Heart of stone, rind so tough it’s crazy / that’s why they call me the avocado, baby. Shouted alternately by a cheerleading squad and lead singer, this hook appropriately announces the return of Los Campesionos! in the single “Avocado, Baby” from their new album No Blues. It’s a little bit ridiculous, catchy and self-deprecating, and classic Campesinos.
In classic Radiohead fashion, the quirky quartet have kept quite mum in the face of an absolute tsunami of questions about The King and his Limbs. To sort out the shit from shinola, I’m gonna get right into it and do my honest best to clear up some of the main questions surrounding the release.
If you have never heard Van Morrison’s yearning, keening voice—its blues and jazzy swag , the way it stretches words into birds that fly you to heaven, its worn beauty—well, then, you’ve never heard it. But I bet you have; … Read More
The first time I saw the band Yuck perform live, I had never heard of them. They were simply the group warming up for Smith Westerns on a Friday night at a hole in the wall in downtown Nashville. I saw their name on the marquee above the venue and thought “Yuck” sounded weird and off-putting. When they took forever to set up on stage, I went from skeptical to hostile: “Who do these guys think they are? They’re just the warm-up act!”
Late one Friday night, buzzed and carrying packs of sour candy from the Wa, I wandered to a room in Whitman. As my host and I sat on her bed, alternating handfuls of Sour Patch and some other Technicolor monstrosity, her roommate decided to show me a video for “Beauty and a Beat,” performed and directed by everyone’s favorite cultural punching bag: Justin Bieber.
The Crying Game DJ Yung Educated But Unemployed Lil Drummer Boy Sofresh n’ Soclean Dion Adonis Morissette D(ean)J Rapelye Rudeboy Giuliani Duncan Hoy-Z Lil Peni$ Lil Italy Lil Lion Man Lil Caesars Pizza Kings ?uest Missy Eliot Linton Missy Michelle … Read More
The following is a blow-by-blow of my impressions of the songs on the album, with some comments from my step-grandmother, who admits that she is a Kid Cudi neophyte.
“More than anything, Dylan and Dante share an unbroken sense of pity for the ‘ill-begotten souls’ of hell. Both in the position of outsiders looking-in, this subversion of time, space, and reality is what makes hell so mystical, and this carnival of characters is what makes hell so unsettling.”
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 … Read More
Azealia Banks might just be the long awaited solution, or revolution, concerning misogyny in rap. The opening line of her hit, “212,” “Hey, I can be the answer,” is perhaps her subtle recognition of her position at the helm of constructive feminism in hip-hop. For years women have been voicing their frustration with the portrayal of females in hip-hop, and rightly so.
