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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

Portrait of a Struggling Artist as a 38-year-old man on the eve of destruction →

Greetings from the B-Side Brewery! Have you drank enough water today? Gotten out of the house? Walked down to the polls? Taken five deep breaths? Smashed your phone against the wall? Okay cool just making sure.

If you still need a distraction from *gestures broadly at the world*, I invite you to check out the latest episode of the Struggling Artist Podcast, featuring yours truly! Host Trev Allen invited me onto the show to ostensibly talk about the history of the Roland High Life, and also how the hell to exist in the world as a creative person. Inevitably, our conversation also spirals out into a talk about ADHD and why Hawkeye is the best Avenger, as these things are wont to do. I like to think our chat has some nice glimmers of hope as well, as we talk pretty earnestly about how to balance artistry and all the various demands of “real life.”

If that’s not enough of a distraction, the fact that the New York Times Tech Guild is currently on strike could also help stop you from constantly refreshing your browser. The Wirecutter Union, of which I am a part, is technically separate from the Tech Guild, but we do stand in solidarity with our colleagues’ goals. While I can’t tell you what to do about or how to respond to this strike, I can encourage you to check out Strikle instead, or maybe soothe yourself with the dulcet tones of Billy Bragg. Or check out some unionized Chippendale dancers, idk.

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Time To Punch The Waves Back Into The Ocean →

Every year, as the temperature drops and schools start up again, my mind always returns to the same thing: "What We Did On Our Summer Vacation," my favorite episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Most people who’ve met me would not be surprised to learn that I have an earnest and genuine fascination with that particular Nickelodeon kids show, and have for a long time (Buy me a beer some time and I’ll tell you about how I almost went on a blind date with the actress who played Ellen Hinkle). And “What We Did On Our Summer Vacation” is a perfect distillation of everything the show had to offer: quirky characters, the whimsical magic of suburban boredom, and of course, weird deep-cut celebrity cameos that go way over kids' heads (yes, that is Michael Stipe from REM).

First, there’s that unforgettable episode opener: the moment when Younger Pete and his personal superhero, Artie, the Strongest Man In The World, attempt to punch back the ocean waves to prolong the summer. It’s obviously futile battle for them. But that futility also feels like such a succinct metaphor for growing up. (Perhaps even moreso now that we’re living in a time when we’re all so acutely aware of rising sea levels.)

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Welcome To Hamden (+ some other stuff) →

Greetings from the B-Side Brewery! Hope you’ve all been enjoying the hottest summer of your life so far. But just think: it could be the coolest summer of the rest of your life!

Lucky for you, I know a guy (me) who knows a guy (me) who knows a thing or two about being cool (though not in the way I never was in high school). I recently chatted with The Atlantic about the rising popularity of neck fans (you’ve probably seen my face on that one, right?). I was one some iHeartRadio talk show talking about ACs, too, but I have no idea which one or how to find a link. But I did write some new advice on oversizing air conditioners for Wirecutter. And if you’re interested in a heat pump AC or heat pump water heater, I got you covered there, too.

I also tested out a new FDA-authorized video game designed to help treat ADHD. Yes, you read that right. I liked it better than I expected, too, though it’s unsurprisingly not the miracle treatment that it claims to be.

But now it’s time for the main event…

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My Teenage Dreams Come True April 12 →

On Friday, April 12, my band the Roland High Life is playing in the prestigious Rock & Roll Rumble — and it’d be genuinely awesome if you came out to support us. The Rumble is the longest running Battle-of-the-Bands-type industry showcase in the country, and has helped break bands like Letters to Cleo, Powerman 5000, the Lemonheads, the Dresden Dolls (i knoooow), and many, many more. And while sure, the music industry is in a very different place now than it was back when the event was still sponsored by a major rock radio station — it's still pretty cool! As I told the folks at Cambridge Day…

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This month's gigs: July 22 at Exhibit A Brewing

Come catch the Roland High Life on Friday, July 22 at Exhibit A Brewing in Framingham, MA. It’s an outdoor show, and we’re on early at 7pm — so there’s really no excuse not to come out and rock out, right? We’ll even have merch!

But even if you can’t make it, we’ve got some stuff coming in August and September, too. See ya at the show!

We're back, baby! Come see the Roland High Life LIVE!

That’s right — my indie rock band the Roland High Life, which has mostly been a studio-only project for the last long while, is finally doing live shows again!

Our first show back is later this month at the Jungle in Union Square Somerville:

We even got some fancy new merchandise to show off too!

See ya there!

Recording Roland High Life album #3, Part 1

We started working on the new Roland High Life album this weekend, carrying on the tradition we established from last October. This time, we got together outside of Newport, Rhode Island — and for the first time, we actually had an active, functioning bass player there to contribute to the songwriting process! Jake WM had played one show with the Roland High Life back in the day as a fill-in, and it was probably the best show we ever played; we had wanted him to play on “Another Other Dorset,” but he had some family stuff that come up. We couldn’t have been happier to finally officially welcome him into the band.

We got another 5 songs done this time, and I think that covers it for our existing back catalog of tunes we wrote between the bands’ active eras. That means it’s a good diversity of tunes, but we’re also looking forward to writing with the future in the mind — starting from who we are now, as individuals and a band, and working together to crank out the best stuff for who and where we are in our lives.

I’ll share some samples of the songs we did as soon as I have them!

