Sexting with the Millennial Arlo Guthrie
Don’t swipe left, bro. Don't swipe right.
Two deaf girls walk into a folk show
The talking blues aren't always a comedy routine
John Craigie spent the better part of his early career without a fixed address, sleeping in his van and on couches, touring around the country, and self-releasing a spate of albums for his homespun Zabriskie Point Records. Based on the evidence of those early records, one could have been forgiven for pegging Craigie as a lesser light of the late-2000s indie-folk boom, a kind of itinerant cousin of the Avett Brothers or Langhorne Slim. It was only with 2016’s Capricorn in Retrograde… Just Kidding… Live in Portland that Craigie fully captured what he was after. In addition to Craigie’s studio hits, his live performances feature topical, often slapstick tracks that usually take the form of the talking blues and affect a kind of charming millennial haplessness — Arlo Guthrie by way of Bo Burnham, maybe, without the latter’s cloying come-on. On “Pictures on My Phone,” a song about the pitfalls of sexting, he sings, “You might want to see some pics from when I went and saw Springsteen / But …