We end at the start: Huck’s January 2024 Newsletter

Emma Garland’s first monthly dispatch of the year takes in a bonfire of culture: Pitchfork’s demi-demise, the slow death of music writing and death of venues.
Hi, I’m Emma Garland, former Digital Editor of Huck and current writer about town. In this monthly cultural digest I’ll be diving into a definitive issue of the moment, whether it’s the trials and tribulations of the creative industries or the celebrity couples we’re obsessed with performing armchair psychoanalysis on and why. It’ll also be a good laugh, hopefully. Join me, won’t you? Emma Garland

Fair play, 2024 has come out swing­ing. With­in the first week we had: a guy go viral for get­ting his arse stuck in a vase at a New Year’s Eve par­ty in Alaba­ma; the dis­cov­ery of under­ground tun­nels beneath a syn­a­gogue in Brook­lyn that led to police brawls, an onslaught of anti­semet­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and a video of a dude climb­ing out of what appears to be a storm drain; a round of unsealed court doc­u­ments link­ing Jef­frey Epstein to Bill Clin­ton, Prince Andrew and Alan Der­showitz (who respond­ed to the inclu­sion of his name by attack­ing rad­i­cal fem­i­nists” who don’t con­demn Hamas) among oth­ers. Also, a 16-year-old almost won the darts and said he’d use the prize mon­ey to treat him­self to some more vapes.

All of which is to say: there’s been a lot to keep us stim­u­lat­ed dur­ing what is famous­ly the most mis­er­able month in the solar cal­en­dar, when the sky turns a unique­ly wretched shade of grey and all adver­tis­ing U‑turns from fuck it, eat / buy the thing! It’s Christ­mas!’ to look what you’ve done, you hog. Also you owe the tax­man nine grand.’

Per­haps chaos comes to the fore more when cul­ture goes into hiber­na­tion. You could make a strong case for that being busi­ness as usu­al these days, giv­en the over­all con­sis­ten­cy of chaos and the feel­ing that cul­ture is gasp­ing for life. But the indus­tries do actu­al­ly stall in Jan­u­ary because it’s a bad month to ask any­one to spend mon­ey on any­thing. There’s very few new releas­es across music, film, books. Instead we get a fresh crop of real­i­ty TV shows, like The Trai­tors, Real House­wives and Love Island: All-Stars, cap­i­tal­is­ing on the fact that peo­ple are spend­ing more evenings on the couch eat­ing from the same batch of healthy win­ter chilli’ for a third night in a row.

Mean­while a slew of awards cer­e­monies – the EMMYs, BAF­TAs, GRAM­MYs – cleanse the palette by cel­e­brat­ing what’s already hap­pened, with most of the chat­ter around this year’s EMMYs revolv­ing around The Bear and the actors involved in The Bear, regard­less of whether or not it was about their per­for­mance on The Bear. Jere­my Allen White almost destroyed the fab­ric of soci­ety a few days pri­or by wear­ing some pants for Calvin Klein, Ayo Ede­biri glued it back togeth­er again on the night with her good natured charm and wit, and Mat­ty Math­e­son became poten­tial­ly the first per­son in his­to­ry to begin an accep­tance speech with WHAT’S GOOD???”.

“Fewer grassroots music venues means less places for new artists to cut their teeth.” Emma Garland

For those work­ing with­in the cul­ture indus­tries, Jan­u­ary also brings the delight­ful trend of job loss­es. FACT Mag­a­zine retired its long-run­ning mix series this month. There are planned lay­offs at the L.A. Times. Pitch­fork, for bet­ter or worse the most deferred to author­i­ty in music jour­nal­ism for the last two decades, has been inex­plic­a­bly fold­ed into GQ, which has felt to some like a final blow for spe­cial­ist music writ­ing – par­tic­u­lar­ly after mass lay­offs at Band­camp last year, the loss of print pub­li­ca­tions like Q in the UK, and VICE sim­i­lar­ly fold­ing Noisey (along with all its oth­er ver­ti­cals) into its main site to let it with­er. This is all espe­cial­ly depress­ing for any­one who, like myself, grew up hav­ing their tastes and ambi­tions shaped by new media. There was an out­law men­tal­i­ty to it that sucked in a lot of peo­ple who oth­er­wise wouldn’t have had a look in. Cer­tain­ly music writ­ing was of lit­tle inter­est to me until the blo­gos­phere explod­ed in the 00s, wrestling influ­ence away from big city news­rooms and tra­di­tion­al gate­keep­ers and hand­ing it over to a glob­al net­work of shit­heads – who cared so deeply – writ­ing in the glow of a lap­top in their bed­room in Min­neso­ta or Ket­ter­ing or wherever. 

