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May
13th

Mon

More than half of the songs on Modern Vampires of the City are about young people who hyperbolically conflate adulthood with death, or at least with permanently surrendering a sense of possibility and license for recklessness. Koenig’s characters sense doors closing behind them at every turn, and feel the weight of decisions they might have not considered to be particularly important even just a few years ago. For his protagonists, YOLO isn’t a declaration of freedom; it’s a nagging pressure to make the most of their finite youth.

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Vampire Weekend Vs. YOLO

I wrote an essay about Vampire Weekend’s new album, which is so far my favorite record of 2013. I’ve been dying to talk about it for weeks now; I’m pretty happy with how this came out.

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Ever wonder why some artists get signed to labels, and then they never get to release any music, or their record gets delayed forever? Aylin Zafar explains why this happens in this excellent, very well reported feature story.

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May
7th

Tue

I had a long conversation with Stuart Murdoch about his first movie – eight years in the making! – and the past and future of Belle & Sebastian, and now it’s up as a feature length Q&A. Stuart was very high up on my wish list of people I’ve been wanting to interview, so this was quite a thrill for me. I hope you like it too - we get pretty deep into some stuff.

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Apr
24th

Wed

I wrote an essay about Phoenix and the increasingly prominent place for French musicians in American pop culture.

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Apr
22nd

Mon

Thee Oh Sees
“Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster”

Man, this song. This like someone ringing a thousand Pavlov bells for me at once. This song makes me wish I played guitar because it sounds so fun to play. I can very clearly imagine being in a basement or shed and running through this over and over in an afternoon with a few people, just kinda getting lost in the ebb and flow of the groove. It feels vicariously cathartic just listening to it, so what must it be like to actually play it?

(Source: youtube.com)

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Apr
20th

Sat

The 90s were better than the 80s, and one key reason was that there was less originality. Originality is unmusical. The urge to do music is an admiring emulation of music one loves; the urge toward originality happens under threat that the music that sounds good to you somehow isn’t good enough.

— The late Scott Miller in his excellent and thought-provoking book of music criticism, Music: What Happened? You can buy the digital version of the book for less than $4 through Amazon, FYI.

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Bat For Lashes
“Oh Yeah”
Live at Coachella, April 13, 2013

It is an awful thing to feel stuck and uninspired, as if your inner life has all gone blank. You feel the absence in your mind, but you don’t know how to fill it. “Oh Yeah” is sung from the perspective of a woman who feels this lack, and she’s desperately hoping for a quick fix. “I’m looking for a lover to climb inside,” Natasha Khan sings, her voice rising up with an optimistic yearning. “Waiting like a flower to open wide, I’m in bloom!” From the first verse, she sings about feeling alive, echoing the climax of “Lilies,” a song with more or less the same narrative at the start of the record. But “Oh Yeah!” is more sexual and less ambiguous. She’s unlocked something in her mind and body, and the song communicates her desire to act on this personal breakthrough.

(Originally posted 10/30/2012)

(Source: youtube.com)

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Apr
17th

Wed

Scott Miller, the singer and songwriter of Loud Family and Game Theory, as well as the author of an excellent book of music criticism called Music: What Happened?, has died. He was a huge talent, and incredibly intelligent and kind. You can get a sense of who he was and what he accomplished in this interview I conducted with him about his book back in 2011. There’s a bunch of songs embedded, give them a listen too. The Game Theory catalog is being given away for free on the official site, and you can find the Loud Family catalog on Spotify et al. My favorite albums are Interbabe Concern, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, Days for Days, and Lolita Nation.

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This is what the last two Coachellas look like with only the female fronted acts. We did this for every year of the festival going back to 1999, and analyzed the gender breakdown by year. Data by Maria Sherman and Jane Kelly, graphics by Chris Ritter, and article by Amy Rose Spiegel.

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Apr
15th

Mon

Basement Jaxx featuring Dizzee Rascal
“Lucky Star”

Can you even fathom how much I wish there was more music like Rooty/Cish Cish-era Basement Jaxx?

(Source: youtube.com)

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Apr
10th

Wed

Vampire Weekend
“White Sky”
Live on KCRW 2010

“White Sky” is a stroll through uptown Manhattan, taking in the art and architecture that is available to everyone while quietly pondering the barriers between the public domain and the private property of the powerful and wealthy. The tension is faint, but it’s there: You walk through this area, always dimly aware of the immense luxury just out of view, and all the places where you don’t belong that share a border with the common culture. The boundaries are at once glaringly obvious and weirdly invisible; security guards and doormen are merely a second line of defense after the sheer banality of class stratification.

Resentment is usually mitigated by aspiration — you can get a contact high off the big money and high culture; you can dream of ways of insinuating yourself into this world. In the final verse of the song, Ezra Koenig’s protagonist pictures herself in this context:

look up at the buildings

imagine who might live there

imagining your Wolfords in a ball upon the sink there

I love that last line; it’s so specific and loaded with implication. You can read this a few ways, but it makes the most sense to me if she’s only just a visitor, her access granted by personal connection and sexual availability. It sounds cynical, but it doesn’t have to be. There are certainly worse ways of attaining social mobility.

Originally posted 6/3/2010

(Source: youtube.com)

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Apr
4th

Thu

This was Fleetwood Mac’s setlist tonight, at the opening show of their tour in Ohio. I’m going to see them on Monday and they’ll probably play pretty much this exactly and I’m pretty excited. (“Sad Angel” and “Without You” are unreleased new songs, FYI.)

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I interviewed Bradford Cox and the rest of Deerhunter yesterday and we mainly talked about how much Bradford hates Morrissey and The Smiths. It’s a really funny interview, and you should read it knowing that Bradford was having fun, not being angry or anything.

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Apr
3rd

Wed

I wrote a piece about The Knife’s amazing new album Shaking the Habitual, and its connection to goth and social justice, and how its packaging/marketing will keep a lot of people from noticing that it’s waaaay more emotional/physical than cerebral.

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Mar
26th

Tue

I made a guide to Stereolab’s body of work on BuzzFeed last week. Going on the reception, it seems almost futile to get anyone under the age of 28 to even listen to this band. If you are in your teens or 20s, please give them a chance because you will probably find something to love, or possibly one of your new favorite bands.

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