Jazz Monroe
Jazz Monroe is an associate staff writer at Pitchfork, covering music and culture with a particular focus on rock, pop, and the unfolding stories of long-running artists. His work stands out for the way it links fast-moving news about new releases, tours, and archival projects with deeper critical and narrative pieces on the musicians behind them. He moves between concise news posts, detailed album and track reviews, collaborative lists, and interviews, giving a wide-angle view of how contemporary and legacy acts evolve.
Music News & Releases
Monroe is a regular presence in Pitchfork’s Music News & Releases stream, filing short, direct stories on announcements across rock and pop.
Recent pieces include news on Fontaines D.C. plotting a 2027 North American arena tour, the band’s “Tongue” video, and a forthcoming live album from Kim Deal, all framed with clear context about the artists’ current phase. He covers archival and catalog activity as closely as new material, with items on The Flaming Lips reissuing At War With the Mystics with demos and live recordings, Stevie Wonder unvaulting additional Songs in the Key of Life tracks, and Morphine unveiling the lost album Cocoon. His beat also spans marquee pop moments, such as Taylor Swift releasing four new songs, Madonna and Charli XCX teaming up for “Danceteria Afterhours,” and Chvrches returning with “Roses” to signal a new phase for the band.
Alongside those, he covers tour dates and new music from figures like Kali Malone and The National’s Matt Berninger, often highlighting how a release or run of shows fits into a longer artistic trajectory. The Carly Simon story on her first album of original songs since 2008 fits this pattern: a straightforward bulletin that still foregrounds the weight of a new chapter in a veteran career.
Rock Reviews and Sunday Review
Monroe’s reviews lean toward rock, art-rock, and adjacent experimental music, mixing contemporary albums with reissues and canonical records. His recent album reviews include The Tubs’ Hard Life, The Durutti Column’s Renascent, and Gorillaz’s The Mountain, each filed under Pitchfork’s reviews section and rooted in close listening rather than fanfare.
He has written about The Smile’s Wall of Eyes, which was designated a Best New Album, as well as Blur’s The Ballad of Darren, King Krule’s work, and cult-leaning records from artists like Hen Ogledd and Oliver Coates, showing a taste for bands that sit between mainstream recognition and more adventurous scenes.
Catalog titles are a recurring thread: his Sunday Review essays on XTC’s Skylarking and Scott Walker’s Tilt treat those albums as complex, enduring works, blending deep research with a persuasive argument for why they still matter. Reissue-focused reviews of records like Muse’s Origin of Symmetry and other classic albums extend that approach, often framing the new edition in terms of how the band’s story and sound have shifted over time.
Across these pieces, his criticism is marked by narrative detail and a willingness to take on dense, sometimes difficult records, positioning him as a go-to voice on artier corners of rock and its back catalog.
Out This Week and Anticipated Albums
Beyond individual reviews and news posts, Monroe appears regularly in collaborative features such as “Out This Week” and lists of the most anticipated albums, tours, and festivals.
In roundups like “10 Albums Out This Week You Should Listen to Now” and the “Out This Week” tag, he helps select and frame new releases across genres, distilling why a record is worth attention in a sentence or two. He contributes to seasonal lists like “The 34 Most Anticipated Albums of Fall 2026,” “The 52 Most Anticipated Albums of Summer 2026,” and “The 64 Most Anticipated Albums of Spring 2026,” where his blurbs sit alongside colleagues’ notes to map out the coming release calendar.
Similar pieces on “The 47 Most Anticipated Tours of Summer 2026” and “The 31 Most Anticipated Music Festivals of 2026” show him tracking the live side of the industry as closely as records, tying artist momentum to touring cycles and festival lineups. This work underscores a broad view of the field: he is not only reacting to what has come out, but also signalling future movements that matter to fans and the industry.
Interviews and Profiles Beyond Pitchfork
Monroe also works in interview and profile formats, both at Pitchfork and at other outlets. On Pitchfork, he wrote the interview feature “Mall Walking With dexter in the newsagent,” an example of his conversational style and attention to emerging artists beyond headline names. His author bio notes that his work appears in The Guardian and The Independent, and his recent pieces there include a Björk cover story built around spending a day with her in Reykjavík and an extended interview with Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner about the band’s unusual career trajectory.
He has compiled a ranking of Radiohead’s 40 greatest songs, indicating a comfort with giving definitive, canon-shaping judgments on major alternative acts.
Syndication means his writing is also carried by other digital outlets, but the through-line remains the same: detailed, narrative-led coverage that connects big-name artists to their histories, influences, and futures. Taken together, his interviews, profiles, and lists show a reporter who treats musicians as long-term subjects rather than one-off stories, bringing that sensibility back into his daily news and reviews.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alex Rigotti
Alex Rigotti is a freelance music and culture editor and journalist who joins fast-turnaround music news with detailed reporting on artists, fandom and politics. They report breaking stories and live music updates for NME and Paste Magazine, covering pop, rock, club music, underground scenes and cultural debates around art and identity. Their live-music beat includes setlists, tours, festival appearances, cancellations, ticketing, venues and onstage collaborations. They previously served as a contributing editor for NME’s Radar section, supporting coverage of emerging artists and new scenes. Rigotti also writes features on rap lyrics and criminalisation, Eurovision and politics, queer feminist bodybuilding, astrotherapy and contemporary art. Their reporting is direct and specific, using clear quotes, concrete details and artists’ own words to explain what happened and how music fits into wider cultural and industry trends.