By Max Cohen and Roxie Parker
Photos by Tilly Sandmeyer
We’ve said it before, D.C. music is in a weird place. While its the heart of DMV DIY, the scene feels aimless and lacking in community, not nearly as together as cities like Philly, Pittsburgh, or New York with their strong emo, shoegaze, and punk pockets, respectively. Maybe you think D.C.’s been slowly dying since harDCore fizzled out in the 80s. Maybe you think it’s on the precipice of taking off again. Maybe you think it’s mediocre and unremarkable but either way, you’re thinking about it. Or at least we’re thinking about it.
Also thinking about it is local music journalist Taylor Ruckle. Like many of us, Ruckle—who’s written for FLOOD magazine, City Paper, and Post-Trash—is foremost a fan, consistently showing up to chronicle sold out performances and empty Tuesday night gigs after a full day of work. By breaking down and directing attention to the best the DMV has to offer, Ruckle helps us better understand the scene and its potential. Notably, he was there covering Mosh Madness, one of the best moments for local music in recent memory, where over a dozen bands played a benefit basketball tournament for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
It’s not an easy hobby, Ruckle doesn’t write for the money or appreciation. Being a scene journalist necessarily places you on the fringe; to comment on something means you have to be a little removed from what’s going on. And as an ethical guy, he’s sometimes put in the tricky position of panning artists that he doesn’t just respect but are his neighbors. As the unpaid directors of a college radio blog, we’re acutely aware of how awkward and isolating local coverage can feel.
But more than sympathizing with Ruckle, what pushed us to talk to him was his hybrid piece on Oceanator’s latest album, Nothing’s Ever Fine, which candidly explored his struggles with anxiety:
I’d love to say “Nightmare Machine” was my turning point—that a song changed my life. But that’s not what songs are for. What it did was force me to admit to myself that I wasn’t coping as well as I wanted to. I should have asked for help right then and there, but instead, I wrote an early version of this essay and set it aside without showing anyone. I let anxiety sit like an old tub of yogurt at the back of the refrigerator of my mind, mutating new shapes and colors I couldn’t make myself look at. By February of this year, a perfectly harmless heart palpitation was enough to break the seal and send the whole rancid mess spilling out. Just one extra heartbeat felt like a sure sign that it was my turn to go the way of all those people on the news. Someone in the world was going to have a random deadly heart failure that day. Why wouldn’t it be me?
From this essay to his more straightforward reviews, all of Ruckle’s writing is imbued with a sense of personal truth and deep respect for his subjects. We spoke with Ruckle in October about his induction into music criticism, the future of DMV music, and his advice for other writers. The scene is lucky to have him banging the drum, pushing musicians and critics alike to better things.
This interview aired on WRGW’s “Taking Notes” on Oct. 21, 2024 and has been edited for length and clarity.
Parker: What was the first album you ever bought?
Ruckle: Haha, the first album I ever bought, I would have been in the seventh grade, in about 2007, and I got really into Guitar Hero III when that came out. And so I’m pretty sure the first album I ever bought was Inhuman Rampage by Dragon Force.
Cohen: Whoah.
Ruckle: Because “Through the Fire and Flames” was the credit song from Guitar Hero III and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard, so I went to iTunes and I bought it.
Cohen: Wow, that’s a great answer.
Parker: When did you start listening to music critically, versus just listening for enjoyment?
Ruckle: That’s a good question. I think it would have been some time in high school, or that would have been the first seeds of it anyway. I don’t know if I could really say I was listening to music critically, but that was when I developed an awareness of music criticism. At that time, I’m listening to this thing that’s new to me, I think what are they saying about it on Pitchfork? And so I started to read music criticism, in this very rudimentary way where you sort of see publications as monoliths, and you think Pitchfork, the institution, thinks my favorite band sucks, and I’m really mad about that. At the time, I was writing for my high school paper, and the first thing I ever wrote was a review of Battle Born by The Killers. It was never printed, it was just like a senior year journalism class assignment, but one of my best friends, who is still one of my best friends to this day, sat there because they were editor of the paper and read over it with me and critiqued my critique. You know, when you have friends in your class who have authority over you and they just kind of have fun with it, it’s a great time.
