The summer of 2003 was a hot one in eastern Washington, and my concrete bunker of an apartment contained the heat like no other. Granted, the above image wasn't shot by yours truly until 2004, but it sure seemed hot enough to ignite even the least combustible of items. I wrapped up my undergraduate that December, which was cold as Antarctica, and upon that milestone I moved to Seattle. It was a good year for the Northwest; many of my favorite albums came from Seattle labels like Sub Pop and Barsuk. As for the list, I've [...]
Årtiet lakker så småt mod enden, og i den anledning har Frekvens kigget tilbage på de bedste plader fra perioden 2000 – 2009. Alle redaktionens medlemmer har således indleveret deres top 25 lister over årtiets plader, og de er nu blevet regnet sammen til Frekvens' definitive top 60 over årtiets bedste albums. Ikke mindre end 145 albums har været med i overvejelserne, men Arcade Fires debut endte med at blive den suveræne vinder, af et i øvrigt utroligt stærkt felt. Death Cab For Cutie forsangeren Ben Gibbards hyggeprojekt The Postal Service rendte med 2. pladsen, blandt andet foran to [...]
On Wednesday, Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla spoke with MTV about Death Cab's plans for the new year. While no dates have been determined, and writing new music has been mostly demo work, Walla said the band does plan to reconvene to start work on a new album in 2010. Regarding the new album, Walla pointed to Wilco as a band he thinks Death Cab could emulate, in the sense of the arc of their newest album. "I think they took the thing that happened on the previous [...]
French songstress (and actress) Charlotte Gainsbough is preparing her first album in four years, "IRM," and she has some pretty heavyweight collaborators: Nigel Godrich, Jarvis Cocker, Air and ... Beck , who produces and duets with Serge Gainsbourgh's daughter on the song "Heaven Can Wait." I'm not sure I grasp the meaning of any of the video's vignettes, but they're all in slow-motion, so maybe you'll have time to figure it out. ◊ ◊ ◊ Speaking of Beck, the third installment of his Record Club is up. The series features Beck [...]
Last night I had the pleasure of hanging out with some great people and witnessing an incredibly dynamic set of bands at the Middle East Upstairs. Each band set a different mood, showed different sets of musicianship, and rounded out this show line-up quite nicely. Without further ado, let's get to the bands: Opening the show was Borrowe d E y es & the Blood Red Road with a single guitar strumming and a four part vocal harmony. Already quite impressed, [...]
The fine folks over at A.V. Club have posted their best-of-the-decade music list today, and at number one they've got the White Stripes' White Blood Cells. That pick is sure to start some rabble-rabble below, but it's a solid pick, backing away from the easy gimme of putting Kid A on top. Though I do take umbrage with calling White Blood Cells "true," since most of the songs are far from any "truth" as I know it. Still though, solid pick. The top ten is rounded out by [...]
For ramblings on how I came to compile this list go here . And for commentary on previous selections: [ #50-46 ] [ #45-41 ] [ #40-36 ] 35. Ys - Joanna Newsom (2006) I get an amazing number of hits to my site from people googling the phrase " I Hate Joanna Newsom ", simply because the word ' hate ' is in the title of this here blog, and I've talked about Ms Newsom [...]
Wilco are fucking pirates The flurry of November tour announcements continues... Dinosaur Jr have just revealed the details of their sideshows for when they are here in March for Golden Plains . Thursday, March 4: Corner Hotel, Melbourne Wednesday, March 10: Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay Thursday, March 11: Metro Theatre, Sydney Friday, March 12: Perth - Rosemount Hotel, Perth Saturday, March 13: Fowlers Live, Adelaide Sunday, March 14: Moorilla, Hobart No word yet on when tickets will be going on sale. [...]
50 M.I.A. - Arula 49 Muse - Absolution 48 The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows 47 Brendan Benson - Lapalco 46 The Delgados - The Great Eastern 45 Avalanches - Since I Left You 44 Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 43 Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot 42 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend 41 Wild Beasts - Two Dancers 40 Ryan Adams - Gold 39 Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles 38 Bloc Party - Silent Alarm 37 The Knife - Silent Shout 36 Spirtualized - Let it [...]
