Up today at Dusted: thoughts on Bon Iver member S. Carey’s All We Grow, which I liked overall. I’m curious to see where Carey’s next album goes, however — when All We Grow was good, it was quite compelling, but there were some aspect to the album of which I was less fond.
Also in the …
Two worthwhile pieces for your weekend reading.
In the first, Amy Klein, guitarist for the excellent punk rock band Titus Andronicus, takes a look at the new issue of Rolling Stone and its handling of gender. She then ties this in with a larger political narrative which, I would argue, makes no small amount of sense. …
And in generally kickass music news this week, both Rebecca Gates and Erika Anderson have announced new musical ventures, whether albums in progress or newly-formed bands.
For what it’s worth, some context for why I’m so fond of the music of each:
My first sudden reaction of the night was that Till Fellner’s recording of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” would make excellent for the night’s editing.
My second sudden reaction of the night had to do with the amount of classical music in my collection. In my apartment, I generally listen to music in one of two rooms: my …
So hey, Maura Johnston has an excellent interview over at eMusic with Teenbeat founder Mark Robinson.
This bit is interesting, and — I’d think — gets at a lot of what’s good about both physical and digital distribution of music.
What do you think of digital distribution’s effects on the presentation of albums?
My main beef right …
I reviewed S’s Sadstyle for Tiny Mix Tapes.
This album is indeed a four-track project from the 90s, but it’s also a reminder of exactly why the home-recordings aesthetic works. These songs can feel messy at times, but that mirrors the messiness of the lives documented in them, something Ghetto’s lyrics and (especially) …
dälek’s Gutter Tactics is a fine, fine record. Posted below is the Alexandra Momin-directed video for “2012 (The Pillage),” which boasts one of the more ominous uses of skyline images in recent memory.
Doug Mosurock’s review of Tre Orsi’s new album? Quite good, incorporating thoughts on a whole long-dormant subgenre and a fine analysis of the record in question.
With crisp, balanced production by Bedhead’s Bubba Kadane, and the sort of Sonic Youth/Unwound-informed octave dynamics, surges in volume and measured aggression, and literate, even masculine lyrical reads, …
Heading out of town for a couple of days for a foray — my first — to scenic Las Vegas, Nevada. Posting will resume once I’m back.
When I was in Seattle last month, I caught a set from Javelin at the Vera Project. It wasn’t quite my thing — in the world of ramshackle DIY …
I reviewed the latest album from The Lodger, Flashbacks, for Dusted:
Siddall’s voice is in the same melancholy vein as Field Mice/Trembling Blue Stars mainstay Robert Wratten, and the Lodger’s music suggests that that influence goes beyond the vocal approach. The Lodger takes a restrained, austere approach to uptempo, jangling rock — though …
Yesterday, I went to the Guggenheim. While there, I took in “Grey Area, an exhibit of Julie Mehretu artwork. Taking in her large-scale, informationally-dense works, I thought about the recent New Yorker piece on the artist. In turn, that prompted thoughts of another piece from the same publication – Sasha Frere-Jones’s essay on noise-rock. Specifically, …
Up today at Dusted: a review of My Education’s Sunrise.
If you’ve read any recent think-piece about how the lines between rock bands and classical ensembles are blurring, you could pretty easily swap their name into the list of case studies provided without sacrificing accuracy. Besides recording their own compositions, they’ve also …
In a similar vein to the post below, I also have two new “Delorean” entries over at Tiny Mix Tapes.
Samuel: Lives of Insects
““Sideways Looker” closes out the EP by essentially pushing one mood for two minutes and segueing from there into somewhere much more grim. Essentially, it’s the sound of a band teetering …
In the last few weeks, I’ve had a few reviews run on Dusted; this is an attempt to collect links to all of them in one place.
Avi Buffalo: Avi Buffalo
“At times, this album could pass for a mid-1990s contemporary of the softly-spoken indie pop of Holiday. At others, when the guitar’s melodies become …
A few days later than most, I’ve taken a look at Mr. Weingarten’s piece from this year’s #140conf, as well as this response from the folks at The Hype Machine. What I think their response misses — and there are definitely echoes here of Steve Almond’s and Kevin Smith’s recent criticisms of critics — is …