I think it was sophomore year, I got involved with the alternative paper at my college, The Declaration, and that’s when I really started thinking about actually consuming music critically and writing about it that way, for real this time. It was this really weird alternative paper. Half of it was satire, half of it was serious. We wrote fake letters to the editor. We wrote fake horoscopes. A lot of real prankster energy around it, but for whatever reason, once my name was up on the website as the music person, I got a lot of serious PR emails, and knowing absolutely nothing, just kind of stumbled my way into interviewing bands, reviewing albums, trying to figure out what that was all about.
Parker: Is there an early review from that paper that you think of as a milestone?
Ruckle: Yeah, I think the first time I really seriously tried to write long form music criticism, I was taking a music class. I didn’t major in music, but every time I had a free class, I would take a music class, and in one of those, we read a lot of historical criticism. And so I had just come into contact with Lester Bangs for the first time, and I thought, here we go. I’m going to write long form album reviews. And I wrote one, it’s probably still the longest album review I’ve ever written, because I hadn’t quite developed the internal editorial, whatever it is that stops you from writing 4000 words at a time. I wrote about No Closer to Heaven by The Wonder Years because their album, The Greatest Generation was such a huge deal for me in college. So when that album came out, that was where I said yes, this is the one, I will flex my muscles, I will do the Lester Bangs thing.
Parker: So when you started with journalism, were you only interested in music, or were you in general trying to be a journalist?
Ruckle: I thought about this earlier today, and I can’t really remember why I got involved with The Declaration to begin with. I don’t think I went in assuming this looks like a great place for me to write about music. I think I must have known somebody who was already involved there, and I liked the more comedic, or satirical elements of the paper. Then once I was in the door, and we were batting around ideas, and I heard they were soliciting album reviews, I thought, I bet I could take a crack at that. I’d had such an interest in music going back that it felt like something that would be fun to try. But so I guess the answer is no, I did not go into it trying to be a music journalist, if that’s what I am. And I don’t think I even went into it trying to be a journalist. It was more like I found this group of fun people to hang out with, and they made a newspaper.
Cohen: So you have this early romance with Bangs. Were there any other early critics that you latched onto?
Ruckle: I should say I don’t endorse everything Lester Bangs ever wrote. I feel like that’s obvious. But I think a lot of my early knowledge of music and music writing were probably informed by the really prolific internet music critics like Robert Christgau, obviously, whose archives are just out there. If you suddenly get interested in writing about music, you can just read what Robert Christgau thinks about anything from the last 50 years. Probably Stephen Thomas Earewine’s blurbs too. I mean, obviously I was reading Pitchfork, so I’ve read, God only knows how many thousands of words of Ian Cohen’s writing. That was my early stuff. And then as I’ve become more aware, there’s so many amazing music writers of the, you know, recent era. Like Ann Powers is somebody I love reading, Jessica Hopper, I have her book and I refer to it religiously. I think those are probably the big influences. I’m sorry, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. Those are the people who inspire me, who I read a lot.
Parker: You said the music’s always been an important part of your life. Did that come from family? What first made you interested in music?
Ruckle: Definitely, there’s a lot of that in my family. My father is a banjo player and a barber shop quartet singer, which are two very unusual things to grow up with around the house. There was always country music when I was younger, but also a lot of classic rock. Bruce Springsteen, a healthy appreciation for Bob Dylan. Of course, my mom was really into the 80s alternative stuff, and when I came of a certain age I started getting her old The Cure CDs and that kind of thing. So yeah, music was always a big part of their influence on me.
Parker: Can you tell us about making the transition from writing for your college paper to reporting and professional journalism?