Jesus, Etc. est une magnifique chanson. On le savait déjà. Qu'elle soit interprétée par Wilco ou bien en solo par Jeff Tweedy, guitare acoustique en main, je suis sous le charme. Même quand elle est interprétée a capella en concert par le public comme c'est le cas actuellement lors de la [...]
So there will actually be two Culture Club's today...next one later this evening. From Beck's Record Club project, Skip Spence's "Little Hands" with Feist, Wilco and Jamie Liddell -If you're interested in good causes and/or sneakers, DJ AM's massive sneaker collection will be auctioned off over the coming weeks to support his memorial fund -My Old Kentucky Blog interviewed Yoni Wolf of Why? -Aquarium Drunkard's decade retrospective continues with The Streets' A Grand Don't Come For Free -P4k has a long interview with Atlas Sound [...]
It's been an eventful tour for Grizzly Bear, what with a tour bus accident that stranded half the band in Austria while the other half was la dolce vitaing it in Milan, ultimately forcing the cancellation of their support slot at a Wilco show. However their bills with fellow Twilight superfan Annie Clark are hitting as scheduled, as evidenced by this clip of Daniel Rossen joining St. Vincent at Basel, Switzerland's Volkshaus for a hypnotically looped pass at "The Party": Annie does the singing, Mr. Rossen supplies the inverted guitar chord atmospherics. [...]
The Bad Plus - Radio Cure [Wilco]
Contrast Podcast recently asked music bloggers like myself to submit our favorite 50 songs of the year for their annual "Festive 503 podcast. Our selections were then compiled into a shortlist and now we've been asked to recruit votes to narrow it down. For the curious, I've bolded the 10 songs I personally voted for. I really, really want "Nice Very Nice" by Kurt Vonnegut & Dave Soldier (from their album Ice-9 Ballads ) to make the final list. Not only because it's my favorite song of the year, from my favorite album of the year, [...]
Have you been keeping up with Beck's record club project ? Well, if you have not, the uber talented musician has been covering songs recently, and usually with a talented cast around him. Here is the premise of the record club. Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. As you will hear, some of the songs [...]
The Fiery Furnaces have a new album called Take Me Round Again that was released digitally only on November 5th. In theory, Take Me Round Again is a collection of cover, but it is also a collection of alternate takes of previously released songs. In other words, it features the members of the Fiery Furnaces re-writing each other's work. As Eleanor (who accounts for 1/2 of the Fiery Furnaces) put it: "I've gotten into the habit of rewriting songs Matt has written, just as a way of practicing and singing at home. Originally, I had [...]
De a pocos se van sumando más medios a publicar sus listas con lo mejor de la década, anteriormente revisábamos la lista de la norteamericana Pitchfork con 200 posiciones que escogió como disco de la década a Kid A de Radiohead, ahora es turno de la NME y aunque últimamente ya no tenga la influencia de antes, resulta más que interesante revisar la decisión del staff de la publicación británica. Es conocido el impulso que ha logrado dar la NME a la nueva música británica, no han querido parecer distintos en su lista ya [...]
Matter of Time mp3 The Leisure Society The Sleeper ..... ..... buy it Well, now this is getting interesting... Over at the Contrast Podcast , Tim's solicited everyone for their favorite 50 songs of 2009, remember? From all the responses he's compiled the top 155. I'm very impressed with the list! If you didn't submit your faves yet, you've still got a chance to get in the game at this point! Help us out, eh? (I"ve highlighted my top 10 in blue) Here's [...]
The end of the decade is nearly upon us which inevitably means everyone is about to start rolling out their "best of" lists. This proved to be a rather arduous task, but at the same time I had a lot of fun during the process as it forced me to go back and listen to a lot of albums that I hadn't heard in quite some time. It seems like we tend to get so caught up on trying to hear as much new music as possible that we forget to go back and appreciate many of the [...]
By Jon Stone | @jwstone Over the weekend I saw three shows in Champaign-Urbana. Each show was a good show-great even. But wow, were they different experiences. This disparateness is one of the things that makes thinking and writing about music appealing: parsing through the musical experience looking for clues and connections of their quality with our resulting affinity. My goal here is to review each of these shows but also make a larger argument (that includes some theorizing-sorry: academic alert) about why it is we like the music we do and what [...]
new music from vampire weekend – cousins + music video
Beach House: Norway
No Curve Allowed (Grading This Week's New Tracks)
Friday Five: Surf Songs
