in that window. Here we are planning road trips. Scheduling brunches. Sharing links." Gmail will break your heart [Links I would Gchat you if we were friends by Caitlin Dewey]

"I wanted to know how to be breezy. To meet someone for a drink but order food because I’d missed lunch. To free myself of this habit of rehearsing conversations in advance only to be disappointed when none of my prepared talking points naturally arose. ... No matter where I was, it seemed I was doomed to always feel as though I were in the window seat on a flight, prodding apologetically, mincing and smiling for the person in the aisle to get up." On getting diagnosed with autism as an adult [Mary HK Choi, The Cut]

"We need to go places and touch things." The people turning away from smartphones [Clea Skopeliti, The Guardian]

Before Smartphones, an Army of Real People Helped You Find Stuff on Google [Amelia Tait, Wired]

This Is What It Looks Like When AI Eats the World [Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic]

When did you last do one thing at a time? In defence of single use objects [Celia Mattison, Dirt]

I Have a Terrible Memory. Am I Better Off That Way? Wild scenes. [Katy Schneider, The Cut]

"But [parenthood] did not unearth new ethical or emotional resources. I am, it is true, far more patient with my daughter than I would be with anyone else exhibiting comparably high levels of incompetence, need, or obstinance. But this tolerance does not extend to anyone else. There is less of it to go around." What if parenthood isn't transformative at all? [Anastasia Berg, The Cut]

"The Lennon Patek captures a measure of time that no other watch ever will—the little they had left together." The Strange Journey of John Lennon’s Stolen Patek Philippe Watch [Jay Fielden, The New Yorker]

Inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters | Crime [Sophie Elmhirst, The Guardian]

So long, Longform Podcast [Brady Brickner-Wood, The New York Times]

The Precarious Future of Big Sur’s Highway 1 [Emily Witt, The New Yorker]

“I think to an unusual degree Agnes sort of lives what she thinks and thinks what she lives.” Agnes Callard’s Marriage of the Minds [Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker]

"Change is slow in me. It’s a little like turning a tanker. I find I have to set it in motion and then wait patiently for it to happen, and try not to lose faith in the meantime. Since November, I’ve been intending to go and swim in the local outdoor pool, and on Tuesday I finally managed it. I’ve had my swimming bag packed all that time. I just needed to think through the steps before I could manage it. Even then, it took me all day to get in my car and drive down there, and I don’t think I’d have done it if H hadn’t gone with me. Until the moment I got in the water, swimming in a new place seemed like a multi-stage problem that I couldn’t solve." The Clearing by Katherine May

I’ve Spent a Lot of Time Pretending Not To Know What I Want [Swan Huntley, Autostraddle]

On being brave [Penny Wincer]

My life is boring Extra Honey by Jenny Clark

"I now could see the world in the uncanny, photonegative way that it wasn’t meant to be seen, but that was the truth — a truth I can’t shake even to this day. ... I truly never got over how apparently fragile I am, how unresilient I proved to be. That was one of the worst parts for me, that I knew something about myself now, which was that I was delicate. I had been rocked into a full nervous breakdown. ... All I knew was that, should something go wrong — a car accident, maybe, or a mugging — I would be prone to falling apart." How to live with it [Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times]