Sasha Frere-Jones
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Articles by Sasha Frere-Jones
Voice Over
sub-heading: The Language of Chris Marker (You save ) Current Stock: Filmmaker, writer, photographer, historian, orange cat, internet enthusiast, narrator, CD-ROM advocate, fugitive: Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve was also Chris Marker. Since his death in 2012, more of Marker’s writing and film work has become available, but his oeuvre remains obscured. Voice Over is a brief attempt to pull Marker into the light, lovingly.
Jocelyne Saab: Letters from Lebanon
Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019) documented Lebanon in a way that complicates the idea of documentation even being possible. At the level of footage, Saab filmed historically valuable scenes in her “Beirut trilogy”—Beirut, Never Again (1976), Letter from Beirut (1978), and Beirut, My City (1982)—that were only available elsewhere in television news broadcasts now lost to time. In Beirut, Never Again, Saab captured children sifting through the remains of a civil war.
This Poor Book
This Poor Book Sasha Frere-Jones In her final collection, Fanny Howe witnesses the same world we all see. This Poor Book: A Poem, by Fanny Howe, Graywolf Press, 132 pages, $18 • • • “I don’t think I have written a book without a child in it,” Fanny Howe told an interviewer in 2020, five years before her passing in July of 2025. God also sat with her, next to the children.
Lana Daher - Journal - Metrograph
FORTY-THREE MINUTES INTO LANA DAHER’S Do You Love Me (2025), a girl in pink pants and a Tweety T-shirt says, “Film me!” to the person already filming her with a consumer-grade video camera. She squats on a white dining room chair. A three-explosion cluster answers her and the cameraman, her father, calmly explains that it was “a sonic boom,” a conclusion unavailable to Westerners not being assaulted by varieties of Israeli materiel.
Healing Institutions
Healing Institutions Sasha Frere-Jones Francesc Tosquelles is the hero we need right now.
“What you, my good Israelis, said”: Sabri Jiyris’s The Foundations of Zionism
If you asked the free version of ChatGPT to “crunch a World Civilizations textbook and solve for ‘blood and soil’ in the voice of an Israeli wellness influencer—and make sure to mention AI,” you might get something like Alana Newhouse’s “Zionism for Everyone,” published in Tablet in March 2026.
April 5 2026
That Israel is attempting to annex South Lebanon and displace over a million residents is no secret—such missions are claimed proudly now. Two related variables have changed over the last eighty years, though, as Israel has continuously assaulted Lebanon: the US position on these efforts (once opposed) and the mainstream press coverage (once empirical). Go back to 1982 and read The Washington Post’s reporting on another of Israel’s attempts to take Southern Lebanon (courtesy of the CIA): “Maj.
Flyboy in the Buttermilk
Flyboy in the Buttermilk Sasha Frere-Jones A new reissue of Greg Tate’s 1992 essay collection hits hard with the truth, again and again. Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, by Greg Tate, AUWA Books, 336 pages, $18 • • • Gregory “Ironman” Tate wrote as if Black Music were a person, sitting beside you, and that white supremacy was as immediate as fresh shit in the president’s pants. Of course we have to talk—can’t you smell it?
Cat Power
Cat Power Sasha Frere-Jones A twentieth-anniversary reissue of The Greatest renews faith in the artist’s soul-baring songs. The Greatest and Redux, by Cat Power, Domino Recording Company • • • God is resident within each and every one of us to an equal degree and music is one of the few reliable ways we have of expressing—or measuring—this fact. We can see how this relates to the expanded version of Cat Power’s 2006 album, The Greatest, by listening to Ian MacKaye.
writing about 2025
Wasim Said: Two o’clock after midnight. The rain is falling. My tent sways right and left. My little brother beside me is shivering. Dogs are barking, and my hands tremble from cold and from humiliation. I argue with myself: Now I will sleep. Enough wakefulness. I must sleep to escape the hell I am living. It answers me: Are you fleeing from one hell to another? The souls of those I love are waiting for me there. I cannot sleep. I take my pen and paper; the faint glow of my phone lies beside me.
The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer
The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer Sasha Frere-Jones Idris Robinson’s book presents a radical perspective on the role of martyrdom in the next American revolution. The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer, by Idris Robinson, Semiotext(e), 252 pages, $16.95 • • • The common slang term NPC—“non-player character”—marks someone as being run by the software, not acting of free will.