We out here #newalbum #newmusic #recording #homerecording #homerecordingstudio #diy #punkrock #indierock

12 Likes, 1 Comments - The Roland High Life (@therolandhighlife) on Instagram: "We out here #newalbum #newmusic #recording #homerecording #homerecordingstudio #diy #punkrock..."

A lil' #behindthescenes #music from @therolandhighlife's recent #recording session. #newmusic #indierock #rockandroll

12 Likes, 3 Comments - The Roland High Life (@therolandhighlife) on Instagram: "A lil' #behindthescenes #music from @therolandhighlife's recent #recording session. #newmusic..."

The first actual LIVE Roland High Life show in a decade!

Frands! 1. Not from Wisconsin 2. Mighty Jet Band 3. The Roland High Life #porchfest2019

37 Likes, 0 Comments - Erica 🌿 Steinhagen (@ericasteinhagen) on Instagram: "Frands! 1. Not from Wisconsin 2. Mighty Jet Band 3. The Roland High Life #porchfest2019"

And while we’re in the throes of all this Roland High LIfe news — we started playing shows again! Or at least, me and Walker played a solo acoustic show together as part of Ithaca Porch Fest. We’re also getting ready to start recording the next album, so this was a good warm-up, and the reception was such that we very much plan on doing it again. Go team!

It's been 10 years since we didn't release the first Roland High Life album →

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Now that the Roland High Life is a real band again, we decided to re-master and release our debut EP, “If You Really Want To Hear About…”

You’ll notice that, while I said re-mastered, I didn’t say re-released. Because we, uhhh, neglected to ever actually release this album, just like we kind of neglected the band for a decade for no good reason; we just kinda got busy, even though we were all still friends, and let it all languish.

But now, it’s finally out there for the world to see. Even though I wrote these songs in college — at the very start of my ADHD treatment, and dealing with all kinds of new sensations — I still think they hold up pretty well. We also had the privilege of recording it all at WERS studios at Emerson College, which meant access to lots of high-end equipment and unlimited time after hours in which to work. (The downside, however, is that we lost the master multitracks, and had to work from the rough mixes we put together. But still.)

I’m not gonna do the same song-by-song breakdown on here; I could, but it feels moot, seeing as I wrote all these songs on the cusp of 21 or so. I’ll save the Behind-the-Music shpiel for our next album.

But I will share this newly-recorded acoustic version of “Squatter Song” that I did over the summer. That’s a song that I originally wrote upon first moving to Boston, freshly diagnosed with ADHD and feeling very depressed and overwhelmed with the state of being a mental ill grownup and having my own apartment. Thus, it felt oddly fitting to play the song again on the eve of Boston’s famous Allston Christmas, as I sat in the empty Boston apartment that I now own as I move back into it as a somewhat-functional adult.

The new Roland High Life album is out today! →

Well folks, it’s been about a decade since we last released or performed any music … but the new 5-song EP from my indie rock band the Roland High Life is now available on Spotify, iTunes/Apple Music, BandCamp, and everywhere else you might want to find your tunes!

We arranged and recorded all of these songs over a single weekend at a house in Vermont. They weren’t fully written that weekend — me and Walker, my co-front-man for the band, had been working on songs intermittently that we’d share with each other. But we put them all together, arranged them, and recorded the tracks pretty quickly on our own. For a self-produced work in a basement in Vermont, I’m pretty god damn proud of the work that we pulled off, and I’m very much looking forward to what’s next for the band.

I wrote this song about a few people I know in real life who have succumbed to the crippling addiction of fucked up Trumpian conspiracy theories. I think the Americana-blues-punk vibe we landed with here really encapsulates our vision for the future of the band. The song also explicitly references David Graeber’s economic theory on Bullshit Jobs, which I think everyone should read.

This is a Walker jam (aka my best friend, and the other lead singer in the band). He had sent me an acoustic demo of this a few years back, and I think we landed in a pretty rad Jimmy Eat World-esque area in this. It’s a banger for sure, helped along by Chris the Drummer laying down a sick bass line.

I had originally imagined this as more of an AJJ-esque folk punk song; you can find my solo version of it on Spotify as well. It’s a lot more politically direct than our other Roland High Life thus far (even when we have gotten political), but I think we hit on something good here. Walker convinced me to play it like a Springsteen song that my audience already knew, and that’s exactly how we recorded it. I also threw down some mandolin and lap steel guitar on this track, to really mix it up.

This is actually an older Roland High Life song that we never quite recorded right. I’m not sure if this one is perfect, either — maybe a little too slow — but it’s still the best we have so far. It’s a love song to my cherry red Gibson Les Paul Junior, and I definitely accomplished what I set out to do (i.e., writing a song about loving music that’s also overly sexualized in a weird way). I originally wrote this at a time in my life when I was prone to over-complicating songs, but I do think that the look-at-me-i’m-so-clever music theory games that go on in here are still pretty cool.

Another Walker jam, this one started off as more of a Billy Joel knockoff, and Walker wasn’t sure if it would fit with our rock vibe. But Chris, our drummer, said that he’d been listening to lots of Teenage Fan Club lately, and as soon as he said that, I was hit with a Teenage Fan Club-style version of the song in my head. Or at least, that’s what we were going for; the final product is a little more ambient power-pop, and very much us, which makes it even better.

Plus that snare drop right before the second verse is sick.