This is The Pitchfork Review. I'm Pooja Patel, the editor-in-chief. Today, Jeremy and I will be

answering some questions that came in from our listeners and our readers, so stick around for that

later in the episode. But first, we're going to delve into the sounds that help our brains

turn off and chill out. I'm talking about ambient music, which is having a huge moment right now from both a musical

and cultural perspective. And to talk about all of it, I'm here with Reviews Editor

Jeremy Larson and contributing editor Andy Cush. Hello, friends.

Hey, Puja.

How's it going out there?

I'm not sure if we should be extra loud today to make up for the fact that we'll be playing

sort of soft ambient music or we should sort of sink in to the whole quiet NPR,

the SMR vibe of the ambient show that we're doing.

Yeah, whispers only.

How's this sound? You sound great.

Thank you. So I want to just get the most obvious thing out of the way, which is that it's not necessarily a huge surprise that so many people have been turning to ambient music in the past

couple of years. Like famously, it the past couple of years, like, famously,

it is a genre of music that is relaxing and soothing and that you can kind of just melt into.

And, you know, with everything that's been going on, we've got a climate crisis, we've got a global

pandemic, we've got political upheaval, we're all losing

our damn minds. This is not shocking to anyone, right?

Yeah, definitely not. And to that I would add, it's also music that works really well in a

solitary headphones context.

And sadly, we're kind of living more alone

...