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Living the Dream
If you’re the kind of person who treats pop music like the Plague, I’ve got news for you: You’re missing out. This March saw the release of one of the most ambitious and exhilarating albums of the year, and it’s quite defiantly pop-tastic. Certainly in its ingredients, The-Dream’s “Love Vs. Money” is no different from…
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Is Andy Samberg Beethoven?
Whenever people ask me, “What do Andy Samberg and Beethoven have in common?” I usually point to the obvious: “They both have big hair” or, “they both lived in different centuries.” The comedian and the composer both sport unwieldy manes of brown curls, lending them an air of frazzled genius; both have striven to push…
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Lighten Up: _Contra_
The unbridled happiness of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album, released January 29, 2008, coincided with and perfectly complemented the second semester of my senior year of high school; I remember capering with my friends in their basements, half-shouting the lyrics in the spirit of frontman Ezra Koenig’s energetic (occasionally barking) voice, sipping from our preciously…
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“There’s this rich guy, he wants to be famous”
Close your eyes. Are they closed? No, good point, I guess you’ll need to keep them open to read the Powerpoint. Okay, close them when you can, and otherwise close your inner eye, or eyes. The number of inner eyes may depend on the species of your spirit animal—mine, for instance, is the spider (or,…
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There Will Be _Odd Blood_
In an interview with Pitchfork in August 2008—shortly before they were to play at Terrace Club for Lawnparties—bassist Ira Wolf Tuton said that his band, Yeasayer, “always wanted to be the biggest band in the world.” This remark is a testament to just how far indie music has come in the past decade. There was…
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“Well, Daring, I Can’t Go—”
Joanna Newsom must be the most enigmatically fascinating figure in indie music today. Though she’s shrouded in a barely-tangible sense of cultured innocence—her closeness with her astrophysicist and musician siblings, her compositions and lyricism refined by academia yet bejeweled with joy—she’s ended up working with some of the most formidably famous people in the business…
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“But You May Stay Here, With Me”
Oscar Hyde having provided you, in his nefariously multifarious style, with all the juicy historical context you could possibly desire [see prior article], I find myself relieved of the standard duty to explain that “Newsom has two parents” and “Newsom plays the harp,” and in rather the unique and enviable position of being able to…
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Top 30 Albums on WPRB
1. BLACK TAMBOURINE Black Tambourine [Slumberland] 2. FOUR TET There Is Love In You [Domino] 3. PANTHA DU PRINCE Black Noise [Rough Trade] 4. TITUS ANDRONICUS The Monitor [XL] 5. VARIOUS ARTISTS Pomegranates: Persian Pop [B-Music] 6. TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS The Brutalist Bricks [Matador] 7. DUM DUM GIRLS I Will Be [Sub Pop]…
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Bombs and Hookers
“Innovator”—Plains (Link) At first we think it’s a requiem; the minors chords on a solo guitar, “ROOSEVELT DIES SUDDENLY” as the featured headline. The women weep as Truman kisses the Bible, then as shadows descend over the mountains the soldiers don their goggles with resolve. Grief is somehow implied in their faces as they set…
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Desert Apocalypse
During the monorail ride at the Newark Airport, most of the talk was about how “crazy” the weekend would be at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The lineup was particularly strong this year, boasting Thom Yorke, The xx, Phoenix, Tiesto, and Spoon, to name a few. I was traveling with a group of…
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Scan His Rhymes
If great hip-hop artists produce minor hip-hop artists, as RZA brought us Method Man and Biggie Diddy, Gucci Mane may achieve greatness on October 5th, when Waka Flocka Flame attempts to achieve with _Flockaveli_ what OJ Da Juiceman sort-of eventually bothered to get around to with _Tha Other Side of the Trap._ Of course this…
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Buy [Gucci’s] Album
In the video for the first single off his new LP _The Appeal: Georgia’s Most Wanted_, Gucci Mane, sporting space-age bug-eyed sunglasses, a grey keffiyeh and a mink around his head, asks his audience, “Do you know what time it is?” The answer, of course, is Gucci Time. _The Appeal_, which dropped September 28, is…