We are thrilled to announce that the Albumism family has grown by one with the addition of Stephen Lee Naish. Stephen is a published author and accomplished journalist whose penchant for the pen runs well beyond music alone. We’re excited to read much more from Stephen in the future, and encourage our readers to check out his debut article, an expansive deep-dive into Manic Street Preachers’ 2001 album Know Your Enemy.

“Music writing is actually where my love of the written word originated,” Stephen confides. “As a young teen I’d pour over copies of the weekly rock press and read record reviews and opinion pieces which to this day linger in my mind and have informed my own musical tastes and opinions.”

More about Stephen:

Stephen Lee Naish is a writer, independent researcher, and cultural critic. Originally from Leicester, UK, he now resides in Kingston, Ontario, Canada with his wife Jamie, a third year PHD student in Cultural Studies and their son Hayden, a post-doc student in Star Wars Philosophy.

Steve studied media and filmmaking at Leicester college in the late ’90s. He then set up a one-man film company called FrameDropFilms, which produces music videos, music documentaries, and video installations for local and visiting bands and artists. When the smell of stale beer and dirty cigarette smoke got too much, he turned his attention to writing about film and pop culture. At the age of 27 he went back to school and studied with The Open University in the fields of creative writing, essay writing, and contemporary politics.

Steve’s writing explores film, film memory, politics, and pop culture and the places where these entities meet. His writing has appeared in numerous journals and periodicals, including Candid Magazine, The Quietus, 3:AM, Empty Mirror, Gadfly, and Everyday Analysis. He also writes book reviews for Review 31, Hong Review of Books and LSC Review of Books.

Steve is the author of four books, including the essay collection U.ESS.AY: Politics and Humanity in American Film (Zero Books, 2014), Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), and Bringing Up Baby: Deconstructing Dirty Dancing (Zero Books, 2017). His new book Riffs and Meaning (Headpress, 2018), available in the US now and in the UK this October, is about Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers.

He has had essays published in a number of anthologies, most recently in Everyday Analysis’ third volume of essays entitled ‘Politactics,’ and a short story in Centum Publishing’s 100 voices anthology. His influences are wide, but he narrows it down to Dennis Hopper, Crispin Glover, Nicolas Cage, Stanley Kubrick, Kelly Reichardt, Lynn Shelton, Joe Strummer, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Shia Labeouf, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Chris Hedges. He once received in the mail a pirated DVD copy of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971) from Alex Cox. He occasionally presents the New Book Network podcast on new music titles. Follow Stephen on Twitter via @RiffsandMeaning

Stephen’s 5 Favorite Albums of All Time: