So here we are at the weekend before the holiday season officially begins and everyone's schedule gets really busy, so get your music fixes in now. On Thursday night you can check out the final night of the Jenny Dee & The Deelinquints residency at the Lizard. It's also the first night of the International Pop Overthrow 4 night stint at Church. Night 1 of the IPO has The Buckners, The Doom Buggies and more. There are also 2 great free shows on Thursday, Lars Vegas is at the Alchemist and Sally O'Brien's has an impressive lineup. On Friday Thalia [...]
It's pretty difficult to bottle together Human Conduct Records as a uniform whole. Portions of their output could pass as material from your average Joe's favorite freak folk label, whereas the opposite is true for their less accessible releases. An understandable slight of ambivalence may sour your first impression of HCR-and that's certainly not abnormal in this case. Uncertainty to the nature of the noise going through your headphones can, after all, be a bit daunting. The fact is: that's precisely the sort of thing you have to expect when you're talking about a [...]
In 2004, Annie—Bergen, Norway's sunniest export—scored both club hits and indie cred with her debut album Anniemal . Her sophomore LP Don't Stop was initially announced in early 2008, but got tangled up, as she explains it, in a nasty case of record label drama. "I kept on delivering things but it was never enough," says the singer. Fast forward a year-and-a-half later, and Don't Stop has finally arrived on these shores, thanks to Oslo-based label Smalltown Supersound. Idolator met up with 31-year-old Annie (real name: Anne Lilia Berge Strand) in Los Angeles [...]
Brooklyn's Gold Streets specialize in thick, ethereal, lush, dreamy soundscapes that you can dance and singalong to... this is why we love them. Here at EAR FARM, we specialize in bringing awesome free music to your ears... this is why you love us. Consider this, then: Gold Streets is playing a very special CD release show on Sunday at Mercury Lounge and we are giving away TWO TICKETS to this very show!! All you have to do to enter for a chance to win these tickets is email us at mail -at- earfarm -dot- [...]
I've never met an album that didn't change for me somehow. Now, they can go up and down the scale in either a positive or negative direction, but there isn't one that escapes a reframing of sorts somewhere along the line. For some albums, time is the perfect vindicator. The album is revealed as a master stroke and the audiences' initial conceptions are what become tarnished. Other times, what was once golden falls into disrepair, looking like an old sack of potatoes, stripped of its luster and banished to the bin. This state of flux is part of what makes [...]
Welcome to the new, not-really-improved BabyStew This Week In Chicago listing. What's new about it, you ask? Absolutely nothing, except that it now covers the week from Monday through Sunday rather than Sunday through Saturday. It always seemed weird to me not to be listing Sunday shows until the morning of – when not many people are reading blogs – for the sole purpose of sticking with the conventional definition of "week" ( i.e. , Sun-Sat). But convention be damned. So here's what's going on in Chicago this "week". [...]
M y friend Rob and I ought to be ashamed of ourselves. If certain people knew what we sometimes do in our spare time, they'd probably never send us another email, text message or IM. Maybe they'd stop talking to us altogether. What are we up to now? On slow days, we spend hours chatting on MSN, poking fun of the comedy of manners that is dating in Buenos Aires and cracking up over some of the messages sent to us by our Argentine suitors. I know it's not a very nice thing to do, but when someone [...]
Frank Yang In leading up to Friday night's show at Lee's Palace, I'd wondered aloud as to why it had taken The Wooden Sky so long to play a proper hometown show, what with their latest record, the ex If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone having come out all the way back in August. Walking into Lee's, I got my answer - they were building their sets. The stage was breathtakingly decorated with all manner of props and sculptures built of paperback [...]
Een weblog als Ketelmuziek levert een bomvolle mailbox op. Elke dag komt er mail binnen van artiesten, labels en distributie-bedrijfjes met de vraag of Ketelmuziek aandacht wil besteden aan een CD, video of optreden. Tussen die verzoekjes zit veel rotzooi, zo ben je bij ons aan het verkeerde adres als het om dance, metal of funk gaat, maar het blijft de moeite waard om de mailbox door te ploegen. Zo heel af en toe levert het namelijk iets moois op. Zoals White Pines. Via de mail ontving ik de EP Face Made of Wood en dat [...]
So many great choices for Thursday. You could start at Toad for the early part of the night and see uke master Melvern Taylor. Afterwards there are many venues that have great line-ups. Gordon Gano, yup the guy from the Violent Femmes, and his his new band is at the Middle East with Sidewalk Driver and Mascara. Also on Thursday there's the Lovewhip cd release at Church or go to TTs for John Powhida International Airport, Logan 5 and the Runners, Weisstronauts and Mercy James (great local line-up!). On Friday, I'll Be at Precinct to see My Own Worst Enemy, [...]
