January 2011
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“Maybe we’ll become a pop band, finally. But I just look at photos of us,...”
– The Decemberists’ Chris Funk, in Time.
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“I watched the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It and was really surprised at...”
– Sufjan Stevens, on planning his stage show, in Pitchfork.
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Stream the new Bright Eyes →
The People’s Key is now up for streaming at NPR. And it begins with a long monologue from Oberst’s friend, the guitarist Denny Brewer, sharing some of his thoughts on aliens and the future: “[The aliens] walked like a man but had reptilian features. They had snake-like eyes, a tail and scales. They made slaves of the people. And where they landed in is what The Bible calls the...
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“Fame, friends, fortune, and even my family — my wife and kids —...”
– Darryl McDaniels, aka the ‘DMC’ in Run DMC, on how a chance encounter with the song ‘Angel’ in the back of a taxi cab saved his life. This wonderfully hilarious and moving story, which you can find on this week’s podcast from the Moth, is among my favorite pieces...
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Dan Bejar: 'More people should fail at art'
As a blogger I’ve always been very interested in artists’ creative process, particularly when they’re able to describe why they made certain choices or what events in their own lives have led them in particular directions. Some, like the National’s Matt Berninger, are very articulate in this regard. And then there are those who, like Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, are...
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Will.i.am named Intel's 'director of creative... →
So apparently future Intel products will simply sample older, more successful products.
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Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation, Pt. 8 →
Steven Hyden tackles 1997 and two of its most prominent releases: Oasis’ Be Here Now and Radiohead’s OK Computer. As a 17-year-old who could only afford to buy one of them, I vividly remember standing in Best Buy with a copy of each in my hand thinking long and hard about which would make the better purchase. OK Computer had gotten great reviews, but What’s the Story (Morning...
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“I try to make people cry. Like, how quickly into a song can I make someone cry?...”
– Sam Beam, of Iron & Wine, in the AV Club.
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Boy repels pack of wolves using only Creed's music →
Those poor wolves.
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Stream the new Iron & Wine →
It’s up for your listening pleasure on … TeamCoco.com? What the hell is going on here?
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How I spent my musical vacation
Music obsessives don’t generally talk about the period between December and the first part of January as a vacation, but that’s what it feels like to me. The great grinding wheels of album promotion screech to a halt at the end of the year, we all spend four to six weeks issuing and arguing about various year-end lists, and in the meantime little to no new music is inflicted on us.
...
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“We get described often as a “literate rock band.” Which I guess is better than...”
– Decemberists front man Colin Meloy, on being called a “literary” band, in the AV Club. The band’s actually-not-bad-at-all new record, The King Is Dead, is available for $4 on Amazon.
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Pick the next A.V. Club 'Undercover' songs →
I loved this series last year, and am looking forward to see who they bring in to do this year’s crop. In the meantime, vote!
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“This is the peculiar burden and shame of the no-longer-young Bright Eyes lover:...”
– Ben Dolnick, on Conor Oberst, in the Awl. I relate to these feelings completely.
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Stream a Jeff Tweedy solo show →
Perfect late-evening listening, via Coop and Kiehl.
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Watch“Wake And Be Fine,” the new Okkervil River track the band debuted on Jimmy Fallon last night, is a little shouty for my tastes. But I like the energy, and the presence of A.C. Newman. We’ll all probably like this one more once we know which suicidal poet it’s about. (via)
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Green Day's Billie Joe considers writing original... →
If all goes well, it could do for his career what Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark did for U2.
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Some thoughts on Arizona
My friend Ruben called me yesterday, after word got out about the shootings in his adopted home state of Arizona. “It finally happened,” he said. ‘Finally’ being the key word — for those of us who have lived in Arizona, yesterday’s events had a disturbing sense of inevitability. We had been waiting, powerless, for something like this to happen.
In Arizona,...
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“The main thing with me is to make the coldest music on the planet. I don’t...”
– Big Boi’s New Year’s resolution, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.
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“On some level, I wonder what would have become of John Mayer, had he cut a video...”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a fair point about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
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“The whole point of writing a song is that, in its completed form, it should be...”
– Joanna Newsom, on why she hates explaining what her songs mean, in The Economist.
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The best film criticism I've seen this year! →
At the end of 2009, I linked to that devastating, hilarious, weird and wonderful 70-minute review of The Phantom Menace. A year later, Milwaukee filmmaker Mike Stoklasa has finished reviewing both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. These are films in their own right, and fascinating as pieces of criticism — as they deconstruct the infinite failings of the Star Wars prequels, they...