A guide to cities, bars, experiences, and places to stay chosen for how they sound. “I started Tracks & Tales to answer a simple question: Where does music actually sound right? Not where it’s loudest. Not where it’s trendiest. But where sound is treated with care — rooms designed to listen, systems tuned with intention, and music given the time it deserves. Think of it as the Michelin Guide to Listening — if such a thing existed. I travel, listen, return, and write. The rest is the map you can now explore.” Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here. — Rafi Mercer, Founder of Tracks & Tales
St. Louis is where American music learned to travel — blues, ragtime and jazz all moved through the city on their way to everywhere else. Discover why its listening culture...
St. Louis is where American music learned to travel — blues, ragtime and jazz all moved through the city on their way to everywhere else. Discover why its listening culture...
Downey is more than a Los Angeles suburb. It is aerospace memory, roadside history and California evening light — a city waiting for its own listening room.
Downey is more than a Los Angeles suburb. It is aerospace memory, roadside history and California evening light — a city waiting for its own listening room.
Athens is one of those rare cities where music feels woven into everyday life. Long before visitors arrived looking for famous venues or legendary bands, sound was already part of...
Athens is one of those rare cities where music feels woven into everyday life. Long before visitors arrived looking for famous venues or legendary bands, sound was already part of...
Goodyear sits on the western edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, where the city begins to dissolve into desert. It is a place defined by openness. Wide roads. Expansive skies....
Goodyear sits on the western edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area, where the city begins to dissolve into desert. It is a place defined by openness. Wide roads. Expansive skies....
Durham is a city that understands reinvention. Once defined by tobacco warehouses, rail lines, and manufacturing, it has spent the last generation transforming itself into one of the most creative...
Durham is a city that understands reinvention. Once defined by tobacco warehouses, rail lines, and manufacturing, it has spent the last generation transforming itself into one of the most creative...
Dorchester occupies a distinctive place within Boston. It is the city's largest neighbourhood, yet it often feels less like a district and more like a collection of villages woven together...
Dorchester occupies a distinctive place within Boston. It is the city's largest neighbourhood, yet it often feels less like a district and more like a collection of villages woven together...
Pasadena sits just beyond the noise of Los Angeles, but it has always felt like a place with its own rhythm. The city unfolds beneath the San Gabriel Mountains, where...
Pasadena sits just beyond the noise of Los Angeles, but it has always felt like a place with its own rhythm. The city unfolds beneath the San Gabriel Mountains, where...
London sits in the heart of southeastern Kentucky, surrounded by the rolling landscapes and wooded ridges that define the Appalachian region. Unlike its namesake across the Atlantic, this London is...
London sits in the heart of southeastern Kentucky, surrounded by the rolling landscapes and wooded ridges that define the Appalachian region. Unlike its namesake across the Atlantic, this London is...
Every month, The Listening Club gathers around the world. Join here.
Recorded in a Manhattan recital hall in 1959, Nina Simone at Town Hall captures the exact moment a classically trained pianist became one of the great performers of the century. A live album built not on applause, but on silence.
Caribou's Suddenly is an album that refuses to stay in one place. Moving effortlessly between house, soul, electronica and psychedelia, it captures the beautifully unpredictable rhythm of modern life.
Coltrane Jazz captures John Coltrane at the exact moment he steps out from the shadow of Kind of Blue and begins the remarkable journey towards becoming jazz's greatest explorer. It is an album about curiosity, evolution and the courage ...
Some records belong to winter rooms and late nights. Barrington Levy's Here I Come belongs to open windows. Forty years on, its grooves still carry the feeling of possibility — not nostalgia, but the sense that something good might be ab...
Pink Moon is one of the quietest masterpieces ever recorded. Stripped to voice and guitar, Nick Drake created a record that feels less like an album and more like a private conversation with silence itself.
In 1966, Cannonball Adderley recorded a live album in a Hollywood studio with an open bar and an invited audience. The club on the sleeve didn't host the session. The music didn't notice. A deep listen to the record that turned adversity...
In 1987, CHANEL created its first watch for women: the PREMIÈRE, inspired by the codes of the House. Its octagonal case evokes the stopper of the N°5 perfume bottle. The original bracelet, interlaced with leather—like the chain of the iconic quilted bag—has been reinterpreted in chain, ceramic or velvet-finish ribbon versions. A timeless, feminine timepiece to slip on your wrist day and night.
By Rafi Mercer
What Sade understood about absence, trust, and the quiet courage to disappear.
By Rafi Mercer
Not the loudest records, nor the fastest risers, but the albums readers returned to with intent this June — a chart shaped by curiosity, slow listening, and the quiet pull of lasting sound.
The biggest ideas rarely feel comfortable at first. They challenge assumptions, invite doubt and ask us to imagine a future that doesn't yet exist. Looking to the lives of great...
The biggest ideas rarely feel comfortable at first. They challenge assumptions, invite doubt and ask us to imagine a future that doesn't yet exist. Looking to the lives of great...
Something happens when you land somewhere new — a bar, low music, good speakers — and you think: this is what I was looking for. Then you go home. But...
Something happens when you land somewhere new — a bar, low music, good speakers — and you think: this is what I was looking for. Then you go home. But...
There was a time when I thought progress looked like movement. More meetings. More plans. More ideas. More miles travelled. More things started. Like many people, I spent years believing...
There was a time when I thought progress looked like movement. More meetings. More plans. More ideas. More miles travelled. More things started. Like many people, I spent years believing...
A reflection on anticipation, vinyl records, and the quiet days before a listening session — when parcels, possibility, and the music itself are still making their way towards the room.
A reflection on anticipation, vinyl records, and the quiet days before a listening session — when parcels, possibility, and the music itself are still making their way towards the room.
Rafi Mercer explains the thinking behind the Tracks & Tales Star — how we listen, choose, and award.
