Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

04 Oct 2009 20:22

tags

Music: Lady Gaga’s going on tour by herself – without Kanye West

  • It was a mutual decision. Kanye’s going to take some time off. But the good news is that I’m going on tour in a few weeks.
  • Lady Gaga • Shedding some light on she canceled her joint tour with Kanye West. Remember that post-Taylor-Swift episode of Jay Leno where Kanye looked like he was at the edge of oblivion the second that Jay brought up his mom? Yeah, it was probably that. The “Fame Kills” tour might’ve been good, Imma let you finish, but Kanye probably needs some time to regroup. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 Oct 2009 23:20

tags

Music: We continue our Saturday Mixtape decade-in-review with 2003

  • 1. The Jayhawks’ sturdy approach was never really appreciated after about 1995 or so, which is a shame because “Rainy Day Music” is a great album, and “Save it for a Rainy Day” is one of the alt-country band’s best singles.
    2. M. Ward’s under-the-radar rep tipped above the radar after 2003, but “Transfiguration of Vincent” is as good as his later albums – if not better. “Vincent O’Brien” plays centerpiece.
    3. Back in 2003, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were overhyped and under-appreciated all at once. “Maps” went a long way to make them accessible, but their first album, “Fever To Tell,” was full of spiky bursts of energy like “Y-Control.”
    4. Dear Ben Gibbard: You’re sitting on a huge potential pile of money and you haven’t done anything serious with it in nearly six years. No matter the success of Death Cab for Cutie, the reason that people started caring about DCfC en masse is The Postal Service. Here’s a B-side, “There’s Never Enough Time,” covering a topic that we know all too well about.
    5. The Wrens are the quintessential indie success story; ditched by a label that later sold out and became huge by pushing Creed, they disappeared for years, only to return with a victory lap of an album, “The Meadowlands.” “She Sends Kisses” has a great hook that stays with you for days.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

02 Oct 2009 10:38

tags

Music: Here’s the average score of Pitchfork’s top 20 albums of the 2000s

  • 9.2 the average score of the top 20 albums of the decade; two albums (including the top one, Radiohead’s “Kid A,” and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”) scored perfect tens, and most albums were above 9.0 source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Oct 2009 20:20

tags

Music: Hype kills: Kanye West and Lady Gaga’s “Fame Kills” tour axed

  • We blame 50 Cent, because why not? On November 10, the two most overstyled, vapid names in pop music were supposed to launch a co-headlining tour designed to make everyone forget how Kanye treated Taylor Swift (or that Lady Gaga is a possible hermaphrodite). But not long after 50 Cent called it the “Gay Tour,” it got cancelled. Coincidence? We think not. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 Oct 2009 20:11

tags

Music: Thousands of people want to sound just like T-Pain

  • 300,000 downloads of the T-Pain autotune iPhone app since its launch three freaking weeks ago, which sounds like a pretty successful app source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Sep 2009 22:43

tags

Music: Don’t Forget to Be Awesome: There’s a YouTube record label

  • Alex Day, above, has an album coming out on Thursday on DFTBA Records, a label created by two YouTube-based musicians. (DFTBA, by the way, stands for “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.”) These guys made a pitch about the label, and we admit, while we don’t get into the nuances of YouTube culture that brought the label to the forefront, this is a smart idea.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Sep 2009 21:41

tags

Music: Like lions on a gazelle, British pop stars tackle file-sharing en masse

  • 100 Britpoppers were in one room; Lily Allen was the loudest source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

29 Sep 2009 11:00

tags

Music: Thom Yorke’s new backup band features Flea. Yes, THAT Flea.

Thom Yorke and his backup band
  • Despite having a super-famous Red Hot Chili Pepper as his bassist, the rest of the Radiohead singer’s solo band certainly couldn’t be called a cast of unknowns either. They include really well-known session drummer Joey Waronker, Brazilian-born Mauro Refosco and Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. Oh, and Flea. Wasn’t he in The Big Lebowski?source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Sep 2009 16:16

tags

Music: Lotsa great music’s come out latetly. Our Saturday Mixtape is on it.

  • 1. We admit that we’ve been quite excited about Monsters of Folk, mostly because of our boy M. Ward. (Nothing against Conor Oberst, but he seems to have lost his edge lately.) The leadoff track, “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.),” certainly doesn’t scream folk, but there’s certainly a lot more going on here than an indie equivalent of the Traveling Wilburys.
    2. What if you took the most experimental part of Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago” and built a whole album around it? You’d have Volcano Choir‘s “Unmap,” which features frontman Justin Vernon with Milwaukee’s Collection of Colonies of Bees, proving that he’s not the only interesting musician currently coming out of Wisconsin.
    3. Lots to love here. The Big Pink’s “A Brief History of Love” has at least one killer chorus in the form of “Dominos,” which gives a nice sheen to their best shoegaze intentions.
    4. Rain Machine, a.k.a. TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, had one of the year’s most-highly-anticipated releases. The album itself isn’t nearly as amazing as the billing, but the vocal theatrics of the otherwise-simple “New Last Name” certainly live up to the pedigree.
    5. On “Higher than the Stars,” The Pains of Being Pure at Heart seem to be ready to cut back the massive amounts of guitar distortion that defined their earlier releases. Even without it – relying more on a cheery synth instead – the formula still works.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

26 Sep 2009 11:16

tags

Music: Brilliant! UK tunesmith Dan Bull takes Lily Allen to task

  • Lilly Allen recently threatened to give up music on an anti-piracy blog she created. Then she took the blog down. As Allen made her name on file-sharing, that statement sounded hypocritical to some. Now Dan Bull, a UK musician with a similar style to that of Allen, has a video for a song which criticizes the star for just that.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 5 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>