January 2011
10 posts
4 tags
Peter Bjorn and John - "Breaker Breaker"
This song is the first available bit of new material from Peter Bjorn and John’s latest album—Gimme Some, out in March—so my self-inflated music critic-y instincts tell me to glance backwards for context and preparation. I would say something like this: Falling Out was pleasantly poppy but a bit too indistinct, Writer’s Block was a near-ideal confluence of great songs and...
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Roberto Cacciapaglia (ft. Ann Steel) - "My Time"
“I love my weekends in the pure air on the heights of the Eiffel Tower,” spits Ann Steel before launching into the chorus of “My Time,” the opening track of the 1979 electropop album Italian composer Roberto Cacciapaglia wrote and produced for her. To me, the only way the line fits with the rest of the song—in which Steel rattles off all the ways she herself is...
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Conversations with Danny: 2000s Music
DANNY: i have a theory: ME: go on DANNY: I may be becoming a “child of 2000’s music”. So, music that came out from 2000 to 2010. These 10 yrs, especially the earlier yrs were extremely formative on my musical tastes. I have noticed that a lot of the bands I tend to consistently go back to are from this period. I feel like I can identify more with it than some of the newer stuff....
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Imaginary Coachella
I find myself doing this in my head every year when these festival lineups start being announced, so I figured this year I should actually write it down. I don’t have the money or time to fly to southern California and go to Coachella in April, but it’s still important for me to have a sense of how ‘good’ it is and how I would spend my time if were I able to go. It’s...
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Smith Westerns - Dye it Blonde
It’s not always good to pay attention to press blurbs or early snippets before you dive into a new album, but often you can’t help picking up some informational tidbits about what to expect. Here, the story is casually familiar: a band of scrappy dudes barely out of high school make a melodic lo-fi debut and then clean up a bit for a sophomore effort with a greater focus on songcraft....
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Cold Pizza Friday XLVIII
On Liking Things, Not Liking Things, And Talking About It
Hi everyone. Cold Pizza Friday is back (if you know/care what that is/was), but not as a mix of leftover songs that I didn’t get to talk about this week or as a mix of new songs from new bands posted on other blogs this week. At least for now, I think I’d like the 2011 version of CPF to be more of a loose-topic kind of thing,...
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Deerhoof - "Super Duper Rescue Heads !"
There was a point some time in the middle part of the last decade where Deerhoof was the objectively best band in the world. Not just in my head, mind you—pretty much anyone who listened to Apple O’ or the incomparable Runners Four would stab you with a banana or unleash an adorable panda attack if you disputed the band’s supremacy. Their arty twee-noise tore the idea of pop...
4 tags
Drop/Dead - "Always Love You"
Always Love You by Drop/Dead
When I first heard this song back in November, I made a comment about how the source genres for this stuff—garage, 2-step, dub—were outside my area of expertise to say the least. In fact, when it comes to sub-genres of club-oriented electronic music, I have what I think is a fairly common problem: the creeping sense that I’m incapable of...
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Boredoms - "Super Are You"
Super Æ is one of those records that I find myself returning to for what only it can offer. Much as I love the endless parade of indie rock bands and twee mewlers and critically enshrined pop that makes up most of what I talk about on these pages, there comes a time when my brain needs a cleanse, when I need context to be blunted and language to be shredded and form to be eviscerated. I’m...
1 tag
Parental Duties
tomewing:
That video I just posted has led me to wonder. Would you have liked it if your parents had tried to get you into the music they thought was good? Or, if they DID, did you appreciate it?
I don’t remember my parents listening to music for its own sake very much. It was usually talk radio (which I generally ignored), both in the car and at home. Sometimes we would have music on...