Ruckle: It’s been a weird journey. My degree was a double major in English and Media Studies, and when I graduated I applied to a lot of professional journalism jobs. I interviewed with an alt-weekly in Charlottesville who told me that they had some trouble in the past with Declaration writers following style guides and things. That did not go anywhere from there. After that, what I did was I took everything I had written at the paper and started a blog, and from there, I kept getting press emails. So I told all of the PR people who had been emailing me for, you know, the last few years, hey, thanks so much. I’m no longer at The Declaration, but I have a blog of my own if you’re interested in me covering this thing, and a lot of them just kept sending me things. So I spent about five or six years, since I graduated in 2017 until about 2021 I think, kind of doing my own thing, just opening up the mailbag and listening to press streams and things, and arranging my own interviews, writing my own stuff, and sort of just figuring it out on my own. And I did that obsessively for those five or so years, and I hit a point where I had done a lot of really exciting things but it felt like it had gone as far as I could take it individually. This was during covid, of course. And it just sort of occurred to me that there were a couple other blogs I had been following that had come up and gone away during the time I was writing, and I was like, well, probably I shouldn’t be the only one involved in this thing, or else at some point I’m just going to get tired of it and burn out.
At that point, I started looking around and trying to pitch around to places, which has been very slow for me, and it’s still an unfolding process of learning how to do that and learning how to ask for bigger assignments and things. And so from there, I asked around quite a bit, and the first place I heard back from was a blog called Post-Trash, which has been an amazing experience to write for. The editor there, Dan, was amazing and actually answered my emails. And after I had written a few things he started working with me very one-on-one asking who should we be interviewing? What do you want to do?
Parker: I’m wondering about your experience as a freelancer. I imagine it can be a lonely experience, and it seems like it was really validating to finally work with other people. How do you manage that lack of physical community?
Ruckle: I don’t think physical community is anything I’ve ever really had with music writing, it’s always kind of been something that I talked to people on the internet about. It was a whole other step to go from writing for my own blog to writing for publications that actually pay something. The only way that happened was just kind of reaching out to people on the internet and saying, like hey, I really like what you do. Or, you know, people reaching out to me and saying, hey, I read that thing you wrote. And so for me, it’s been entirely an electronic pursuit. Really, it’s never been an in-person kind of community, so I can’t even tell you what that would be like. But I can tell you that the more I have tried to reach out to other people, tried to build relationships with other people who do this, it’s just gotten more and more fun and fulfilling.
Parker: Since you were writing for your own blog for so long, where you were your own editor, was there difficulty in transitioning to writing for other publications?
Ruckle: Yeah, I was my own editor for a long time and I had to set arbitrary standards for myself. I would say well, let me just use the AP style book for some things. Let me put a cap on how long my interviews should be. You know, just put some guidelines in place. And even so, editing yourself, you just miss so much and you take so much for granted. The good thing about writing for other publications is that people do edit me, and make comments or provide feedback that I’d never have thought of if I were just writing for myself.
It’s way easier to get through the day having somebody else be responsible for whether my pitch has been accepted or not. Because that’s the other thing, when I was editing myself, I took every pitch that I gave myself. I never said no to me. I would read an email and say, oh, there’s this indie band, and their things are really cool, it’s not getting written about enough. I could write about it. And then I would just do that all day, every day, every time I heard a new ding in my inbox. I wrote about basically everything I could and that’s why I would have burnt out if I kept writing my own blog forever. As much as I am disappointed that I don’t get to write about certain things I would like to be paid to write about now, as much as sometimes it can be difficult to negotiate with somebody else over things that happen in the copy, it is so much better working with other people.
Parker: Has your style changed over the early high school and college writing years to the blog to now with a print publication?
