I am not watching college basketball. I am a lifelong Knick fan, and the Knicks, this year, have turned me off to the entire sport, pro or college-pro. Today’s New York Times greets its 30-40 year old arts&leisure demographic with a piece focused on REM’s new album Accelerate, whose title refers to tempos rather than […]
The bad news about the new Destroyer album begins with the appearance of a Swan Lake song – as if anything from that noodling nightmare of an album needed rehashing — and continues with Punkfork’s blood-curdling-ly laughable review today. Reviewer William Bowers, while a smart cat, steals our life-minutes with his six-sentence GRE-test method of […]
Always metal. Always. Despite that like-able new Shearwater song (look “Rooks”) which laudably distills their longer excursions into single form, I’ve reached one of those twice-yearly attacks of a fetishistic need for metal, especially on earphones. I have theories, one being that metal delivers right away, as a genre, for time-pressed or attention-span-challenged listeners. I […]
Most reviews of Portishead’s upcoming and now leaked Third will lead with we’ve waited ten years for this or some such lazy claptrap. Many will be written by those too young to know pain, or waiting, or the pain of waiting. They’ll be only partially right, since we’ve been waiting for this album for 14 […]
Who’s to blame: Ben Sisario, for selling an overworked arts&leisure NY Times editor on a tired concept — the easily-written “Here’s the new Scene!” article — or said editor, who didn’t notice the article was a boring, unsurprising retread of Brooklyn? Didn’t they write this article a year or so ago, with Deerhoof at the […]
I submit to you two parts of the new Pixies album that never was: While the Breeders’ Mountain Battles is their best since their debut, proving Deal was spewing out material during and following the Pixies’ reunion whatever her damage, one listen to Svn Fingers eliminates doubt that at least Black was obviously writing with […]
The Long Blondes – CouplesI’m still waiting for the day I’ll hear the Long Blondes blasting from some frat-girl’s Hyundai on the Garden State Parkway. Last album it was “New Girl,” this time my vote goes to “Guilt,” the best Madonna single since “Material Girl” in a world of needless Madonna singles, including her own. […]
Two nights ago I finished watching Julie Taymor’s interminable Across the Universe, essentially Rent with Beatles songs. I can even hear her pitching it that way to the studios. It’s a noble and even interesting experiment, but done with a suspicious lack of care, considering the conspicuous electronic-pitch-witchery for many of the cast’s attempts at […]
The other day I received a wonderfully important email from a publicist — about their hiring of another publicist, something I’m sure I needed to know. Soon, I can hope to receive press releases about press releases, and promo CDs of recordings of label board meetings. Scott Walker – Use Me (Bill Withers cover, I […]
Stop Loving Everything 