Ana
@motherslug.bsky.social
Detroit writer. Books, jazz, records, eclectic music, bleak sci-fi, depressing and upsetting fiction and films, the works.
Read me in print media (Uncut Magazine & Maggot Brain), plus motherslug.substack.com and some other places when they will have me!
Read me in print media (Uncut Magazine & Maggot Brain), plus motherslug.substack.com and some other places when they will have me!
#NowPlaying The Natural Bridge is my favorite Silver Jews album, hard stop. Nearly every song embodies the psychic geography of eternal skin-ripping melancholy like nothing else except maybe all his other music.
November 14, 2025 at 12:29 AM
#NowPlaying The Natural Bridge is my favorite Silver Jews album, hard stop. Nearly every song embodies the psychic geography of eternal skin-ripping melancholy like nothing else except maybe all his other music.
How it feels to make a new folder in my Google Drive for a publication I haven't worked with before.
November 12, 2025 at 1:17 PM
How it feels to make a new folder in my Google Drive for a publication I haven't worked with before.
My latest review for Uncut!
November 9, 2025 at 6:11 PM
My latest review for Uncut!
Does the inside count?
November 8, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Does the inside count?
This beauty arrived today!
November 6, 2025 at 12:22 AM
This beauty arrived today!
#NowPlaying Undercurrent (1962), Jim Hall and Bill Evans. One of my favorite jazz guitar joints and a great autumn album, too.
October 27, 2025 at 9:23 PM
#NowPlaying Undercurrent (1962), Jim Hall and Bill Evans. One of my favorite jazz guitar joints and a great autumn album, too.
Woody Shaw looking absolutely terrific in this Francis Wolff photo.
October 24, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Woody Shaw looking absolutely terrific in this Francis Wolff photo.
#NowPlaying This album was recorded in two sessions, one of which was HALLOWEEN 1963, which I personally find completely delightful. Do we think there's even a sliver (😉) of a chance that the Van Gelder Studio was decorated with some gorgeous Beistle cats and pumpkins?!
October 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM
#NowPlaying This album was recorded in two sessions, one of which was HALLOWEEN 1963, which I personally find completely delightful. Do we think there's even a sliver (😉) of a chance that the Van Gelder Studio was decorated with some gorgeous Beistle cats and pumpkins?!
#NowPlaying Out in a few days, this terrific previously unreleased recording of Horace Silver & his quintet (incl. Woody Shaw & Joe Henderson) live at The Penthouse jazz club in Seattle, 1965. There's an almost 20-minute version of "Sayonara Blues" that absolutely fuckin' rips.
October 19, 2025 at 4:39 AM
#NowPlaying Out in a few days, this terrific previously unreleased recording of Horace Silver & his quintet (incl. Woody Shaw & Joe Henderson) live at The Penthouse jazz club in Seattle, 1965. There's an almost 20-minute version of "Sayonara Blues" that absolutely fuckin' rips.
Saturday morning tunes.
October 18, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Saturday morning tunes.
A date with Shadow Ticket and this wonderful little bourbon drink. 🥃
October 18, 2025 at 1:08 AM
A date with Shadow Ticket and this wonderful little bourbon drink. 🥃
Tim Robinson's new show The Chair Company gets a resounding HELL YEAH from me. If you find his anxious yelling extremely funny, as I do, you'll like it. But it also has excellent music (score & needle drops), sharp writing about the mundane ways we use the Internet, and sublime paranoia.
October 14, 2025 at 1:06 AM
Tim Robinson's new show The Chair Company gets a resounding HELL YEAH from me. If you find his anxious yelling extremely funny, as I do, you'll like it. But it also has excellent music (score & needle drops), sharp writing about the mundane ways we use the Internet, and sublime paranoia.
#NowPlaying Perfect autumn jazz and a great soundtrack to Shadow Ticket.
October 12, 2025 at 2:26 AM
#NowPlaying Perfect autumn jazz and a great soundtrack to Shadow Ticket.
Moving thru Shadow Ticket slowly (this is only pg. 9) but here's one of my favorite bits so far, Pynchon beautifully rendering light (shades of Against the Day) with "penumbras of lampposts" & then almost a Last Picture Show vibe with Skeet Wheeler (relative of Zoyd?!) & his Milwaukee bildungsroman.
