Super Sunday Substack Recommendations

For many of us, the holiday season is a hurry-up-and-wait affair. Hurry to close out business for the year. Hurry to hit up as many holiday events as possible. Hurry to shop and cook and clean, all before the big day. Then wait… as the world slows to a crawl and you try to resist going back to the fridge for another plate of leftovers.

During those languid hours, we like to catch up on the many Substacks we subscribe to and neglect to open throughout the rest of the year. And we see our readers doing the same as old editions start registering new stats for the first time in months.

So in the holiday spirit of paying things forward, here are a few of our favorite Substacks with content that remains largely evergreen, so you can pore through the archives. All of them have a free option, but we hope you’ll take that five dollars grandma still sends every year and put it toward supporting at least one.

Rave New World

by Michelle Lhooq

We first met Ms. Lhooq when she was an editor at Vice’s comically titled electronic music vertical, Thump and throwing “weed raves” at friend chicken joints in Brooklyn. Once that became untenable, she hit the road, first to LA where she became an early progenitor of the term “Cali Sober” and then across the globe, from illegal warehouse parties in her native Singapore to post-BLM lawless zones in Seattle. Her style is gonzo in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson but without the high-concept fictionalizations and nihilistic mythmaking that was part and parcel of the older generation of outsiders.

Herb Sundays

by Sam Valenti IV

The pandemic was the catalyst for a good many Substacks (The Cadence included), but few have grown into something as special as Herb Sundays. What began as a Twitter piss-take on guilty-pleasure listening has morphed into weekly playlists by the cast of god-tier creatives that surround Ghostly International founder Sam Valenti IV. In the process, it reminds us that everything SV4 touches turns to art, no matter how hard he tries to keep it casual. Ask yourself, what’s cooler? Kool Keith making a disco and boogie playlist? Or the person who thought to ask Kool Keith to make a disco and boogie playlist? The answer is neither. It’s the write-up that comes with the playlist(s) by Valenti that secretly serve as some of the smartest cultural criticism being written today.

Jimmy Doom's Roulette Weal

by Jimmy Doom

If you grew up in the 90s alt-rock scene of Detroit, there were certain local punk icons whose presence provoked a mix of fear and respect from the younger generation. One of those was John Brannon of Negative Approach and Laughing Hyenas fame. Another was Jimmy Doom, singer for the The Almighty Lumberjacks of Death. Both these legends loomed large, but laughably, 14-year-old alterna-teens didn’t even know who was which when one or the other would appear at the bar. Such was life before the Internet.

Of course, without the Internet, we would never have known that in 2020, Doom set out to release a piece of original fiction every-single-day. He’s in year three of this never-ending tour of Detroit’s blue-collar belly, which is usually bloated with beer or shaking with cynical chuckles. But don’t let our poorly poetic prose turn you off from Doom’s genuine genius when it comes to portraying the D in all its underdog glory.

Rants & Raves

by Tovah Feinberg

And speaking of Detroit legends, when it comes to raving, no one has done it better than Tovah Feinberg. Born in front of the left speaker stack and bred to remain awake until dawn, Tovah has been haunting the finest clubs in Detroit, New York and Europe for decades. And now, she serves up her hard-earned knowledge of dancefloor dynamics to a new generation with a saucy mix of caring and cunt. From fan claps and fog machines to phone faux pas and baggy basics, she’s the Ann Landers of acid house. The Dr. Ruth of disco. Ya betta listen up!

The Signal

by David Katznelson

One more author who peaked in the 90s (jk!), David Katznelson was the A&R guru who helped shepherd underground acts like Mudhoney and The Flaming Lips to major label homes. But his awesomely esoteric Substack covers more than just the final decade of the 20th century. It celebrates arts and music from the entire 100 years when contemporary creativity was conceived and walks the fine line between ephemeral and archival with aplomb.