Will Hermes
Verified- Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone
- Writer, Freelance
- Writer, Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
New York
@rollingstone @NPR @nytimes @pitchfork @uncutmagazine Books: Love Goes To Buildings On 🔥 Lou Reed: King of New York substack.com/@willhermes
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Will Hermes
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Playback speed × Share post Share post at current time Share from 0:00 0:00 / Live from WOMEX w/Judy Cantor-Navas + Will Hermes A quick post-game on the WOMEX global music festival + conference in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. We’ve just wrapped up five days of music, camaraderie, and optimism at the WOMEX international music festival and conference in Las Palmas on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast of Africa and southern coast of Spain.
WOMEX (Part 1). Nirvana. boygenius. Big Thief. Pavement.
Weekend Links Cutting edge international trad music in the Canary Islands. New writing on old music. New music that’ll trigger old memories. Support independent music journalism. Paid subscriptions make New Music + Old Music possible, and gets you all the bonus stuff. I’m writing today from Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, the second-most-populous of the Canary Islands, the Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.
New Song of the Day #60: Orchestra Baobab “Ana Maria”
New Song of the Day The legendary Senegalese band turns 50 (or so) with a new LP, new members, and the same sublime sound. Support independent music journalism. Your paid subscription make New Music + Old Music possible (and gets you all the good stuff). Thank you! My daughter’s first concert, when she was nine months old, was Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab — what I believe was their U.S. debut — in New York City’s Central Park in July, 2002, decades after their Dakar heyday.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music Podcast New music worth hearing + old music worth remembering. Deep-dive playlists. Record reviews. Tour alerts. New York City sounds. Lou Reed. Genre-fluid. New music worth hearing + old music worth remembering. Deep-dive playlists. Record reviews. Tour alerts. New York City sounds. Lou Reed. Genre-fluid.
90+ new ūüĒ• songs: October ūüćĀ
Dolly Parton‚Äôs parting shot. Madra Salach. Noeline Hoffman. Olivia Tremor Control. Corridos Ketamina. And ‚Äúpop:‚ÄĚ Tinashe, Natanya, U2, Madonna, and Prince. Support independent music journalism. Your paid subscription make New Music + Old Music possible (and gets you the good jams). Apologies for the delay with this month‚Äôs playlist. Here are some notes, with streaming links (for paid subscribers) at the end.
Joy Division revised. Lily Seabird soars.
“The Eternal” is a 16-disc monument to, and revision of, Joy Division’s legacy. Plus: Lily Seabird’s feral, incandescent folk-rock. Support independent music journalism. Paid subscribers make New Music + Old Music possible and get to hear / read all the good stuff in full. A couple of longer reviews this week, while I finish my monthly new music playlist — paid subscribers, you’ll have links to it in your inbox before the calendar-page flips.
A post-punk homecoming. 3 LPs reviewed.
Scrawl, Wussy, Dumptruck, Come, Barbara Manning, Nice Strong Arm, etcetera mark 30 (or 40) years at a Catskill, NY, micro-festival. Plus: some albums I’m loving. New Music + Old Music is wholly reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The side-stage bathroom at the Avalon Lounge in Catskill. (📸: Will Hermes) Marcy Mays and Sue Harshe — of Columbus, Ohio post-punk heroes Scrawl — did the math onstage. “Nice Strong Arm were great. They said they haven’t played together in 37 years.
Sylvan Esso: Ow ∞
When Sylvan Esso’s self-titled debut dropped in 2014, their electronic songcraft felt novel. It played like a triangulation of Tune-Yards’ digital playground-chants, Everything But the Girl’s soul-folk remixes, and the sing-song indie-pop of Feist, with whom vocalist Amelia Meath toured as backup singer and opener with her woodsy harmony trio Mountain Man.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Playback speed × Share post Share post at current time Share from 0:00 0:00 / Generate transcript A transcript unlocks clips, previews, and editing. Musicians, culture + visas post-9/11 A conversation with attorney & arts activist Matthew Covey of Tamizdat, the U.S. cultural-exchange nonprofit, about the importance of visiting artists + the challenges they face, here and abroad.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Today at 1PM ET, I’ll livestream a chat with Matthew Covey of the non-profit Tamizdat — a veteran arts activist + attorney who’s the foremost U.S. expert on artist mobility, ie: the work visa hurdles facing touring musicians and other performers. Those hurdles have never been tougher to navigate, in this moment of border panic and immigration hysteria. The upshot is: brilliant musicians are unable to play here — or, increasingly, choosing not to.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: “Hyperballad” (Björk cover) (New Song of the Day #59)
New Song of the Day A taste of “Hidden in Pieces: Live at the Royal Albert Hall” — a concert-length benediction for string ensemble & one of the greatest bands of their generation.
