Note: Each Friday, we’ll close with a song we consider a suiting goodbye for the workweek. With each Music for Fridays post, check for a free mp3. Download the song here. On Slave Ambient, the second album from one of my favorite bands in the world, Philadelphia’s The War on Drugs, “Come to the City”…
On Oct. 21, 1974, Californian Clifford Travis Bean filed a U.S. patent with the intention of making a guitar from “extruded aluminum.” His goal, read the patent, was to create an instrument that resulted in “stable and versatile tones.” Nearly four decades later, it’s safe to say that Bean, who died last Friday at the…
Though it would be hyperbole to call the job of a record producer thankless or nameless, you might not expect someone who spends all his or her time making a band sound its best would make a compelling subject for a film, let alone one with the potential to draw stars like Al Pacino, Bette…
Note: Each Friday, we’ll close with a song we consider a suiting goodbye for the workweek. With each Music for Fridays post, check for a free mp3. One of my favorite things about Sam Herring, the frontman of the romantic and dramatic Baltimore dance trio Future Islands, is that his lovesickness always comes cut with…
“At what point does a waterfall of surprises become just another drowning crush of predictable unpredictability?” asked Paste critic Jason Ferguson at the start of his mostly spot-on review of D, the fourth album by Austin quartet White Denim. Conduits of eclecticism in an indie rock atmosphere where such post-modern magpie tendencies have become increasingly…
If Dimples, the name of the debut EP by the Texas band The Nighty Nite, suggests a certain romantic sweetness, you’re going to be disappointed. Led by former Paper Chase frontman and producer extraordinare John Congleton, The Nighty Nite fills Dimples with references to cancer, murder and greed, all delivered with the sort of Pentecostal…
Yesterday afternoon, Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham and CBC DJ Grant Lawrence announced the 10 albums that comprise the Short List for this year’s Polaris Music Prize, the Canadian award that honors the country’s best annual album without regard for sales or popularity. Past winners include, of course, Fucked Up, Caribou and Final Fantasy’s extravagant…
Note: Each Friday, we’ll close with a song we consider a suiting goodbye for the workweek. With each Music for Fridays post, check for a free mp3. Download “How Can U Luv Me” here. We’re going to return tomorrow with a list of five new songs that might suit your Fourth of July cookout fairly…
James Blake‘s self-titled LP has sold just more than 30,000 copies stateside since its release by Universal Republic in March. That’s not quite the smash hit that I predicted in my Pitchfork review; I thought (and still think, really) “Lindesfarne” had a blessed spot on FM radio and season-ending television shows, but that’s yet to…
Watching the video for “Hallway of Mirrors,” the title track from the new album by New York State guitarist Alexander Turnquist, you might get the sense that you’re watching the preamble to a love story. A woman walks into a park and begins hula hooping, her lithe, black-clad figure offering a provocative contrast to the…
There’s nothing “slightly overweight” about Damien Abraham, the round-all-over frontman of relentlessly ambitious Toronto hardcore innovators Fucked Up. Abraham is an inarguably big man, not altogether dissimilar (in shape at least, as Abraham is a good deal smaller) from Butterbean, the rotund American boxing icon. But Tuesday night, 45 minutes and a gallon of sweat…
Download “World Gone Global” here. The first single from WHATWAVE, the second album by peripatetic indie rock quintet The Dead Trees, is appropriately called “World Gone Global.” The title fits the sunny-afternoon, backyard jangle; despite production by Devendra Banhart crony Noah Georgeson and a long-standing partnership with Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., The Dead Trees…
(Download “July” here.) Writing about this song might be more appropriate with another week’s time, as it will be July, and well, that’s the name of the stunning A-side from a forthcoming single by Boise’s Youth Lagoon. But that relationship is coincidental, while this song–a bittersweet, image-rich builder that uses all of its five minutes…
Yesterday, I wrote about Shaking Through, one of my trusted new series for watching and discovering new music on the Internet. One of my favorite things about Shaking Through is that it demystifies the process of recording a bit, pulling the blinds up and letting the viewer see not just how someone plays a song…
It seems like every week or so, some blog or music website comes up with a new way to show a band playing another song, whether that’s in the street or in the back of a car or simply on a stage. Maybe it’s a new concept, like a band covering a tune by an…
“Iso-Residue” is the shortest song on the 10th album by Texas rock quartet Centro-matic by nearly a minute. In its 140 seconds, though, it covers both a lot of ground and, really, no ground at all. Its work is its swagger and pace, moving with a jubilance and conviction that’s enviable; like a perfect punk…
(Download “Indian Summer (Des Moines)” here.) When Nashville’s Daniel James makes a record as Canon Blue, he doesn’t hedge his bets: His 2007 debut, Colonies, was a collaboration with Grizzly Bear‘s Chris Taylor. An album a bit before what might have been its time, Colonies mixed elemental singer-songwriter fare with sweeping electronic textures. Last year,…
In a recent piece for Slate called “Bringing Saxy Back: The sax solo returns to pop music,” critic Jonah Weiner connected hits by Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to proclaim that “the saxophone is repopulating” pop music. In earlier decades, the shiny, serpentine cylinder had been a staple, used by everyone from No Wave noiseniks…
Note: Each Friday, we’ll close with a song we consider a suiting goodbye for the workweek. With each Music for Fridays post, check for a free mp3. Early last year, the fresh-faced, co-ed Toronto outfit First Rate People self-released It’s Never Not Happening, a handmade seven-track EP with a photocopied tracklist and cover art cut…
The 25-year-old California musician Frank Fairfield has toured in support of Fleet Foxes and Cass McCombs, two bands at or near indie rock’s recent crossover metastasis. But Fairfield doesn’t approach the twisting folk-pop of Fleet Foxes or the elliptical escapades of Cass McCombs. Rather, Fairfield plays banjo, guitar, fiddle and, quite often, the floor with…
(Download “Escape” here.) It’s been five years now since Richard Buckner made Meadow, his eighth album and second for Merge Records. On Meadow, Buckner confirmed what he’d been building for the last decade–a collection of words and images with very few modern songwriting peers, in spite of a fanbase that’s generously described as cultish. Don’t…
In the past decade, Lou Reed‘s certainly made his musical adventures. There’s been an hour of urban-aquatic meditations, an epic inspired by Edgar Allen Poe that featured David Bowie and Ornette Coleman, and a pairing with filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s for the live-residency concert film and album Berlin. Hell, he’s even collaborated with old and new…
Speaking of the 10th Bonnaroo, this year’s massive Manchester, Tenn., festival produced a load of good media: Ben Ratliff’s commentary for The New York Times was slightly elliptical and very intriguing, like a set of elaborations carefully built from random notebook scraps. There’s the excellent stream of The Arcade Fire set, too, plus this charming…
The accepted wisdom regarding Neil Young‘s career is that, unless you’re really willing to dig for gems, you’d bdo best to skip his ’80s output. In the decade-plus that came before the reign of Reagan, Young released some of rock’s most memorable songs–“Cinnamon Girl,” “Southern Man,” “Down by the River,” or for a few years,…
