February 2012
16 posts
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The Dutchess and The Duke - "Out of Time"
I’d sort of forgotten about this band (they split up to little fanfare in 2010), but they put out a couple of neat, perversely enjoyable albums during their short run. I say perversely because The Dutchess and The Duke were the type of songwriters who dealt exclusively in sharp, personal despair. Rebecca Raber once wrote that their music was about exorcising demons, which is a spot-on...
“Apprehending Mr. M does not take a genius, nor does it take an English degree,...”
– This.
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Very sad to learn that Chris Reimer, of the band... →
rawkblog:
He was 26, my age. What a horrible thing. Both of Women’s albums are great but their first self-titled release is a painfully underrated piece of art — the kind of abrasive, ecstatic, challenging guitar record that you want every guitar record to be.
This is really sad. If you haven’t listened to Women, you’re missing out on one of the greatest guitar bands of the last...
Sleigh Bells' Positive Rock →
barthel:
Here is the Sleigh Bells piece! I try to get into the emotional heart of the album, and talk about how the sound design and images send a message.
This piece pretty well nails the differences between Treats and Reign of Terror—I especially like how Barthel frames one as a distortion of space and the other a distortion of time—and I sympathize with the arguably therapeutic...
Oh hey, this looks new... →
I’m fairly certain most people who read this read it through their own Tumblr dashboards, but those who don’t will now be treated to a much handsomer and easy-to-read experience. It was made by my roommate Mike—who designs things for a living—using this highly-malleable theme. I like it a lot.
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Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror
You wouldn’t think that boring technical minutia would matter when it came to a peppy, poppy band like Sleigh Bells, but it does. We’ve all seen the little track player widgets on SoundCloud before, yes? With the horizontal spectrum that displays the waveform of the song in it? Think of the very top and bottom edges of that SoundCloud player as boundaries†. If the amplitude (or...
“At the Gainesville kickoff show, an eager dude jumped out of his car and smashed...”
– William Bowers went to Sleigh Bells/Diplo/Liturgy’s “Paradise Lost” tour of Florida and lived to tell the tale. (via pitchfork) Sometimes I miss Gainesville, but most of the time I do not. Also: this whole piece is fantastic. Bowers!
You Either Love Love or You Don't
In the wake of her death, Valentine’s Day seems as appropriate a time as any to write something about Whitney Houston. I think it’s fair to say that she—at least our idea of her, the her portrayed in the songs she sang—loved love. She did not love it like Celine Dion, who makes it a shrine, draping it in crimson silk on a silver pedestal surrounded by sleeping multiracial...
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Fake Outrage
I don’t think there’s much difference between the (ostensible) recording industry giving itself awards and, say, a widely-read magazine/blog putting out a year-end list of favorite albums. People should not treat them differently. Maybe the Grammys just produce a lot more talk because a lot more people pay attention to them, but I worry that since there’s a ceremony on TV where...
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Listening Journal
I have a habit of not pushing myself to hear new releases all the time, waiting around for good records to somehow find their way to my ears, which is not a good way to do things if you want to be an even half-decent critic. So I spent the last couple days playing catch-up on a handful of talked-about albums I’ve been meaning to listen to—some newer than others—taking notes as I...
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Useful things I did on my day off today:
- Finished that Edie Sedgwick piece I’ve been sitting on for a couple weeks
- Finished another cartoon / illustration for a friend’s blog that will be up soon
- Started planning my two-week trip to Florida at the end of April
Useless things I did on my day off today:
- Took a nap
- Ate a pint of chocolate ice cream
- Watched “Best...
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"What Cue?..."
“…’Faye Dunaway’ take two,” mumbles Justin Moyer in a terse moment of verité that kicks off First Reflections, the otherwise spotty and confounding 2001 debut of his Edie Sedgwick project. It’s been a different ‘band’ every album, but in the beginning it was a bass-and-drums duo of Moyer and Ryan Hicks, both stalwarts of the DC Dischord scene. The...
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Good Morning to You →
People seem to like these and it’s been a few weeks since the last one, so here’s another mix tape. I might just be wired differently, but I’ve always preferred Emily Haines’ dour solo work to Metric’s glossy bombast. When given some room to breathe she has a knack for elucidating the tired and helpless sides of adulthood, even to the point of letting the mood become...
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I Listened to the Lana Del Rey Album
I am taking the side that says this is a fatally flawed album, fascinating though it can be. Here are some more thoughts:
- While I hold to my previous impression of it, “Video Games” is indeed the best song on the album. It’s focused and evocative where much of Born to Die is a slapdash grab-bag of signifiers—one of the few that can be said to be about more than just,...