Berlin Childhood Around 1900
Berlin Childhood Around 1900 Sasha Frere-Jones In thirty-two pieces by Walter Benjamin, a recollection of moments at the confluence of individual memory and collective history.
A Certain Lucas
A Certain Lucas Sasha Frere-Jones In Julio Cortázar’s surrealism, a displacement of the real. A Certain Lucas, by Julio Cortázar, translated by Gregory Rabassa, New Directions, 121 pages, $15.95 • • • A Certain Lucas was one of the last books Julio Cortázar wrote, published in Spanish in 1979 as Un tal Lucas and then in English on April 12 of 1984, two months after he had died from leukemia.
Requiem for a Beam
Hearing Things is nearly one year old, and we love publishing great freelance pieces like this one—but as an independent, worker-owned publication committed to paying contributors fairly, we can’t do that without the support of our readers. Subscribe to Hearing Things today! The CD era was like no other time in the history of widgets, a 30-year iceberg that surfaced in October of 1982.
Dread Beat an Blood
Dread Beat an Blood Sasha Frere-Jones A 1979 Linton Kwesi Johnson documentary by Franco Rosso is a portrait of the artist as principled activist. Linton Kwesi Johnson in Dread Beat an Blood. Courtesy Seventy-Seven.
Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue
Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue Sasha Frere-Jones Never the same experience twice for the ninety-three-year-old French composer. Alien Roots: EĢliane Radigue, edited by Charles Curtis and Lawrence Kumpf, Blank Forms, $25 • • • In his introduction to Alien Roots, a collection of interviews with and texts by and about the ninety-three-year-old composer Éliane Radigue, coeditor Lawrence Kumpf makes an important point.
To Hell With Poverty!
To Hell With Poverty! Sasha Frere-Jones In a memoir by Jon King, the Gang of Four frontman looks back on the post-punk band’s formation amid the class struggles of a different era. To Hell With Poverty! A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four, by Jon King, Akashic Books, 326 pages, $29.95 • • • Jon King’s engaging new memoir, To Hell With Poverty!, is titled after a song by Gang of Four, the British band King sang with in the ’70s and ’80s and is performing with now on their farewell tour.
Everybody’s Head Is Open to Sound
Everybody’s Head Is Open to Sound Sasha Frere-Jones A new book on the late Tom Wilson, the uncelebrated producer of John Coltrane, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, the Velvet Underground, and more.
Run the Song
Run the Song Sasha Frere-Jones Sounds to run by: in his fifth book, Ben Ratliff triangulates the rhythms of music, the mind, and the moving body. Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening, by Ben Ratliff, Graywolf Press, 237 pages, $18 • • • How do we escape the prison house of language? Music does it, much of the time, and sometimes, dialectically, language disables itself, which critic Ben Ratliff knows.
The World After Gaza
The World After Gaza Sasha Frere-Jones The mistitling of Pankaj Mishra’s new book. The World After Gaza: A History, by Pankaj Mishra, Penguin Press, 292 pages, $28 • • • Israel is death. To say anything else is frosting.
Mood Machine
Mood Machine Sasha Frere-Jones Music for nothing and your chill playlists for free: a new book by Liz Pelly on the horror story of Spotify.
Emily Allan’s ‘Steps to Destruction‘ propels listeners on a serpentine journey
In her newest music video, premiering on Document, Allan traces the seductions of romantic descent In “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter,” Joni Mitchell sings that “the eagle and the serpent are at war in me / the serpent fighting for blind desire / the eagle for clarity.” How hard does the serpent fight?
Able Noise
Able Noise Sasha Frere-Jones Scraps of sound, stoned marching around: the experimental duo’s debut is an inviting blend of chaos and intimacy. High Tide, by Able Noise, World of Echo • • • Able Noise formed in The Hague—a place that should be busier than it is—and call themselves an “experimental baritone guitar and drum duo,” though there are many more instruments than that on their utterly glorious (yes—please put that on a sticker and wave it at your nan) debut album, High Tide.
Monumental Graffiti
Monumental Graffiti Sasha Frere-Jones Art by and for the people vs. architecture in the service of empire.