97 new songs for September.
The Philly (via Baltimore via Boston) psych folk duo with the search-resistant name (see Four Tet’s alias LP, below) makes songs I don’t always love on first listen. If I do, I might like them less on second listen, but then more on third, still more on fourth. Thing is: there’s something that makes me listen, repeatedly, to get to the bottom of them.
RIP Dolly Parton: 60 songs + footnotes
Deep cuts, rarities, covers, podcasts. A celebration of (and short syllabus on) the late great country music singer/songwriter, international pop icon, and beautiful human being. Flags are flying at half-mast, literally and figuratively, for Dolly Parton, one of the greatest singer/songwriters of our time. She died yesterday; she was 80. Dolly — it seems right to call her that, as she was among the first pop stars who only needed one name — has a huge catalog of songs.
(Late-) summer music books
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider a free or paid subscription. The latter is what keeps this newsletter afloat. I’m always behind on my reading, and behind on my writing about the books I read. So pardon my lateness on these titles. To make up for it, I’ll end with some early notice on a bunch of forthcoming titles.
New song of the day #58: (Four Tet aka) ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ: "[...] OOOOOOooo☼⃝☼⃝◉࿃ूੂ ࿃ूੂੂ ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡()ʃ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡ ꐑ(ఠీੂ [...]"
Album cover image of Kieran Hebden’s latest LP, with Google Lens pop-up ID. If I had to pick my favorite electronic artist of all time, I’d think on it a bit. But most days, the answer would be Kieran Hebden aka: Four Tet. He has been for years, ever since his 2003 LP Rounds. This track in particular yanked me in: The warm heartbeat kick drum pulse, the spine-tingling electric Miles keyboard runs, the gentle fireworks of the snare and cymbal sequencing … wondrous stuff.
100 Greatest Bruce Springsteen Songs
|
Moisturizers 8 hours ago The Best Barrier Creams & Toners For Soothing Stressed-Out Skin Bustle - Brittany Leitner • 8h TLC for your top shelf. If your moisturizer suddenly stings, your skin feels tight after cleansing, or you're dealing with random flaking and … Religion 7 hours ago We should treat foreigners like Jesus did RNS - Thomas Reese • 7h (RNS) — In talking to the Canaanite woman, Jesus sounds like Donald Trump and JD Vance. (RNS) — This past Sunday (Aug.
By Brian Hiatt Verified, David Browne Verified, David Fricke, Jon Dolan Verified, Thomas Walsh, Patrick Doyle, Andy Greene, Will Hermes Verified, Rob Sheffield
|
Flipboard
Fiona Apple, Phoebe Bridgers, L'Rain, Mos Def, Mad Professor, Massive Attack, Fania Records, Nana Osei Twum Barima.
Lots of news + noise this week about the Phoebe Bridgers LP. It’s very good indeed. But I’ve written a lot about her this summer. So I’m gonna let the LP simmer a little longer in my nervous system, and tell you about some other wonderful things you may not have heard about.
New Song of the Day #57: Margo Cilker "Little White Cross"
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Those of us who drive American roads, and others, know the image of a small wooden or plastic crucifix, planted in the dirt of the off-road shoulder, to memorialize a death at a crash site. A “white cross” is also druggie slang for speed — specifically amphetamines in white scored-tablet form (NB: Sonic Youth’s classic “White Cross,” aka: “White Kross,” from Sister).
The Grateful Dead are everywhere
Today, Rolling Stone published “The 100 Best Grateful Dead Songs.” They’d invited me to contribute, and my first response was “RS has never done this before??” Hard to believe, but there it is. Suki Coughlin: Grateful Dead driving into Watkins Glen, NY, 1973 / 2026 archival giclée print 32 x 50 inches (David Kadansky Gallery) I ended up writing a big chunk of it. You can read the whole thing here.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
In my recent chat with reggae legend Linton Kwesi Johnson, which posted here last month, we talked of the creative renaissance exploding from England’s West African community. Still more proof of that came Sunday, when I saw Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, a UK import currently running at the tiny Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village through September. I won’t lie: I wept. And the music was sweet, too. (l-r) Shifters’ Daniel Ezra and Heather Agyepong.
Review: 5 songs. A 99-song August playlist.
