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The Department of Tangents Podcast

Years ago, playing a sort of improv game with friends in which we all picked super powers based on our personalities, I dubbed myself “Tangent Lad.” I was not a very strong superhero, and I could not defeat a super villain on my own, but I could distract them with Monty Python quotes and football trivia. I have many times since apologized to an interview subject in my capacity as a journalist by saying, “I am either very good or very bad at tangents, depending on how you feel about tangents.”

I had a rough time coming up with the concept and naming this blog/podcast. I knew I wanted to create a place where I could address things I’m passionate about – comedy, music, and horror. Finding a name that communicated all three of those things proved a bit impossible. I bugged my friends, and they all tried to help. To no avail. Then I thought, maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe my lack of focus should be the focus.

As a journalist, I have written for The Boston Globe since 2000, starting out writing CD reviews and then writing a regular column on comedy for seven and a half years. I still contribute there, and to Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. I’m also a musician, and released my debut full-length album, Blue Skies and Broken Arrows, in March of 2015. And I’ve been publishing short horror fiction for a couple of years.

I like to climb into things I love and see how they operate. That’s what the Department of Tangents is for. The main thing here is love. To talk about the things that make I’ve loved forever, and some new things that might stand the test and be around, at least for me, for decades to come. I’ve had to be critical in my writing at times, and it might not all be nonstop roses here, but in the end, what I really want to talk about is the good stuff. That’s why I will regularly write about things I think are “Perfect,” even if someone can demonstrate empirically that they are flawed. Still perfect to me.

Also, fish.

I hope you, dear anonymous surfer person, will come to expect only the highest-quality, free-range, grass-fed tangents. And I hope some of you love the same things I do and find it useful. Or at least a welcome distraction until the others get here.

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  2. S2EP2 - Musician Jenee Halstead

S2EP2 - Musician Jenee Halstead

Jun 29, 2021

Being an artist often means you spend your life looking for a place that feels right, finding it, and then leaving it as quickly as you can. Creative fulfilment as Brigadoon. In 2021, Jenee Halstead released Disposable Love, an album that sounds in many ways like the one she was always meant to make. With producer Dave Brophy and collaborators like Susan Cattaneo, Halstead has crafted an elegant pop album with a sonic palette that spans from her earlier acoustic sound to horn-driven R&B to something more ethereal. She took some chances to do something different, part of which was allowing herself to sing happier pop songs, which she says can feel even more vulnerable than some of the more folky confessional songs she has written in the past. But then, she’s always kept moving. She recently found new context in her writing after an Ayahuasca ceremony, and she’s looking forward to incorporating chants into her next project. That is all covered in this conversation about the arc of her career and the sound of Disposable Love. 

You can find her music on Apple and Google and Spotify and all the usual places. To keep track of the new stuff you can go to www.jeneehalstead.com and find her on Twitter and Instagram under @jeneehalstead. The new album is Disposable Love, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.