Ruckle: I didn’t really have a real strong sense of style early on, certainly not when I was in high school or college. I think I’ve gone through some phases with style that have been very much related to where I’ve been writing. There was a phase, and sometimes I still lapse back into this, where if I’m writing a review or something I want everything to be as economical and tight as I can make it. I want to cram in as much information as I can in 400 words. I want to make sure there’s no wasted space, no wasted syllable, you know. And a lot of times that can be really gratifying and really fun to do. And then other times, you know, it’s not. One of the great things about writing for Washington City Paper is that I’m working with an editor who’s considering how things will be read by a general audience, who are not so deep in music nerd lore. And that’s so important because then I have to write sentences other people can understand because not everybody is an absolute maniac scrolling music Twitter 24 hours a day. It’s different styles for different outlets, which has allowed me to consider different ways of approaching the project of music writing.
Cohen: Speaking of phases, The Wonder Years? Ian Cohen? Sounds like you’re an emo fan.
Ruckle: Yeah, it’s true. You got me.
Cohen: What do you think about the current DMV emo scene?
Ruckle: I think there’s a lot of really exciting things happening. There’s a lot of stuff that I know I’m not plugged into, and I don’t know how much of that is emo, but I will say that this has been an exciting year for it. I mean, gosh, you’ve got Combat in Baltimore, you’ve got Cuni in DC, you’ve got all kinds of weird and cool emo adjacent stuff. I’ve been getting really into the Spring Silver record from this year—who I think are sometimes tagged as post-emo—which is extremely rad. So, yeah, it’s a really, really cool time to be an emo fan.
Parker: So you write a lot about local bands. Would you say that you’re generally positive in your reviews?
Ruckle: I think so. I think generally I choose to write about something because it’s something that I like. At least once a year I stumble on something where I think, oh no, I’m gonna have to go into pan mode. But yeah, usually, if it’s something super small and local and I don’t like it, then there’s no real sense in writing negatively about it. I tend to save, you know, that kind of mode for larger targets. The things I’ve panned are the things that I’ve talked positively about a couple years ago. I wrote a pan about the last Arctic Monkeys’ record, which I thought was really bland and really dull. I wrote a pan of the re-recorded album that Switchfoot released for the anniversary of THE BEAUTIFUL LETDOWN, which was super important to me when I was in high school. It brought me no joy to have to pan that one. And then this year, I really did not care for the new Charly Bliss record. That’s mostly it. I guess I didn’t really love the Glitterer album from this year, but I hope that wasn’t a pan as much as this is a band I really love, and I think they could do better.
Cohen: How did you manage trying to uplift and support them while expressing that the record wasn’t your cup of tea?
Ruckle: It was tough, I struggled with it. And I hope it comes across in the review, that it’s a group of people—of musicians, of artists—that I really respect. That can be part of sharing an opinion like that, respecting somebody and also knowing that the band is good enough to stand up to criticism that way. Like, if the music’s really got something substantial at its heart, then it can stand up to criticism. I’m sure I could think of some musical acts that I would disrespect, but certainly not Glitterer. And so it’s always a matter of trying to balance my respect for the band and my feelings about what’s not working for me about what they’re doing.
I think it’s also a matter of understanding that Glitterer is an amazing live band. I saw them at their release show, and even though I wasn’t super thrilled about the album, the show was incredible. It was one of the best hardcore shows I’ve ever seen. They had Fury opening and there were people back flipping off the stage into the pit. It was insane. And then I saw them a couple weeks ago at Comet Ping Pong, and it was even better. They had transitions for every song for the whole set. It was unbelievable. So I do think sometimes it’s not wrong or disrespectful to say, I think this band could be doing better. And sometimes they really surprise you when you go, wow, oh my gosh. In just the span of six months, they’re already doing so much better, you know? I think you don’t have to assume that just because you have something critical to say about a band, that you are inherently going to be knocking them down.
Cohen: Do you have a strategy when you go about writing a review?
