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Haley Patail

The cover of Lesley Chow’s book, ‘You’re History: The Twelve Strangest Women in Music’. Cover features artwork of a woman with pale skin and black bobbed hair wearing sunglasses.

An Interview with Lesley Chow

Haley Patail, The Believer Logger, July 2021

One of the most fun and challenging things to do as a critic is to try and decode that kind of strangeness and try to work out why that sound or that image has this specific hold on you. I think I’m drawn to writing about sounds that have puzzled me for years. So, it’s been a time of trying to work out, 'why does that sound bring up these sorts of textures? Why is it so specifically tinny or tarnished?' So I think I’m looking for enduring strangeness. That’s what I’m drawn to writing, anyway.

Music and film critic Lesley Chow talks to Haley Patail about the value of genuinely strange sounds and the shift towards 'tweezerfied' over-curation in the music industry.

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