On a guitar rich in bass tones and coated with tasteful reverb, Eric Benoit conjures a series of gentle arpeggios, punctuating them with a few well-placed harmonics. Then, with his lilting tenor, he carries us through simple, evocative lyrics: “I’ve never been to New Mexico / Never seen the canyons there / But I open… Read More

When I first met Matt Ellin, he was by far the coolest punk kid at our Pennsylvania performing arts summer camp, and at first I hadn’t the slightest idea how to relate to him. But as fate would have it, we soon became close friends and musical collaborators. He has always been intimidatingly funny, talented,… Read More

  cw: death / loss The Winooski United Methodist Church, a modest green-painted wooden structure with two gothic-arched doors and a single unassuming steeple, hosted a line of people streaming out of the front door and onto the curb. I stood at the back of the line, taking in the scene. The small crowd of… Read More

Hey, I’m Jeff (he/him) and I’ll be one of the two music directors for the fall semester. Feel free to ask me for new music to play on your show if you ever need some; it’s our job to encourage you to play new songs! I’m from Cleveland originally, but currently I’m at Middlebury’s Arabic… Read More

From music directors Maddy and Jeff: The holiday slump is finally over at WRMC and we’ve got plenty of new music to warm us up while we wait for spring. These new albums are from many different genres all across the world of new music, and they’ve all got us excited, so consider playing them on… Read More

My high school friends and I didn’t know what to expect when we watched the 1981 film Polyester, directed by John Waters. Waters is a master of gross, bizarre, dark comedy, typically taking aim at the depraved denizens of white, suburban, upper-class America. In this particular film, an unfortunate housewife named Francine Fishpaw (played by… Read More

Brandi: On a subway ride, the icy grasp of rejection, isolation and unrequited affection crawls over skin and pulls at tear ducts. There are too many people around for this to be a problem. At the core I become warm, my heart races past my panting and feels like it’s skipping. With only five people… Read More

The summers of 2014 and 2015 could not have been more different for me. 2014 was the start of a new relationship, and 2015 was the difficult ending. Although the two summers were a year apart, and although they corresponded to two opposite emotional poles of my life, I associate both summers with many of… Read More

I love lo-fi. There’s a certain warm, human charm to a song that sounds like it could have been recorded in a 17-year-old’s bedroom. Imperfections in the recording of a song can give it life and humanity, the way Monet’s imperfect brushstrokes infuse his energy into the reflections of a pond full of water lilies…. Read More

We, the human race, should be admired for our willingness to persist in our constant struggle against the realities of mortal existence. We’re highly practiced in fighting these realities, and yet we seem to perpetually lack any effective means of suppressing our fear of our own rapidly approaching demise, let alone digesting the idea that… Read More