Pill Wonder is the alias of Will Murdoch. Being Bored is a lo-fi jumble of tunes. It used to have all these ribbons made of brightly coloured melodies. By the time Pill Wonder is through with them, they've been stained and torn and chewed by his dog, then rolled into a palm sized ball. Delightfully poppy stuff from his 2009 cassette Jungle/Surf . Pill Wonder - Being Bored (alternate download)
Lord Huron meets Ducktails...

I almost didn't make this list. I mean, come on. It's New Year's Eve. No one cares anymore. Everyone's just getting psyched for Ariel Pink or Titus tonight (you should definitely go to one of those shows, by the way), and looking forward to the whole music cycle starting over again in 2011. I swear I started trying to make this list at least two weeks ago, but as I was getting closer and closer to posting it, I started dreading it more and more. I realized that I didn't listen to enough music this year. Seriously, I [...]

Welcome to The New York Rockmarket's end of the year list spectacular. This is when I talk about how lists are fun but ultimately meaningless, and apologize for not posting the last few days because I've been compiling my lists. This is also where I talk about favorites as opposed to best, like I did last year . All of those things still apply. I'm making two lists this year: Favorite Songs and Favorite Albums. I'm going to attempt to skew my albums list a bit more towards the critical, but this songs list is just straight-up about fun, beautiful, [...]
Lets be honest: I can't name a single Guided By Voices song and all I know about Robert Pollard is that he is quite frankly, the most prolific artist I've never listened to. That admitted (judgment please be kind) the idea of a cassette full of covers by some of my favorite artists working today [...]
Lets be honest: I can't name a single Guided By Voices song and all I know about Robert Pollard is that he is quite frankly, the most prolific artist I've never listened to. That admitted (judgment please be kind) the idea of a cassette full of covers by some of my favorite artists working today [...]

Pill Wonder - My Valuable Hunting Knife Denna låt, med fantastiska titeln, är av Pill Wonder från Seattle. Tidigare i år släpptes skivan Jungle/Surf, men där är inte denna reko lofi-pop med en touch av lite 60-tal med. En snabblyssning på övriga låtar avslöjar dock att ljudet där rör sig i samma sfär som detta.
Bill Baird treats his fans well. He maintains a dedicated following that, if his new album Loveshines But The Moon Is Shining Too is any indication, should increase exponentially shortly. Baird appears quite kind to fans as well, as his tireless work ethic and dedication caught my attention in 2008, when he released two full-lengths [...]
Thanks to Weekly Tape Deck for posting this MP3 from the Wild Animal Kingdom Guided By Voices cover album. MP3: Pill Wonder - My Valuable Hunting Knife (GBV cover) I think if you had an old cassette of the Beach Boys that was just about to fall apart, this is probably pretty close to what [...]

Our Seattle friends from the Wild Animal Kingdom have just announced the super limited (100 copies) release of Guided by Voices covers, Guided By Guided By Voices . A 16 track compilation from some of our favorites and includes Pill Wonder 's version of the great " My Valuable Hunting Knife ". They definitely add their own subtle touches, but I'm sure that this version would bring a smile to Mr. Pollard's face. The entire tracklisting is somewhat of a mystery and the only way I see to find the answer is to [...]
The year is just over half-way through, and so it seems like a good time to make a of list of some of my favorite music that's come out this year. I've included my favorite albums and songs (not from my 'Top Albums' list), as well as the releases I'm most excited for coming out (probably) this year. Looking back on the first 6 months of 2010, it's been a pretty impressive year. There's been some expected favorites (Titus Andronicus, The National, Broken Social Scene, Tallest Man On Earth) but mostly it's been stuff I didn't know that I would [...]
Tiny Mix Tapes - "Cerberus" 13; READ HERE I asked Tiny Mix Tapes' J Spicer if I could contribute to the "Cerberus" column because I think it's fantastic - I make no bones about that. This is the latest installment. In this one I review Prudence Teacup, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer/Penetration Camp, Gnarly Sheen/Alien Soundtracks and Lonnie [...]
Thus far, we've seen a few artists attempt to utilize the donation based website Kickstarter.com to fund the release of a new album . But the Mountain Man Festival is taking it going one step further, as it is now asking the music community to help fund an entire music festival. The story goes something like this, per the festival's Kickstarter page : "Shane & Gabe have a dream. A dream to host the raddest festival that ever existed (enter Mountain Man Fest) And certainly the first of [...]

Times New Viking have just changed their font of choice, yep from now on they shall drink from the excellent nosebag provided by Pill Wonder. PW are a collective of many individuals who specialise in generating a grand pocket orchestra within the confines of a thimble. Yep, it's certifiably twee and sounds like it has passed through an industrial blender several times but the collage is certainly putting the pitter in my patter this evening. Who needs working microphones, sober singers or unchewed cassettes as recording devices when Pill Wonder can make the sorry mess sound as wholesome as feeding [...]

SXSW was a wonderful land of craziness and constant streams of beautiful music from which I have still not fully recovered. It seems too much of a daunting task to detail every wonderful thing I witnessed, so I'll attempt to bring you the highlights. My first night in Austin, me and a friend headed out to the Underwater Peoples (lovely DC based label, check em out!) ranch party outside the city. This quaint country abode with it's barbecue and bugs served as the perfect introduction to the festival. After days of driving, nothing [...]

There's so much going on at sxsw that it's impossible to see even a sliver of what the week has to offer. That's why doing a top ten performances of the week list is sort of silly. On the other hand, I saw some excellent new bands that I'd like to draw a little extra attention to. For this list, I focused on bands that I might not have blogged as much about before SXSW. Did I enjoy Real Estate's and Japandroid's sets at the conference? Yes, very much so. Was that a surprise? Not at all, and rehashing my [...]

I had a few extra photos from SXSW. I thought I'd simply post them here, in no particular order. Plus, a few MP3s below. SXSW 2010: [...]
by kevin diamond This week on the Hype Filter , we have a quick survey of bands I've seen and look forward to catching while I'm in SXSW this weekend. If you know me at all, you can probably guess that these bands live in the dirty side of the pond. Lots of lo-fi goodness. Best part about these bands: I'll be seeing them all at unofficial showcases, most of which rival and tower over any of the official SXSW shows put together. Hope you [...]

Yesterday was a complete SXSW day. Downtown at noon and not home again until 3AM. Since it was such a late night I didn't get a chance to blog before I started falling asleep sitting up at my computer, so this post will be a bit abbreviated for the time being (gotta get back downtown for more music). I'll fill it in later. The day started off at a lovely little bar called Lovejoy's. Enjoying a really delicious free microbrew, this Pop Montreal showcase got my day off to the perfect start. I came for Turbo Fruits, and [...]