ISSUE 21: REVIEWS

There’s no way around it: critics thrust meaning from their subjective presents on persisting work they’re trying to understand.

Let’s review.

In the time since our last issue, Michael Rancic has stepped out of his former position as New Feeling’s Features Editor (he’s writing a book!), and it’s my turn to step in. Michael’s not going anywhere; rotating working group leadership is a fundamental principle of New Feeling’s horizontal structure, and sharing responsibilities is designed to mitigate the unnecessary atmospheres of burnout and competition that can pervade other media offices. Since May 2023, Michael has led the editorial working group through the production of eight issues, so these are big shoes to fill.

Imagine my apprehension, then, when I began the process of cycling into this role a couple months back, and my partner accepted a job offer in Victoria, BC. Suddenly, I was in the position of orchestrating New Feeling’s 21st issue alongside navigating a cross-country move in the middle of so-called Canadian winter.

Moving is strange. You’re packing up your life, boxing up memories, and getting ready to continue in a different place, with a different set of possibilities. There’s an eerie quality to it — the sense that you’re not quite in one place, not yet in another. It felt appropriate, then, that this next issue should centre reflection and revisit the “Reviews” theme we first explored in November 2021. This is our second time returning to the theme, establishing a tradition of revisiting it every two calendar years.

Reviewing music, which is often produced and completed well before publicists release it to media outlets, let alone the general public, also conjures uncanny conditions. There’s no way around it: critics thrust meaning from their subjective presents on persisting work they’re trying to understand. This doubly speaks to music’s uniquely generative quality, as well as our capacity to translate something as ephemeral as music into a lens through which to reimagine a present that is itself out of joint.

Issue 21 - Reviews

New Feeling Members

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A sense of dislocation pervades both of the long-form entries accompanying the capsule reviews in this issue. Writing about Pat Flegel’s Cindy Lee project and last year’s Polaris-shortlisted Diamond Jubilee, Rosie Long Decter writes that the record “feels wrong,” both in the formal production conditions of today’s music landscape, as well as the content of the songwriting. As Flegel speaks back to bygone eras of comparatively robust public ownership through a perfume of 1960s girl group pop shimmer and homespun recording fidelity, there’s a permeating sense of disorientation in dialogue with what’s not there as much as what is.

Always Dreaming: On Diamond Jubilee and Hauntology

Rosie Long Decter

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Alongside this critical deep dive, I’ve also contributed a concert review of the Toronto stop on Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Liberation Autumn 2024 tour, which took place the night of the U.S. election. While the leadup to the election and whatever results it would ultimately produce felt acutely alienating, Godspeed’s tour and the album it supported solicited a sold-out crowd full of hope and a willingness to challenge whatever leadership would emerge.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at History on Election Night

Tom Beedham

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In addition to this issue’s contents (you’ll also find reviews from Cierra Bettens, Alexia Bréard-Anderson, and organizing members Leslie Ken Chu, Sarah Chodos, Michael Rancic, Laura Stanley, and Daniel G. Wilson), I’m proud to announce that since issue 20, we’ve also increased our rates for features, because we believe in the importance of supporting the writers who make New Feeling what it is. Engaging critically with any artistic work is labour-intensive, and the work our contributors do is invaluable to the conversations we’re trying to foster. Writing about music requires time, care, and expertise, and we want to accommodate that in our compensation. This issue is a reflection of that investment, and we’re grateful to the writers who’ve contributed their voices to this conversation.

In the same way that moving forces us to confront the uncanny nature of transition, reviewing art challenges us to grapple with the unknowable, the unsettling, and the fleeting. The reviews in this issue — whether they’re about Diamond Jubilee, a concert, or an album — are all attempts to capture something that is constantly shifting. The process of reviewing is an act of trying to hold on to something in motion, to articulate something that cannot be fully contained. We hope this issue captures that sense of transience, of uncertainty, and of the uncanny that comes with trying to make sense of a world in flux.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. We’re all in this together.

– Tom Beedham