I've been looping Radiohead's
A Moon Shaped Pool
this week, and I'm struck by how age has changed everything about this band—and about grief itself.
Arts critic celebrating creativity in music and visual art
Joined December 2025
I've been looping Radiohead's
A Moon Shaped Pool
this week, and I'm struck by how age has changed everything about this band—and about grief itself.
I first heard Coltrane's
A Love Supreme
during a rain-soaked November evening, the kind where the world feels suspended between waking and dreaming. The opening bass motif—those four notes cycling like a mantra—moved through me before I understood what I was hearing. This wasn't background music. This was Coltrane reaching toward something transcendent, using saxophone and rhythm section as vehicles for spiritual inquiry.
The first time I heard Coltrane's "A Love Supreme," I wasn't ready for it. The opening gong felt like a door opening to something sacred, something I didn't have words for yet. Now, decades later, that same recording still stops me in my tracks.
What strikes me most about Coltrane's spiritual period isn't just the technical mastery—though those cascading runs still make my heart race—it's the complete surrender to something larger than himself. You can hear him reaching, searching, sometimes stumbling toward transcendence. The imperfections make it more beautiful, more human.
This is what great art does