October 11, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Moving thru Shadow Ticket slowly (this is only pg. 9) but here's one of my favorite bits so far, Pynchon beautifully rendering light (shades of Against the Day) with "penumbras of lampposts" & then almost a Last Picture Show vibe with Skeet Wheeler (relative of Zoyd?!) & his Milwaukee bildungsroman.
It ain’t sfinciuni bagherese, but it’ll do.
October 11, 2025 at 5:39 AM
It ain’t sfinciuni bagherese, but it’ll do.
My latest! You've truly never heard Pharoah like this (meaning specifically with a pipe organ).
September 15, 2025 at 11:31 PM
My latest! You've truly never heard Pharoah like this (meaning specifically with a pipe organ).
Finished both of these on the same day, unintentionally. They make a good, weird pair: Pynchon saw the police state coming, DeLillo saw the dark broadening of our obsession with media, they both locate a unique power in non-traditional families. Very different dealings with death, though!
September 7, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Finished both of these on the same day, unintentionally. They make a good, weird pair: Pynchon saw the police state coming, DeLillo saw the dark broadening of our obsession with media, they both locate a unique power in non-traditional families. Very different dealings with death, though!
I've no idea what Leonora Carrington was getting at here in The Stone Door, but it sure does evoke an arm of the sinister paranoia powering contemporary America. Ungodly in its bleakness: "Perhaps hate as well as love could reveal secrets.” #NYRBWomen25
September 5, 2025 at 1:35 AM
I've no idea what Leonora Carrington was getting at here in The Stone Door, but it sure does evoke an arm of the sinister paranoia powering contemporary America. Ungodly in its bleakness: "Perhaps hate as well as love could reveal secrets.” #NYRBWomen25
Had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Joan Shelley and compatriots regarding her wonderful new album, Real Warmth, out in just a few days on No Quarter. Uncut subscribers can read the full feature in the current issue. ❤️🔥
August 29, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Joan Shelley and compatriots regarding her wonderful new album, Real Warmth, out in just a few days on No Quarter. Uncut subscribers can read the full feature in the current issue. ❤️🔥
White Noise as pandemic novel. This paragraph HURTS: “Remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation. No one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing. As people jolted out of reality, we were released from the need to distinguish.”
August 27, 2025 at 5:49 PM
White Noise as pandemic novel. This paragraph HURTS: “Remarks existed in a state of permanent flotation. No one thing was either more or less plausible than any other thing. As people jolted out of reality, we were released from the need to distinguish.”
Sick, stupid, skin-ripping heart of the American fantasy in Vineland: "...the destined losers whose only redemption would have to come through their usefulness to the State law-enforcement apparatus, which was calling itself 'America,' although somebody must have known better."
August 21, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Sick, stupid, skin-ripping heart of the American fantasy in Vineland: "...the destined losers whose only redemption would have to come through their usefulness to the State law-enforcement apparatus, which was calling itself 'America,' although somebody must have known better."
If you haven't already been moved to pick this up, here's another reason: “…down the corridors of the surface streets, in nocturnal smog, the adobe air, the smell of distant fireworks, the spilled, the broken world.” 🥺
August 13, 2025 at 3:36 PM
If you haven't already been moved to pick this up, here's another reason: “…down the corridors of the surface streets, in nocturnal smog, the adobe air, the smell of distant fireworks, the spilled, the broken world.” 🥺
Hot Pynchon Summer continues on page 180 of Vineland: “…the thousand bloody arroyos in the hinterlands of time that stretched somberly inland from the honky-tonk coast of Now.” I mean, that’s fucking HEAVENLY.
August 6, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Hot Pynchon Summer continues on page 180 of Vineland: “…the thousand bloody arroyos in the hinterlands of time that stretched somberly inland from the honky-tonk coast of Now.” I mean, that’s fucking HEAVENLY.
Recent stuff from me. Shelley Burgon comes highly recommended if you like the harp and experimental music.
August 3, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Recent stuff from me. Shelley Burgon comes highly recommended if you like the harp and experimental music.