New songs by Sylvan Esso, The Durutti Column, Phoebe Bridgers. Covers of Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Fela, the Felice Brothers. (Ultra-) rare tracks by David Bowie, the Grateful Dead + The Beatles. New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a subscriber. “Concrete Glen” - Sylvan Esso I’ve always loved this band. They’re certainly my favorite indie-pop-electronic duo to have spun off an indie-Americana trio (Mountain Man).
Interview: Linton Kwesi Johnson
I spoke w/ the poet, activist + reggae legend about retirement, resistance, the West African renaissance, the newly-restored 1979 doc "DREAD BEAT AN BLOOD" + the wordless solo album he just finished. New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. A still from DREAD BEAT AN BLOOD (1979) Last fall, the powerful 1979 documentary DREAD BEAT AN BLOOD, newly-restored by the British Film Institute, premiered in the U.S. at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Writing about old songs
Music history can tether us to the present. Thoughts on the (English) Beat's "Whine and Grine/Stand Down Margaret" and Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" Although the title of this newsletter is New + Old Music, I prioritize new stuff, as most of you know.
Music festivals as sacred spaces
Taja Cheek aka: L’Rain, at Solid Sound, Friday June 26, 2026. 📸: Will Hermes I was raised in the Catholic church — or more accurately, down the block from one: Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, at the corner of 73rd Avenue and the so-called Utopia Parkway, on the faintly suburban southeastern edge of Flushing, Queens. That congregation wasn’t big on music. We got basic organ interludes.
Margaret Glaspy "That Rose" (New Song of the Day #56) š¹ š š§Ø
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ā”Gracias! Some songs sidle up to you slowly. Some songs carjack you at a traffic light. This oneās the latter.
70 new songs for a hot July 🔥
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. ¡Gracias! Finally, after a couple years of folks rediscovering Nate Amos’ This Is Lorelei back catalog, in part via cover versions, here it is: a brand-new This Is Lorelei song, the first single from an album due in September on Matador. It struck me as a gem on first listen, so much so I look forward to hearing it repeatedly in the months to come.
New Big Thief songs. Elvis Costello. Asha Bhosle. Dream pop samba. Greek & Iranian psych. Mexican art-rock. Japanese cumbia. Etcetera.
The new Big Thief songs trickling out are beautiful.
Concerts sans cellphones
If you can't see it on your screen, did it really happen? New Music + Old Music is 100% reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. ¡Gracias! I was at the Phoebe Bridgers cellphone-free pop-up show at Madison Square Garden a couple weeks ago. It was really beautiful. And it took me back. Onstage: three lava lamps, an old TV, a Mellotron, a couch, a crocheted throw blanket, a couple of blacklight posters. Bridgers had a couple of acoustic guitars, and two accompanists.
New Song of the Day #55: Maryam Turkey "Hiragt El Rouh"
New Music + Old Music is 100% reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you ¡Gracias! Walk around New York on a summer day, particularly midtown Manhattan, and you might hear cumbia, reggaeton, and vintage disco blaring from passing pedicabs. You’ll likely hear Arabic melodies, too, swirling up from halal carts amidst savory smoke from grilling meats. Arabic melodies aren’t foregrounded much in Western pop or rock.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Kevin Morby at home last month in Kansas City New Music + Old Music is 100% reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you ¡Gracias! Last week’s newsletter included a summer playlist w/my favorite songs + albums of 2026 so far. Kevin Morby was well represented — his new album, Little Wide Open, is one of the year’s best, imho.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you! ¡Gracias! I started summer last weekend — Memorial Day here in the States — with a renewed tradition: gathering with a mob of college friends and their now college-aged kids. We descended on an old barn - turned - camp house in the Green Mountains of Vermont to hike, bike, eat, drink, talk, puff and share music. Folks brought instruments; there were space jams and sing-alongs.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Low at Basilica Hudson (all photos / video: Will Hermes) New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you! ¡Gracias! When I moved out of New York City in 2000, I had no real idea where I’d landed. There wasn’t a great live music scene in the mid-Hudson Valley.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Marisa Anderson (📸 by Shaun Astor) New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you! ¡Gracias! I recently wrote a feature on Marisa Anderson’s new LP, The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music for the New York Times. The album’s out in full Friday. It’s really something. Have a listen.
Marisa Anderson's (Tunefully) Un-American Activities
Adventurous Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson hadn't planned on a yearslong project when she stopped by the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2022.
Marisa Anderson’s (Tunefully) Un-American Activities
The guitarist mined the scholar Harry Smith’s LP collection, recording her takes on songs rooted in regions the United States has been in conflict with since 1970.