The impact of that is only vis­i­ble in the health of cul­ture at large, which is cur­rent­ly on a res­pi­ra­tor. Few­er spe­cial inter­est out­lets devot­ed to niche or as-yet-unknown artists means few­er path­ways for under­ground tal­ent to emerge, or fresh ideas to enter pop­u­lar con­scious­ness. The same trend is vis­i­ble in TV, with the fate of pro­duc­tions rest­ing in the hands of stream­ing plat­forms that can sell up mid­way through a series – tak­ing the fund­ing with it – or dis­ap­pear a show with lit­tle notice.

Few­er grass­roots music venues means less places for new artists to cut their teeth. Hell, even Ice Spice is cry­ing out for robust crit­i­cism that actu­al­ly engages with her music from a place of con­sid­er­a­tion. Of course, none of this is per­ceived by cor­po­rate strate­gists who, as The Guardian’s Deputy Music Edi­tor Lau­ra Snapes put it, con­demn plat­forms that don’t meet their shift­ing goal­posts (remem­ber piv­ot to video”?) to the enshit­ti­fi­ca­tion that is com­ing for the last good parts of the inter­net.” Even if it did reg­is­ter, very few peo­ple in the C‑suite would have a vest­ed inter­est in pro­tect­ing it anyway. 

And so, at the start of anoth­er year, we’re faced with the ques­tion of what hap­pens next. What shape will cul­ture take when it’s teth­ered so care­less­ly to short-term share­hold­er prof­its and fair­weath­er tech plat­forms? How do we move for­ward when every­thing is being eat­en alive by glob­al monop­o­lies that leave every­one else fight­ing for scraps? Most acknowl­edge that the future of media is inde­pen­dent or work­er-owned, which is true, but has to be fol­lowed with a deep breath because it implic­it­ly requires start­ing from scratch. Still, it’ll hap­pen. As depress­ing as it is to watch every­thing once promis­ing about new media get com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed with­in the space of a few years by the kind of line go up’ sick­os who play in an all-CEO rock band called The Merg­er, noth­ing is meant to last for­ev­er. You can’t rebuild with­out knock­ing shit down first. Every­thing ends at the start.

Emma

Emma: Besides mood playlists with stu­pid names like cozy hob­bit cof­fee shop,’ the only music I’ve been bang­ing late­ly is CASisDEAD’s Famous Last Words. It came out back in Octo­ber and is the reclu­sive rapper’s first prop­er album (his sec­ond full-length project in a two decade peri­od), deliv­er­ing some of the best sto­ry­telling in UK rap. Chuck­ing dystopi­an sci-fi and real-life expe­ri­ence in a blender to cre­ate a world so vivid you can almost smell the rain and see the blood pool­ing on wet con­crete at night. Between the 80s synths, speed­ing cars, drug deals gone wrong, femme fatales with fake French accents and the unex­pect­ed pres­ence of Neil Ten­nant, it’s the kind of hard-nosed com­bi­na­tion of seduc­tion and dan­ger that’s been marked­ly absent from visu­al media in recent years. RIP J.G. Bal­lard, you would have loved it.

Alex (Senior Edi­tor):  2024 can’t be any worse than 2023, right? After my high expec­ta­tions for last year were painful­ly shat­tered, I’ve start­ed 2024 with some dystopi­an cul­ture to pre­vent myself being dis­ap­point­ed by any­thing but the low­est pos­si­ble expec­ta­tions. I got start­ed with the incred­i­ble Para­ble of the Sow­er by Octavia But­ler. Writ­ten in 1993, But­ler gazed into the future and set her nov­el in a spec­u­la­tive future 2024, a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Earth heav­i­ly affect­ed by cli­mate change and social inequal­i­ty. In the real world, we haven’t quite reached apoc­a­lypse yet but every­thing else in Butler’s vision seems eeri­ly prescient.

Jour­nal­ist Robert Evans’ insight­ful but ter­ri­fy­ing It Could Hap­pen Here (sea­son 1) pod­cast, sketch­es out the few steps we are away from our chaot­ic and increas­ing­ly extrem­ist present to a sec­ond Amer­i­can Civ­il War. But as the US and UK bomb the Houthis with­out any­thing resem­bling a strat­e­gy and Trump inch­es clos­er to reclaim­ing the pres­i­den­cy, the jury real­ly is out on which is more like­ly this year: World War 3 or Civ­il War 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo. The ICJ find­ing in the case brought by South Africa that Israel is undoubt­ed­ly com­mit­ting geno­cide in Gaza and absolute­ly should stop com­mit­ting geno­cide gives some hope. Maybe there are some insti­tu­tions that still func­tion and some in pow­er who have not lost all human­i­ty? No more geno­cide this year please. If that’s one New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion the world can stick to, maybe we can get around to dealign with some of the oth­er major chal­lenges that con­front us as a species.

