Been listening to the Avalanches‘ new LP Wildflower. Nutshell: first beats record I’ve heard since Entroducing that’s about listening, yet here specifically about hearing music in headphones while walking through a swiftly changing urban terrain. It’s an experience city dwellers know well. Album as imaginary playlist. Which also reminds me: 16 years ago, while DJing in a Brooklyn restaurant, […]
Alan Vega’s greatest moment after the first Suicide album is “Cubist Blues,” made with Alex Chilton and Ben Vaughn in 1996. I formally reject tributes and obituaries that fail to mention this record. Proof: And I’m not feeling Pitchfork’s listicle of 15 songs indebted to Suicide’s Alan Vega. First of all, lists like this are idiotic […]
Please, read this article on my dream job. Record stores: it’s not all bad. Nice to see someone’s paying writers for the type of mash piece music fans write when they’re 17. A note on Wu Lyf, re the statement “NOBODY sounded like them,” as this article purports: this was true only if you hadn’t listened to about […]
For someone, somewhere, the following statements are true: I was defibrillated by David Lee Roth. Anthony Kiedis saved my baby. 9) We’ll begin with composure. Bryan Ferry didn’t save anyone on a flight to Kenya in 2000, but he did insist his son cease swearing as the plane plummeted. No small feat: such was the […]
Deerhoof released a new record, “The Magic,” today. Shelve it with their focused, non genre-tributary releases. Under Deerhoof: Rawk. In 2003, I bought my first Deerhoof record, “Apple ‘O,” at Other Music, which closes tomorrow. Opposite to interstellar alignments, rock-bottoms will sync. Trenches intersect. Lows coincide. Namely, my plum, writerly day-job of nine […]
Stephen Witt’s superb “How Music Got Free” administers a bone saw to the music industry’s corpse and details the official cause of death with a pathologist’s detail. It’s a slow, circuitous death, and every corner is set in fascinating detail, from Karlheinz Brandenberg’s use of research on the possible spectrum of heard sounds in order […]
Stop Loving Everything 