The brick-and-mortar world shares oxygen with all things virtual in this quite-postmodern retelling of daily life: a beautiful, tortured cello riff knocks elbows with house music samples. Brass duels with synthesizers. Piano keys tap their feet with drum machines. Could anything be more 2009? (We’re looking at you, In Rainbows.) This is a great LP, [...]
How Bands Make Money
Or more to the point, how bands don’t make any money. Fresh off of reading Steve Albini’s take on The Problem With Music I stumbled upon this article on NPR about The Posies and how bands make money. As it turns out, from the Posies’ hey day in the 90′s they’re still in debt to [...]
Updates: Supergroup of the Infamous Sort
Apparently the whole thing was a hoax. No one wants to be in a band anymore, they want to be in a band made up of members from other bands. It’s a conundrum, I know. Now even inmates are starting to get the desire to form supergroups, namely Charles Manson and Phil Spector. When Manson [...]
Update: Arctic Monkeys Transmission About to Begin
The highly anticipated web transmission of the Arctic Monkeys forthcoming album Humbug is about to begin here. Go check it out here. If you missed the web transmission here are the individual mp3 files to download. “Pretty Visitors” “Crying Lightning” “Potion Approaching” “Red Right Hand” (Nick Cave and Bad Seed Cover) “Secret Door”
Stream Julian Plenti is…Skyscaper
Interpol has always been one of those bands that I’m either completely on board with or have had a hard time picking up what they’re trying to put down. Now frontman Paul Banks has grown a scuzz-stache and is about to release a solo album as Julian Plenti, I find myself in the same boat. [...]
“Plankton have gone fishing.”
Well, that’s crappie news. (Tee, hee!) The plankton in question is Plankton, short for Planet K-Tone, I’m told, and hailing from down under. They were a feral four-piece who have settled for permanent hiatus, it seems. The calm is textured, the saxophones unpretentious, the arsenal diverse. I especially like “High Lite and Deep Shade.” The [...]
yes/oui/si
The music writes itself when that is the name of your band. yes/oui/si has a smart, universal, and playful sound. The track “Sad Acoustic Demo” couldn’t be named anything but. The song “One” is disposable but “A Kind of Suite” has an easy, timeless ambiance. tMiM Upstarts are up-and-coming artists who tend toward more experimentation. [...]
“Behind the Mountains” by Japancakes
Japancakes have released what the over-40 set used to call a maxi-single. It’s called “Behind the Mountains” and you could, you know? Buy it? Or go listen to it at Rhapsody here. It’s lush and low-key, with pretty vocals. (Not beautiful, mind you. I actually meant to say “pretty.”) The slide guitar annoys Patrick, but [...]
Apple to Bundle Media with Download
The are many things that I love about this technological day and age. I love being able to pull a 3×5 “computer” out of my pocket and get anything from the nearest sushi restaurant to how far I ran, where I went and what the elevation changes were during that run. But the one thing [...]
What’s with the artwork? Some kind of indie rock terror alerts?
The styles among the various artists we cover here have become so divergent that it’s even difficult for us to keep track. On one hand you have Tobias reviewing the latest U2 release, and on the other, Fred’s lost noise rock weekend, while Patrick quenches his wanderlust with MP3 downloads. All of it is sort [...]