Andrea (Edi­tor-in-chief): When Blind­boy Boat­club was enlist­ed as Huck’s artist-in-res­i­dence for Issue 80, it gave me the jolt I need­ed to dig back through his pod­cast and lis­ten to some of the 300-plus episodes he’s obses­sive­ly craft­ed, week after week with­out fail. There’s some­thing debil­i­tat­ing­ly inspir­ing about the Irish wordsmith’s approach to sto­ry­telling; how he zig-zags down seem­ing­ly tan­gen­tial paths only to arrive at a kind of eure­ka moment that does a lot of things at once: explor­ing the his­tor­i­cal roots of cul­tur­al absur­di­ties (see: The Colo­nial His­to­ry of Pump­kin Spice Lattes’) trig­ger­ing a series of gen­er­a­tional awak­en­ings (‘Bar­bie and Mat­tel as Mil­len­ni­al Pavlov­ian Con­di­tion­ing’) and some­how act­ing as self-help ther­a­py at the same time (‘The Men­tal Health of Adults Who Live With Their Par­ents’). It’s riv­et­ing stuff; fun­ny, fas­ci­nat­ing and always sur­pris­ing. Lis­ten in the dark, or blind­fold­ed, for a full ASMR hit.

Ben (Dig­i­tal Edi­tor): As I sit and write this, it is the 67th day of Jan­u­ary. My bank account has been emp­ty for approx­i­mate­ly 5 days and the few lentils I have left in my cup­board are mock­ing me. Pret­ty much any attempt at dry Jan­u­ary” or healthy eat­ing” has been aban­doned and that per­ma-grey that Emma so beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed above has seeped into my bones. I am one with the cold and the drudgery. In amongst it all, and despite it all, I see lit­tle shoots of hope. The first glim­mers of Spring. Of flow­ers shoot­ing up and our time com­ing. I see it on my thrice-week­ly runs (the sin­gu­lar res­o­lu­tion I have yet to cast aside), and I see it in the what­sapp groups and organ­is­ing meet­ings and ral­lies and strikes across the coun­try, and indeed the world. I see it in the sto­ries of peo­ple and groups cre­at­ing, imag­in­ing and resist­ing that we pub­lish each day on the site. It’s so easy, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time of year when every fuck­er is broke, cold and mis­er­able, to for­get the pow­er that we have when we come togeth­er, often against insur­mount­able odds and win. In that vein, I’ve spent much of this month revis­it­ing some of the inspir­ing sto­ries from our Sea­son of Hope, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Peace & Jus­tice Project, to keep me going in the meantime.

Josh (Print Edi­tor): As the world of media jour­nal­ism reels from more job cuts (pour one out for those at LA Times and Pitch­fork) my mind keeps return­ing to this piece writ­ten by the bril­liant Ilana Kaplan for the most recent issue of Huck (out now) about why the out­look for media jour­nal­ists is so, so bleak around the world and also why humans (rather than AI and robots) are more vital than ever to deliv­er the news we con­sume. Fun fact – I actu­al­ly dreamt about com­mis­sion­ing Ilana to write this piece while I was in Spain, I mes­saged her in the morn­ing and then I got real­ly, real­ly bad­ly sunburnt.

Isaac (Social Edi­tor & Pho­tog­ra­phy Writer): 

I was put onto the work of Mas­soud Hay­oun a cou­ple of days into the new year, and it’s con­tem­po­rary, social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly charged art at its best. An LA-based jour­nal­ist and author who has piv­ot­ed to fine art, his acrylic paint­ings inter­ro­gate the West and the effects of mod­ern cap­i­tal­ist impe­ri­al­ism in the Mid­dle East. The dead are paint­ed in a ghost­ly blue, with heart aching rep­re­sen­ta­tions of real life events and peo­ple – from Mohamed Bouaz­izi, a Tunisian fruit and veg­etable ven­dor who sparked the Arab Spring after set­ting him­self on fire to Eyad al-Hal­laq, a Pales­tin­ian man with autism who was shot by Israeli police on his way to spe­cial needs school in Jerusalem. Check out his work on Insta­gram, and if you hap­pen to be in Mar­rakech at the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary, take a vis­it to his exhi­bi­tion at the 1 – 54 Art Fair.

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