The Intellectual Situation
The Intellectual Situation Sasha Frere-Jones An eclectic and rewarding mix of delightful, unpredictable writing from n+1’s second decade. The Intellectual Situation: The Best of n+1’s Second Decade, edited by Mark Krotov, Nikil Saval, and Dayna Tortorici, n+1 Foundation, 525 pages, $20 • • • The Intellectual Situation: The Best of n+1’s Second Decade is a ball whose bounce depends on the target.
I appreciate you guys following me but
I appreciate you guys following me but substack.sashafrerejones.com
Rhythmic Listening — Parapraxis
This is where the book lives mostly—negotiating how that “too much” can open up aspects of the clinical setting. The authors don’t argue with Freud or Winnicott or any analyst so much as quote them and then circle back to their themes. When you become comfortable with the fact that music does end up representing pretty much any state, be it positive or difficult, the book opens. Music really is being called into play as a tool, not as itself a subject or a conclusion or even an idea, exactly.
In Poetry’s Church
Thank you for reading The Nation We hope you enjoyed the story you just read, just one of the many incisive, deeply-reported articles we publish daily. Now more than ever, we need fearless journalism that shifts the needle on important issues, uncovers malfeasance and corruption, and uplifts voices and perspectives that often go unheard in mainstream media.
Too Much Too Young
Too Much Too Young Sasha Frere-Jones Riotous shows, near-fatal fights, and anti-racism and protest politics: a new book chronicles the influential era of the Specials and 2 Tones Records. Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tones Records Story, by Daniel Rachel, Akashic Books, 485 pages, $32.95 • • • There are memories that, even when false, carry us toward something, or rather pin us to a feeling we keep trying to understand, no matter how strenuously it resists parsing.
What Starts Upstream: On ”Gift“ and ”Evil Does Not Exist“
The Nagano prefecture is a snowy, mountainous region of Japan where Tokyo residents like to ski and wander through the forests, away from the pressures of the city. Some even have country houses there. This is the area where composer Eiko Ishibashi lives with her partner, musician Jim O’Rourke. In 2022, Ishibashi received a request from promoter Florian Felix to present a combination of brand-new music and images in concert.
Steve Albini
Steve Albini Sasha Frere-Jones In remembrance of the sound and voice of the indelible musician and recording engineer. Steve Albini, backstage, New York City, 1985. Photo: Gail Butensky. 1962–2024 • • • The new Shellac album, To All Trains, is coming out today, ten days after guitarist Steve Albini’s death due to heart attack at the age of sixty-one. Albini was the first musician I ever interviewed.
Chris Marker in Japan
On Chris Marker’s many visions of Japan, and his newly translated photoessay book Le Dépays. Chris Marker’s Le Dépays opens at Metrograph on Friday, May 24. Appropriately, the best essay on Chris Marker was not written. It exists, though, as a 17-minute interview from 2007, conducted with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin and appended to the Criterion Channel version of Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983).
Travels Over Feeling
Travels Over Feeling Sasha Frere-Jones A new book captures the vibes of visionary composer and cellist Arthur Russell. Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, A Life, by Richard King, Anthology Editions, 296 pages, $50 • • • Richard King’s Travels Over Feeling represents and reframes composer Arthur Russell’s life through photos and flyers and receipts and conversations with friends and all shapes and sizes of golden archival confetti.
Listen Up! Miles Davis and Elevator to the Gallows
Metrograph’s Listen Up! column, in which we revisit movie scores and soundtracks of note, continues with a look at Miles Davis’s quick and vital contribution to Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (1958). Elevator to the Gallows plays 7 Ludlow beginning on Friday, April 19 as part of On the Run in Paris. The first disintegration happened in September of 1957, when the Miles Davis Quintet dissolved. This was inconvenient, to understate the case.
Notice
Notice Sasha Frere-Jones Nothing will prepare you for this dark, dizzying novel by the late Heather Lewis.
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth Sasha Frere-Jones Walls Have Ears, the band’s trailblazing 1985 album, gets its first official release. Walls Have Ears, by Sonic Youth, Goofin’ Records • • • Some memories are just weak—sour nostalgias and timid regrets that today is just today. Some, though, are firecrackers that can be lit anew every day, blooming to remind us that history holds the sign of miracles. Sonic Youth’s 1985 live album Walls Have Ears is the latter.