Marisa Anderson’s (Tunefully) Un-American Activities
The adventurous Portland guitarist Marisa Anderson hadn’t planned on a yearslong project when she stopped by the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Okla., in 2022.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
New Music + Old Music is reader-supported. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you! ¡Gracias! Yes: Seu Jorge is the handsome dude who sang all those brilliant David Bowie tunes in Brazilian Portuguese in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic With Steve Zizou, functioning as Greek chorus to Bill Murray and crew aboard their ship, the Belafonte.
Kevin Morby: Little Wide Open
It’s amazing to see a musician shoot outta the gate fully-formed, at full strength. But there’s something more edifying, in light of the lives most of us live, to watch an artist hit stride steadily, building a greatness over years. Long-game players. Kevin Morby is one of those. Precocious?
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Leenalchi. (📸: STUDIO TEO) New Music + Old Music is wholly reader-supported. Please sign up to become a subscriber. Thank you! ¡Gracias! Hi. Here are some notes on the songs (playlists at bottom of newsletter).
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
To help support New Music + Old Music, please sign up to become a paid subscriber. Thank you! Mainstream country, like mainstream everything, is fodder for the capitalist media maw, and it’s been mostly dull as dirt the past decade, with dude-centric bro-country ascendent. Outliers shone brighter for it.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
I’ve been a subscriber to Laura Marling’s newsletter for a while. But it’s been appearing in my mailbox with greater frequency lately, often with paywalled recordings. At a certain point, I had to get a paid subscription to hear ‘em. In return — like anyone else on this platform would — I received five one-month-paid subscriptions to her newsletter, to pass on to friends. So, my friends, I’ll forward them to the first five of my paid subscribers who ask.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
I didn’t see this one coming. These sorts of collaborations don’t always work. This one does. The artists sound fully themselves, and they magnify each other. If I’m not mistaken, it’s Waits first new music in 15 years. NB: It’s a disturbing piece of work. It’s also an important piece of work.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY 4/11/26 (ūüďł: Will Hermes) Gillian and Dave, as some of us have come to refer to them, have always been about tapping the deepest emotional core of old-time country and folk music in their playing, their harmonies, and their original songwriting.
Ella Langley Shows Why She’s a Budding Country Superstar on ‘Dandelion’ Original
Ella Langley was a merely promising young country star this time last year, riding the modest success of Hungover, her solid LP debut.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
David Byrne spoke recently with writer Jia Tolentino (NB: her excellent essay collection, Trick Mirror) about Robyn’s 2010 club classic “Dancing on My Own.” Byrne commented on how interesting it was that, musically, the despairing song — which he performed with Robyn for SNL’s 50th anniversary show — says “‘you’ll be all right, the music will lift you, keep going,’” that the music insisted on “triumph over adversity.” He added: “Songs can do that —immerse us in the problem and the solution at...
Thundercat Embarks on an Outer-Space Voyage Through Grief and Beauty Original
Stephen Bruner feels your pain. Or at least he’s feeling his own, which may look much like yours. Distracted is the first LP in six years by the virtuoso bassist and R&B visionary, and it finds him wallowing in perhaps the healthiest way: as creative practice. He’s staring down loss while making the struggle as beautiful, funny, spacey, and vibe-y as he can.
Thundercat Embarks on an Outer-Space Voyage Through Grief and Beauty
5 hours ago With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new drops available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt with Surf Gang, Sunn 0))), …
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
I’ve been on the road this week — not actually Deadhead-caravan-ing behind the Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band / Rosali tour, although our path has been serendipitously shadowing theirs, and I’m super-stoked to catch the Richmond VA show Friday. I heard Kingston was fire. Anyhow, I’ll keep it short + sweet. Below find a carefully-sequenced mixtape of this writer’s favorite very-new songs.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
I’ve been seeing concerts at Madison Square Garden for many years, going back to Led Zeppelin in 1977 (yep: I’m old). Yet I can’t remember one more uplifting than Saturday’s by FKA Twigs — aka the 38-year-old singer-songwriter-producer-dancer-choreographer-actress Tahliah Barnett — let alone one as artful, or as awesome in its near-super-human physicality.
Will Hermes: New Music + Old Music
Confession: For someone who writes books, I’m a terribly slow reader. I’m a slow writer, too. Back when I was an MFA student attempting to compose fiction, I adored short stories, in part because it was hard to get through a novel, let alone conceive of writing one. I loved the work of Lorrie Moore, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, Mary Gaitskill, Ishmael Reed, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Williams, Denis Johnson. Chekhov, of course.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with Will
Contact Will, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack