Everyone who knows me knows that the only reason I bought tickets to the Pitchfork Music Festival was because Frightened Rabbit was playing. Well, honestly, I saw amazing bands that I am so very glad to have had the chance to see, but really, they were all just the gravy on the Frightened Rabbit pile of mashed potatoes, if ya know what I mean. And as Sunday neared I began to quietly count down the hours until they would take the stage, praying for the sound to be good, for the show to be long, for no disappointments. [...]
Where to start with the shocking loss of Arturo "Thunder" Gatti . Yes this is a music blog but as an editor - being a big sports fan, sometimes we just don't need to be too engulfed in music. Gatti is one of my favorite boxers (which you'll hear a lot of from people) because of his heart and his wildly entertaining trilogy with "Irish" Micky Ward. He wasn't great and people respected that. Boxing fans didn't care about being great but putting in 110% effort at all times was that drew the masses. While on paper he doesn't [...]

Tuesday marked a huge day for music releases. Sonic Youth dropped their highly anticipated "The Eternal" and the mighty Mos Def released his fourth solo offering, "The Ecstatic." The big hype going into "The Eternal" was that Sonic Youth was finally releasing an album on an independent label, Matador Records. There wasn't any real hype going into "The Ecstatic," just a lot of grumbling that Mos was probably going to pitch the third strike that would totally decimate his music career, effectively turning him into the thinking man's Will Smith. Needless to say, both artists are coming from entirely different [...]

Tuesday marked a huge day for music releases. Sonic Youth dropped their highly anticipated "The Eternal" and the mighty Mos Def released his fourth solo offering, "The Ecstatic." The big hype going into "The Eternal" was that Sonic Youth was finally releasing an album on an independent label, Matador Records. There wasn't any real hype going into "The Ecstatic," just a lot of grumbling that Mos was probably going to pitch the third strike that would totally decimate his music career, effectively turning him into the thinking man's Will Smith. Needless to say, both artists are coming from entirely different [...]

With school still having it's grips around me, expect to see some more mp3 reviews. However, I doubt I'll review artists I'm not particular familiar with (I'd rather do album reviews for new artists – or else I'll just sound like a lame duck with not much to say other then on that particular mp3). I was a HUGE fan of John Vanderslice `s Emerald City ( check the review from awhile back – Sept 07) and my 9th favourite album from 2007 . Is it really that long ago? Anyway Vanderslice's record wasn't really [...]
Winter Hours CD Cover The Deep Dark Woods is a Canadian band from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. For those American readers out there, it's in the middle of the summer dust and -40 degree winter chill. It seems unlikely that anything could survive out there, let alone a good group of artists emerge from those flat plains. Saskatoon, though, isn't terribly unlike Winnipeg. The same words and the same sentences could be used to describe that small city – yet The Guess Who managed to eke out the great American classic – "American Woman." [...]

Do you remember Dan Caffrey's list of a few weeks ago? Didn't it make you fall in love? Even if you didn't want to do that. Tom Wait's "Take It With Me" makes me feel seasick-lovesick. That music box piano... If you didn't read it, please do, Mr. Caffrey's list will warm your heart. Mine will make your heart feel like a cold rock. Aptly, it's raining now. It's grey out and just starting to get cold after an [...]

Five Hole noun. The space between a goalie's leg pads, as in ice hockey. I'm not even really sure where to start with this one. Everything about this album has the potential to be both wildly entertaining and so morally wrong at the same time. I don't know about you, but as far as I see it that sounds pretty damn near perfect. What folk rock loving, red blooded, sexually driven, Canadian hockey fan wouldn't be into something like this? The name of the album alone almost made me want [...]
It has been seven years since the world was formally introduced to Ben Kweller and his brand of poppy song-smithing. A prolific few years, mind you – he has created four solo albums and several EPs to date, collaborated with Ben Folds and Ben Lee as The Bens, contributed to Bright Eyes ' Four Winds , and toured like crazy. It's a pity it went mostly unnoticed. His new album, Changing Horses , which was originally slated for a September 2008 release, is not the Ben Kweller you [...]
Top 20 Albums of 2008 by Benn Ray 1. ICE CREAM SPIRITUAL by PONYTAIL Noisy, non-verbal, challenging, and different from everything else that came out this year in all the right ways yet Ponytail still reminds me of much of what I love about bands like Pylon and Deerhoof at their best. On their sophomore release, the band presents a string of punch you in the face songs with guitars switching modes between rapid fire chords to cascades to riffs. Meanwhile, I could swear vocalist Molly Siegel is [...]

Going to church is always an odd experience for me. Not being a very religious person, my trips to religious buildings mainly stem from cubs, school or being dragged to them on family holidays. So it was with an unease that I stepped into Union Chapel to see the BK himself, Ben Kweller . How unnecessary my trepidation was. Union Chapel was a gorgeous venue, all pillars, ornated stonework and stain glass windows. It was a pleasure to squeeze between the wooden pews to find a comfortable place to see the stage. Ben kicked off proceedings with a track [...]

Did you ever sit in the kind of rickety chair you found in the street and brought back home into your apartment because this is where we all got our furniture back in the day, cast off from someone else's life? Did you sit and look at the place in the wall where the paint job was peeling and you got up, picked at it and found another layer, a different color of off yellow, off green or off white, even red than what you had since the day you moved in because that was what landlords did they painted [...]

I Landed The Popsicle Account by Molly Lambert Jon Hamm was the host of SNL last week. We were warned by Paul Rudd , but yes Hamm is indeed naturally very funny and charismatic . As one ONTD commenter who watched Hamm's SNL performance put it, " He's super handsome but I feel like the episode would have been better if I actually watched Mad Men . In other news he is still super freakin handsome ." Indeed. Alex's [...]
Glasvegas INTERVIEW/// WORDS: EMYR PRICE /// Rab Allan is exhausted. The Glasvegas guitarist has just dragged himself from his much needed slumber that followed an overnight drive from the previous nights gig in Manchester, back to the bands home town of Glasgow. Currently enjoying a precious brace of days off prior to some studio time, Rab, despite his delicate state is reflecting buoyantly on events last night and anticipating the forthcoming Scottish leg of the tour, which includes two nights in Glasgow. " Normally I would think the Scots show will be the highlights [...]

Tamaryn August, 29 2008 at CSV theater Suffolk between Delancey and Rivington), NYC, 10012 Cost : $5 W/ Religious To Damn and Vuk! Vuk 9pm Tamaryn 10pm Religious To Damn 11pm The past, present, and future are not absolutes. This baffles the brains of physicists. There is a point on the quantum level where time ceases to exist. There is only NOW. Right now. This moment. That's all we have. The same is true in the musical world. On the level of AWESOME, there is no such thing as time. Right now [...]