Zach Bernstein

Zach has an obsessive compulsive need to provide an internal soundtrack for every daily activity, be it brushing his teeth (Royksopp’s “In Space”), taking the subway (the National’s “Fake Empire), or walking around the city at night (Stars’ cover of the Smiths’ “This Charming Man”). He has a shameless tendency to become intensely invested in indie bands right before they hit the mainstream (see: Kings of Leon, Bon Iver, Phoenix) so that he can falsely claim he liked them before they were popular. He spends way too much time browsing artists’ setlist choices and watching YouTube videos from concerts he didn’t attend. His favorite album of all-time is a three-way tie between the Strokes’ Is This It, the Killers’ Hot Fuss, and Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (deep stuff, I know right?) In his opinion, the greatest guilty pleasure song of the past decade is Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” (don’t front, you loved that song back in 2001). His lifelong dream is to write and direct a pretentious, moderately indie film with attractive actors about the pitfalls of quarter life crisis (see: Garden State, (500) Days of Summer), purely so that he can select the film’s soundtrack (Klaxons’ “Golden Skans” for the slow-motion club scene, the XX’s “Crystalized” for the post-club bedroom scene). However, regardless of any posing, exaggerating, or musical taste embellishment, at the end of the day, Zach just loves music, in all of its beauty, ugliness, confusion, and romanticism.

“So what do you love about music?” “Well, to begin with…everything.” – Russell Hammond, Almost Famous