The Brilliant Discontents of Lou Reed
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The Rebel’s Clinic
The Rebel’s Clinic Sasha Frere-Jones On violence, liberation, and the collective: a new biography of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz. The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, by Adam Shatz, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 451 pages, $32 • • • “The colonial world is a world cut in two,” Frantz Fanon wrote in 1961’s Les damnés de la terre, published in English as The Wretched of the Earth (this quote is from Constance Farrington’s 1963 translation).
January 10 2024
January 10 2024 substack.sashafrerejones.com
January 2 2024
Don’t unsubscribe just yet—moving to a new Nazi-free platform as we speak. Mailing list will transfer, so you don’t need to do a thing. See you soon.
January 1 2024
Daniel Saldaña Paris: On January 1st, at 7 am, I left my apartment in Bed-Stuy determined to bike to Coney Island to welcome the new year, but there was a fat, beautiful possum on the stoop, blocking the building’s door. I gently tried to get him to move but he wouldn’t, he just stared at me, half asleep, annoyed by my insistence. That really set the tone for the year ahead, a year of good intentions derailed by wild surprises.
January 1 2024
Discover more from S/FJ photographs enthusiasms essays speculation interviews conjecture Over 14,000 subscribers Daniel Saldaña Paris: On January 1st, at 7 am, I left my apartment in Bed-Stuy determined to bike to Coney Island to welcome the new year, but there was a fat, beautiful possum on the stoop, blocking the building’s door. I gently tried to get him to move but he wouldn’t, he just stared at me, half asleep, annoyed by my insistence.
December 25 2024
I am grateful to everyone who brought Earlier into existence. (Bring the book into your house.) Chris Kraus said “Yes,” Hedi el Kholti said “Let’s go,” Robbie Dewhurst said “What is this?” and Janique Vigier said “Here it is.” Semiotext(e) for life. Once in the world, Earlier found remarkable readers: Stephen Piccarella in The Nation, Michael W. Clune in Bookforum, Sam Hockley-Smith in Southwest Review, andMs. Briefly Noted in The New Yorker.
December 23 2023
I am grateful for all the correspondents sending in texts for the year-end post. What we have accumulated to date is already magical. The whole thing will go live on January 1 or 2, depending on how punctual they are and how industrious I am. Until then, some varieties of gratitude. I am grateful for the unexpectedly big slice of P-Funk catalog available on Spotify. Let’s start there. We have, in fact, already started there. (The thumbnail in that playlist is a photograph of the room I am in now.
December 23 2023
I am grateful for all the correspondents sending in texts for the year-end post. What we have accumulated to date is already magical. The whole thing will go live on January 1 or 2, depending on how punctual they are and how industrious I am. Until then, some varieties of gratitude. I am grateful for the unexpectedly big slice of P-Funk catalog available on Spotify. Let’s start there. We have, in fact, already started there. (The thumbnail in that playlist is a photograph of the room I am in now.
December 8 2023
In the beginning of 2019, when it was cold and I had become fully suicidal rather than recreationally so, I imagined I might kill myself by getting a cop to shoot me. Problems of the individual and group arise here. My feelings about cops, as a group, led me to believe that individual me could get an individual cop to use a gun in a way that might prove fatal to me because of that individual’s predominant group tendencies.
André 3000
André 3000 Sasha Frere-Jones The musician’s powerful new album defies categorization with its subdued quietude. New Blue Sun, by André 3000, Epic Records • • • André 3000’s new album, New Blue Sun, is the X in the road where several roads meet.
A Black Flag in Queens
The new building that forms the heart of the Louis Armstrong House Museum “campus” on 107th Street in Corona, Queens, looks—like many of the institutional buildings that have come into the world since Maya Lin and Frank Gehry burned in the new default setting for such architecture—like no place you would ever live or work in, nor like an object you would ever interact with of your own free will.
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas Sasha Frere-Jones A complete compendium of short fiction showcases the Welsh writer’s giddy, mystical way with words. Collected Stories, by Dylan Thomas, New Directions, 362 pages, $24.95 • • • Everything that happened happened and it also happened all so fast. The Welsh writer Dylan Thomas became famous, in a manner now conceptually and materially implausible, as a poet.
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