Blog: 4F :

"Bodyguard," the first song on Dawn Landes ' latest album, was written as a reaction to her Brooklyn apartment being burglarized. The ensuing theft saw a hard drive, containing the only copy of her ready- to- go second album, vanish. "I never looked back or tried to recreate those songs, never played them, nothing. I just started over from scratch," she says. The album "Fireproof" is the fruit of that labor. The title, obviously, suggests both vulnerability and indestructibility: I'm sure Ms. Landes [...]

When I read, in the accompanying press release for Portland's Strangers Die Every Day 's debut album, that they had previously opened up for Thurston Moore, I was immediately seized by an intuition telling me that I was not going to like this album at all. I saw Thurston (one of my absolute all- time musical heroes) at the Great American Music Hall back in October and the group (not SDED) that opened for him... well, suffice it to say they just weren't my thing* and I was afraid it was going to be more of the same here. [...]

My life is pretty good. I have a long way to go to get to where I want and I'm sure even when I get there, I won't be satisfied--probably because I'm never content with anything. My point being, as each year slips by, there are a few people in my life, both private and public persons, who I never got a chance to meet because they died. Some I wanted to head-butt with a steel spike, others, dine with over some wine and Moroccan food. But when I was in a band my DREAM, my GOAL IN LIFE, [...]

It is raining outside, and I am in kind of a bad mood. I've been trying to work on music all day and

I met Janet Weiss yesterday. I think her husband was there too, you know, the other half of the amazing Quasi . I didn't say hi to him, but almost embarrassed myself gloating over Weiss. She's awesome. I think Quasi's in town for Noise Pop , but I couldn't find them listed anywhere. Anyway, Noise pop promises to be great this year. If you are lucky enough to have a ticket for tonight's sold out Magnetic Fields show, I envy you. I hear there's free beer available thanks to Diesel. Check the details below:

One of my favorite images of all time is a Shel Silverstein sketch of a man playing a guitar that is also his own face and torso. A guitarotaur, if you will. The cover of Say Hi (formerly Say Hi To Your Mom) 's fifth album, The Wishes and the Glitch, reminds me in a fleeting way of the Silverstein sketch, for it is an illustration of a boxy robot (three boxy robots, actually) opening up its own quadrilateral chest outward, like a refrigerator door, exposing what's inside. Say Hi is, according [...]

I'll admit this here & now: Every time a former Beatle releases a new album, I'm hopeful, ready to give every benefit of every doubt. And this is true: I got teary eyed, once, when I was reading a review of a then-new Paul McCartney CD that received high praise. I couldn't believe it, especially when the reviewer wrote that the new songs stood up to Paul's output on "Revolver." Yes! "Revolver"! Dang! Then I went and bought a copy and the first lines of the first song were "One, two, three, four, five/Let's go for a drive." Not exactly [...]

As you probably already know, Valentine's Day is a holiday celebrated on February 14. In North America, it is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other by sending cards, presenting flowers, or offering confectionery. Named after two among the numerous Early Christian martyrs named Valentine, the day became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is in /Parlement of Foules /(1382) by Chaucer: [...]

It's February in San Francisco and it seems like everybody has somebody. The sun came out yesterday for the first time in weeks and love-struck assholes from every walk of life flooded the streets. There was kissing in the on the sidewalks. There was hand-holding in the corner store. There was what looked coitus in the park. Yuck. Public coitus is the absolute worst. "Public coitus is the absolute worst," I said to no one in particular, although "no one" included everyone in the 10-items-or-less line at Safeway. "Hallmark must be responsible for this." I [...]

Full disclosure: I am a former, and slightly fanatical, Athens, GA resident. As such, January was a great month for me in terms of new music. Athens' finest the Drive- By Truckers' latest opus "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" does not disappoint, and neither does Chan Marshall's (Cat Power) latest, "Jukebox" (that Chan is technically a native of Atlanta, really got her start in New York City, and now lives in Miami does not phase me). Athens' residents The Whigs ' second release, "Mission Control," (also issued in January) is yet another [...]

I've been quite lucky to have so much help from great writers like Farhad J. Parsa, Evan Greenwald, Jory John, and John Hell. No longer is 4F a space for one person's look at the current world of music, but instead, a true collaboration. I've set up a separate page for Mr. Greenwald's epic list of his favorite music, musicians, and songs from 2007. Here's just an excerpt: Album of the Year: Neon Bible By The Arcade Fire I don't know why I've been denying it all year

764-Hero : Terrified of Flight Black Flag: Police Story Firehose : She Paints Pictures Bad Brains : Big Takeover Liars : Houseclouds sadsadfun : Ever Loving Light (the old version...it's downloadable now) Spoon : Revenge! Spoon : Underdog CSS : Art Bitch CSS : Knife [...]

There is little room for Kingsbury to be happy, apparently. They're melancholy of sometimes the best quality, like the Smashing-Pumpkins-meets-a-sad- version-of-the-Violent-Femmes of their album's opener, "Corpse," with the heavy church bells and the distorted humming guitar, the climactic gloom of "Buried Beneath the Trees," or the heavy, sped-up march of "Blood In the Kitchen." And sometimes it's just really, really bizarre, like in "Desert Inn". But you have to give Kingsbury credit. Most bands who try out the dreary vocal style drown faster than their lyrics say they want to be. But here the dreariness is [...]

Well let's not get ahead of ourselves, but really, this is a musical achievement. A band has actually combined the weird-noise beep-boop-bopping of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the jolly dance of the circus, and, but only sometimes, the brainless insane screech of the screemo genre into one compact nine-song album. Imagine you've got yourself a fifty-five-minute, twenty-eight-second long caffeine rush that just happens to sound great too, and there you go. Animal Collective. Some of it actually doesn't sound good at all (the mumbling drone of "1"), but when it works, it's a miracle. Easily the [...]

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Way up in the rural New Hampshire town of Alton, miles from any state highway that carry vacationers to the nearby lakes and ski areas, are the workshops of Smile Laboratories. There's no sign on the highway alerting you to its presence, and the vast building complex is set back too far to be seen from the road. If you do somehow manage to beat the odds and find the place, it's likely that you'll never forget the experience. You'll be greeted at the door by our attractive receptionist, the ever ebullient LaShaundra, who will be only too happy to [...]

In the past couple of weeks I've seen two really great live shows: one by Grizzly Bear and another by Final Fantasy . I have a feeling that Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy, both, will shape the future of music. I don't see them as big stars, I see them more as catalysts to a newer sound. As with most great bands their music is SO MUCH BETTER live than on their albums. You can hear/see their subtleties and dynamics, as you do with really great bands. Grizzly Bear's multi-instrumental/vocal sharing is tight. [...]

When Robbers on High Street performed at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco last Friday, I got all turned around. They

There are these moments when you're watching the Two Gallants and Adam Stephens is singing so forcefully and Tyson Vogel is essentially destroying his drum set and you

Just got this in the email, and, well, I like it. I actually like it more than anything that has been sent my way in a while. The label is called Discos Mariscos and they're out of Florida, apparently. Here are three of their latest releases. The words are theirs: On the Death of Science as a Major World Religion by the Cadets Noise squalls and deliberate rock songs from one of the dozens of Northeast Florida's unjustly ignored weirdrock bands. This album is currently available at Discos Mariscos , but is [...]