Donnybrook reviewed films playing the Starz Denver Film Festival this week on a 100 star system. Why? Because our opinion counts 20 times more than most peoples'. Our panel learned many lessons, one of them being: don't let Adam Scott near your girlfriend, especially if Adam Scott happens to be YOUR BROTHER. Words by Angora Holly Polo, Fritz Godard , and Donnybrook's newest Unnamed Intern #2 . Harmony and Me: 79 STARS [...]
Andy Willsher My trip to London last May yielded no shortage of fond and lasting memories, but one of the most vivid is also one of the most unremarkable and inexplicable. My plan for my first visit to the city was pretty much to pick a particular district or two for each day I was there and just wander - one day, the West End, the next day, Soho, Covent Garden and Westminster, the day after, the East End and Greenwich. Greenwich wasn't a place I had any particular prior affinity for, but I [...]
If you have not heard 'Young Folks' by Peter Bjorn and John , you must be living under a rock. And even if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm sure you've heard it even if you didn't know whom it was by because 'Young Folks' was a top 20 hit on the UK singles chart 3 years ago. It begins with a snappy whistling intro that could be irritating I suppose if you're not into that sort of thing. Me? I love it - the song rates on my [...]
Parts of this interview originally appeared in my Pop and Hiss article on Wale . More on Attention Deficit tomorrow, maybe. So judging from the title of Attention Deficit , its wide-ranging sound, and interviews that you've given, it seems like it's your commentary on the fragmented nature of the Internet world, with a million blogs, twitters, and dozens of mixtapes released daily, How hard is it for an artist to create something that has a life span longer than the next blog post? I think a [...]
"Masters of War" is the truth. Bob Dylan's 1963 screed against Johnson's military-industrial complex closes with (I'd argue) the most powerful eight lines in popular music: "And I hope that you die/and your death will come soon/and I'll follow your casket/by the pale afternoon/and I'll watch while you're lowered/down to your deathbed/and I'll stand over your grave/'till I'm sure that you're dead." It's an obvious anti-war song and one of our best. (long aside: Although the man himself has said that it's not an anti-war song per se, but a pacifistic statement against war, I think that what [...]
Adding to the usual debauchery of Halloween weekend is the FEST in Gainesville, Florida. For three days (October 30 through November 1) avid music fans permeate Gator town. With over 300 bands playing in a dozen venues throughout the city, paired with impromptu and house shows, the FEST is like a punk enthusiast's scavenger hunt to awesomeness. The FEST is filled with ink, beards, and the Pabst Blue Ribbon that pours out of sweaty fans' pores, as they fist pump and crowd surf. Outside of the music related fare, there is Friday's FEST-organized pool party at [...]
Former The Microphones frontman Phil Elverum, is coming to Louisville as Mount Eerie alongside the brilliant Tara Jane O'Neil and No Kids . We'd already mentioned that Mount Eerie was coming to Lexington's Red Mile on Oct. 22, the one year anniversary of their Louisville show at Skull Alley . Well, if an hour was to far for you to drive to see this show, you have another show Thursday, November 5th at [...]
Low - Words Saturday Looks Good to Me - Typing Sandbox Astronomy - Lost Languages Jeffrey Lewis - Alphabet Jordaan Mason - What's In Your Head Radiohead - These Are My Twisted Words Please tell me you're one of those people who love looking up words in dictionaries. Good. Thanks for that. I like to imagine that all our readers are the kind of people who [...]
I spend closing night at CMJ in the cozy confines of Union Hall's basement. I can't really see shows there without thinking of time (over three years ago , now) when we somehow managed to squash Secret Society into that space. Good times. Anyway, Saturday was kind of an unofficial roots/folk-rock night there, which suited me fine. La Strada were in mid-set when I arrived. As you can see, they've got kind of a postmodern Williamsburg troubadour vibe going [...]
I went to a lot of shows in October (including a Shotgun Jimmie instore and an historical Roky Erickson show with The Sadies that I still have yet to tell you about) which means that I think I'm going to chill out a bit for the month of November. I'll still be catching a few, but I'll likely be limiting it to a few of the smaller ones. Still, there's a lot to do, and here are my picks. For more detailed listings, as usual, go check out Stillepost , [...]
WKND PLYLST!! This has nothing to do with NEW MOON!
Vampire Weekend - Cousins
HOT CHIP TAKE another crack at IT and I’m IN
The Beach House Theory of 2k10.
new music from vampire weekend – cousins + music video
