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Music
On Believing the Hype
Last October, I volleyed out a couple of thoughts following my first and second encounters with Los Angeles’s Dum Dum Girls. I’ve since heard their full-length debut I Will Be, and I am pretty well sold on the band. As a listener fond of the Aislers Set, Black Tambourine, and Henry’s Dress, their style of [...]
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Music
On Past Lives
I reviewed Past Lives’ Tapestry of Webs for Dusted. Short version? It’s very good — aggro in the right places, yet featuring an unexpected tendency towards the ambient/drone side of things when necessary. (This also reminds me that I need to given the new album from fellow Blood Brothers alumni Jaguar Love a listen — [...]
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Music
On Besnard Lakes & White Hinterland
Two reviews of mine are up this week at Dusted.
On Besnard Lakes’ The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night:
The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night resembles the group’s last full-length 2007’s excellent The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse, but it also calls to mind genre-straddling works like Catherine Wheel’s Chrome and [...] -
Music
On Via Audio
At Dusted, I have a review up of Via Audio’s Animalore, an album about which I had mixed feelings.
…while the band and producer Jim Eno (of Spoon) seem to have savored the opportunity to use the studio, the most straightforwardly played songs on Animalore — the ballad “Wanted” and the breathy folk-pop of [...] -
Music
Ethics + Vinyl
02.17.10 | Permalink | 4 CommentsRecently, I’ve been doing more of my music-buying on vinyl. Most of the music I buy comes from indie labels, and most of the larger (and even not so large) indies have implemented the vinyl-with-download-code format, of which I’m a fan. Some of this comes from how my apartment is laid out: I have a [...]
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Music
Formats.
Over at Chain of Knives, Ned Raggett has a good piece up responding to the rise of cassette labels. The comments are worth a read; Lucas Jensen makes the definitely-valid point that, well, cassettes are not the friendliest of formats. Which is something I agree with: I can make a case for the advantages of [...]
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Music
Life Without Life Without Buildings
Via Maura: an interview with two of the former members of Life Without Buildings, perhaps one of the most underrated bands of the last ten years. Some context for why this name should matter to you comes via Brian Howe and Douglas Wolk.
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Me, Music
Kollaps!
For Dusted, I reviewed Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s Kollaps Tradixionales.
Calling this Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra’s most accessible album should not be taken as an indication that we’re in pop-song territory, or even that most of these songs have a verse/chorus/verse structure. The group’s discography (and, for some of [...] -
Music
In which a showcase is attended.
Because I am not above cutting and pasting my posts from Twitter in this space, some reactions to Saturday’s Don Giovanni Records showcase at the Bowery Ballroom. First came:
At Bowery Ballroom, drinking Guinness and waiting for the punk rock to begin.
Approximately three hours later:
….I think I’d have liked Jeff the Brotherhood a lot [...] -
Music
“Do you hear that, Alexander Haig?”
This Saturday Night Live sketch may have made me laugh harder than anything I’ve seen from said show in a long, long time. (And this includes the likes of “The Curse” and “Everyone’s a Critic.”)
(Link via Heathalouise.)
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Music
Chicago Punk v. The Internet
At the Chicago Reader, Miles Raymer talks about how his take on file-sharing has shifted the release of Mannequin Men’s Lose Your Illusion, Too last year.
My experience with Lose Your Illusion was a big part of the reason my opinion about free music changed so dramatically over the course of this past year. It was [...] -
Film, Music
“Crazy Heart” + Music Writing
Given that I wasn’t entirely impressed with Crazy Heart’s take on music journalism, I’m glad to see that the fine people at New York were thinking along similar lines. And thus: this take on music journalists on film, past and present, which is worth a read.
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Music
Retribution Gospel Choir: Reviewed
At Dusted, my review of Retribution Gospel Choir’s 2 is up.
The Sparhawk heard here seemed to be channeling all of the emotions kept restrained in his more well-known group, and the rhythm section of Eric Pollard and Steve Garrington yielded a sound that left appropriate tribute at the altar of Neil Young. Retribution Gospel Choir’s [...] -
Music
On Red Stars Theory
During my last year of college, one of my roommates was quite fond of the Seattle group Red Stars Theory’s full-length debut, an album called But Sleep Came Slowly. And while I was definitely impressed by what I heard, I was even more taken by the album that followed it, 1999’s Life in a Bubble [...]
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the scowl
Tobias Carroll lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has covered music and books for a number of publications, and his fiction has appeared in THE2NDHAND, 3:AM, Word Riot, and as part of Featherproof Books' "Light Reading" series. He is presently working on multiple projects of varying lengths.