Ruckle: I always try to have a thesis statement. Obviously, the main point is going to be whether you think the album is good or not. Because I came from this English major background, what works for me is sort of trying to structure an argument, rather than trying to work backwards from a numerical score or something like that, or from an opinion about the quality of the record. So as an example, I wrote about the new Oceanator album this year, and the thrust of that piece was, wow, this is a more confident sounding band than the one that put out the last record. So in the process of making that point, you sort of get to bring up all the things you think are really good about the album, or the ways that this band has changed since last time. So you sort of create a lens that allows you to then bring up either your criticisms or your praise. I wrote about the Charly Bliss album this year, and my angle was kind of like, this is a band that has never catered to expectations, and I think this time, maybe that’s led them into a weaker direction. And that’s kind of the lens through which you write about the album.
Parker: We read your Oceanator essay and loved it. It made me wonder how you navigate sharing personal details. It brought so much to have that element, because for me, I want to hear about the personal since music is so personal. But also that type of writing is hard and vulnerable, and I know I shy away from it often. How do you manage that?
Ruckle: Yeah, it’s not something I had ever really done before. I guess I started doing a bit more personal writing about a year ago. I wrote some stuff about Fallout Boy, which was a big high school band for me—I keep insisting that emo is not my main thing and then I say things like this. I wrote a very short review of the reissue of the New Order Substance ‘87 compilation, because that was a big pandemic album for me, and that allowed me to get personal. I’m very careful about picking the moment when it’s okay to insert myself into a piece of writing, because generally, very good advice is to take yourself out of these things. You know, if you’re interviewing somebody, you don’t want to be talking about yourself too much in the piece. Sometimes that can be an interesting angle if you have a particularly interesting story with an artist. But it can get in the way, and you can spend too much of an interview talking about yourself instead of paying attention to what somebody’s saying to you. So definitely, it’s been a process of learning how to balance that.
I wasn’t sure whether the Oceanator thing was something I really wanted to do. Kind of right up until the last minute, I still had doubts about that, and it was a real learning experience. A lot of people told me they related to that, which was very nice to hear. That was one, like I said in the essay, that I had been carrying around for a couple years and not really finishing, and it was an entirely new experience for me. I’m still kind of figuring out my relationship with that kind of writing. A lot of people are very good at it and work in that lane more consistently. I will have to continue to figure out where that fits into the constellation of things I might write.
Parker: Do you have any advice that you would give to writers who are interested in braving the gig economy?
Ruckle: I always really enjoy music writing that is concerned with the craft of writing itself. So I guess my advice to people would just be to read good writers of any stripe, music or not music. What really compels me about writing about music—about writing about anything—is just how much you can do by writing a sentence. Just how much power you have as a writer to craft a series of words intentionally. That’s very basic. If it’s something you’re interested in, nurture that curiosity about the mechanics of language and the power of language and all the things you can do with a sentence. That, to me, has always been one of the most exciting things about writing. The money, the freelancing stuff? Yeah, I don’t know. I might make about $2,000 this year on freelancing. It’s not really a feasible career for me. Some people have figured out how to do that. I have not. So the only advice I can really give on that front is if you love writing, then write and keep writing.
Cohen: Are there any other writers that you want to tell people to go read?
Ruckle: One of my best friends in music writing is a guy named Hayden Merrick. I can’t say enough good things about Hayden Merrick. He’s a guy with great taste, anytime he recommends something to me, I know I’m going to like it. He is somebody who is really devoted to the craft of writing, got me into that in a big way a couple years ago. Just as an offhanded remark in one of his pieces, he mentioned picking up a copy of the Elements of Style, which is this excellent handbook for writing on a really basic level. I should definitely shout out my friend Emily Schweich, who has a really great newsletter. She is from Maryland, and she wrote this zine around the Baltimore Washington Parkway, the worst, worst road to ever have to drive on. But it’s a really good zine. It lives on my desk. And she has a great radio show on Gutsy Radio called Not a Phase. That’s another person I can’t say enough good things about, and who has been really, really important to me as I’ve been trying to be more social about this thing.
