Fox Babies, Feminist Bibles, and the Religion of Music
Every week I buy three magazines and read them front to back. This week: SPEX, Nero, and Total tierlieb!. No page stays dry.
SPEX treats music as religion, which it is. It maps the battle lines between Tupac disciples, Radiohead converts, and Helene Fischer fundamentalists—and holds the entire war at a civilized intellectual altitude, which is the only level worth fighting at. The best piece this issue is a long, intimate interview with Blumfeld on the twentieth anniversary of L’Etat Et Moi—personal, nostalgic, clearly important to someone. I fell asleep three sentences in, as I always do whenever anyone says "Blumfeld." This was true watching VIVA Zwei as a kid. It remains true now. Some conditions are permanent. The rest of the magazine has no bad articles—it holds itself to too high a standard to allow nonsense anywhere near its pages—but that also means it reads smoother than the dullest ad in VICE. Nowhere in Germany writes about the religion of music at this quality. Nowhere.
Nero is the best magazine in the world. The Japanese-English bible for young women with strong opinions and stronger aesthetics, and somehow fiercely feminist without the sour aftertaste that kills most magazines attempting the same thing. HAIM get an interview that crackles. Arvida Byström documents a trip through Tokyo like someone who actually looked at things. Sky Ferreira contributes what amounts to a manifesto. Chinatsu Higashi draws things that produce feelings I can’t fully name. Fashion spreads that are actually beautiful rather than aspirationally threatening. Concert coverage with genuine heat. Love letters with genuine honesty. Every page hums. Reading it, I feel a weird pang—this magazine wasn’t made for me, and I can’t help noticing how much better the world built for women often looks.
Total tierlieb! has technically been banned in Germany for several months, after twelve readers exploded upon encountering too many photos of kittens. I found a copy anyway. I would like to be stapled between pages 6 and 7, permanently, between fox babies Fips and Fiona. The Pulitzer should go to either "Pieti the Fibber King"—the epic saga of a lazy guinea pig—or "Water Fun for Dogs," a practical guide to hot days and cool four-legged companions. My actual vote goes to the photo-novel "Zirkusluft": the harrowing tale of a young woman who must overcome her deepest fears to save her sister, her best friend, and more or less the entire world. More or less. The only bad thing in the whole issue is the preview for the next one: hedgehogs, a pony called Pünktchen, a new photo-novel titled "Charlie’s New Friend." The wait alone might destroy me.