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Stephen Kearse on Muck Rack

Stephen Kearse

Verified
  • Freelance Journalist, Critic, and Reporter, Freelance
Washington, D.C.
As seen in: MSN, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Yahoo Entertainment, Scribd, Terra, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, The Atlantic and
Editor @spotlightpa. Contributing writer @thenation. Author of LIQUID SNAKES (2023) and IN THE HEAT OF THE LIGHT (2019). Critic and reporter all over.
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Articles

L’Rain: fata morgana

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By Stephen Kearse Verified
| Pitchfork Verified
On Bandcamp, every L’Rain album is tagged “not jazz.” It’s both a long-running bit and point of pride for multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, founder and frontwoman of the wayward Brooklyn act. Although jazz informs the project’s improvisational spirit, Cheek prefers to describe her music as experimental, finding freedom in the openness of that label. That committed illegibility has empowered L’Rain to produce noise, R&B, shoegaze, folk, and whatever else Cheek fancies without being pigeonholed.
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Colson Whitehead’s Long Con Original

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By Stephen Kearse Verified
| The New Republic Verified
A professional slight kicks off Colson Whitehead’s third crime caper. Harlem merchant Ray Carney has just wrapped up an interview with a furniture magazine he adores when he’s called downtown to meet with an, ahem, associate. Carney, who moonlights as a fence, assumes the rendezvous will engender some new criminal opportunity, but it’s a trap. His colleague is a hostage, and the armed captors don’t initially recognize Carney as a fellow crook.
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Ravyn Lenae: Blue Island

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By Stephen Kearse Verified
| Pitchfork Verified
“Watching who I’ve become, who’s my tribe?” Ravyn Lenae wondered aloud on 2022’s HYPNOS. That gossamer, hypnagogic debut established her as an R&B savant bridging Janet and Little Dragon, LaFace and Brainfeeder. Like a nectar-drunk hummingbird, her voice swooped, hovered, and soared across that record’s moonlit arrangements. But as the lyric hinted, that agility was fueled by pressure as much as style.
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