| January 10, 2026 
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Ben Sisario brought us a treat on Friday: a first look at Tom Verlaine’s archives, which have been acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The Television musician was “one of the most important but least understood figures in New York rock,” as Ben writes. And he left behind a lot — notebooks, tapes, “7,000 vacuum tubes for the 72 amplifiers he had accumulated” — but stipulated any unfinished work could not be circulated to the public. We do have two audio samples for you: “Red Car,” an improvised spoken-word piece recorded around 1998, and a demo of “Marquee Moon” captured in 1974. And Ben’s reporting sheds more light on the musician’s tragic final days. Some of you may be familiar with 2hollis, a rising young artist raising a racket at the intersection of hyperpop and hip-hop — and some of you may be familiar with his father, John Herndon of the post-rock band Tortoise. Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli chatted with the pair on Popcast about (perceived) nepotism and the flow of familial influence. Jon Pareles provided a guide to the week in songs, flagging major announcements (Bruno Mars and Jill Scott are returning!) and what’s burning up the charts in Japan. Our 5 Minutes crew turned its attention to Dexter Gordon. And our readers shared surprisingly personal stories behind the tracks that meant the most to them the past year. I was unsurprisingly thrilled that Robyn is returning in March with her first album since 2018, when she spent an extremely generous amount of time with me discussing what was then her first album since 2010, “Honey.” Her new song “Talk to Me” is a certified banger accompanied by a video featuring that inimitable Robyn floor work. And the best sound I experienced this week came Thursday at the Armory, where Jason Moran was celebrating a decade of curating the Artists Studio. Last year we did a feature with the pianist about Duke Ellington’s “Black and Tan Fantasy” (and how he transforms it) but I hadn’t seen him work his magic — an ominously hypnotic extended passage where he generates cascades of wavy low end — in person. For anyone who came on psychedelics: congratulations, and I’m sorry, because I was convinced he was sucking us into another dimension, and I was totally sober. |
