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

29 Oct 2009 11:18

tags

Music: Daily poll: Is a )&!&)% swear word enough to kill a band’s fame?

  • Last year, a band named !)*!&!)# Up released one of the year’s best-reviewed albums, “The Chemistry of Common Life.” This year, another band named @)&! Buttons released “Tarot Sport,” which is also being called one of the year’s best by your dad’s publications. Which leads us to question: Could these bands get past their )@&!!%) names and become popular on their own accord? Vote here.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Oct 2009 20:20

tags

Tech: Thanks to Google, Lala’s founders probably have this song on repeat

Celebrate good times, come on! Google just decentralized the whole music industry, and Lala is going to be the big winner. We heard rumblings of a Google-search-based music service last week, but now it's official, and boy, does it make walled gardens look silly. Other services (like MySpace's iLike) will get the nod too, but Lala will be the biggest beneficiary of the service, which will allow full-song samples to play from doing a search for either a song or (this is pretty cool) a lyric. Watch out, Apple and Amazon. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

21 Oct 2009 10:23

tags

Offbeat: The music industry has nothing better to to than fine singing ladies

This woman, who we’re sure has a wonderful voice, was told by Britain’s Performing Rights Society that she could be fined for singing at work. They’ve since apologized. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Oct 2009 14:16

tags

Music: This week’s Saturday Mixtape covers some of 2004’s best tunes



OK, we're halfway through the naughts after this week. In case you haven't noticed, we've been going through some of our favorite songs of this decade, year-by-year, since August. Once every other week or so. This week, we hit 2004. (Want to hear the others? Click here: 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000)
  • 1. If we had to pick one song of the decade, this would be it. In four and a half minutes, The Walkmen’s “The Rat” nailed the unnecessary gravitas and self-seriousness that defined this decade. No other song has come close to best defining it.
    2. Animal Collective essentially did the opposite of what Radiohead did to become famous. Starting out as a strange, dense, openly experimental band, they found themselves making pop music by the beginning of 2009. We still heart 2004’s “Sung Tongs,” though, and “Who Could Win a Rabbit?” is the bridge between the two sounds.
    3. The Arcade Fire suffered greatly at the hands of overhype, like many other perfectly-good bands of the era – Bloc Party or Vampire Weekend, anyone? But they deserved every bit of the hype they got, especially on “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out).”
    4. The Streets – aka Mike Skinner – nailed the best album of his career in 2002 with “Original Pirate Material,” but as far as singles go, “Fit But You Know It” is easily his best. With that roughshod beat – the kind of beat that Lily Allen rides up the charts nowadays – backing a story of a drunk ticked about the unattainable hottie in front of him, it synthesizes the best of Skinner’s sound and storytelling.
    5. The great secret of Sufjan Stevens’ “Seven Swans” – an album openly loaded with religious imagery – was that you didn’t need to be Christian to be deeply affected by it. “The Transfiguration” is beautiful on its own terms, but not without questioning its listener: “Consider what he says to you, consider what’s to come.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 17:59

tags

Music: Sad saps unite: Our Saturday Mixtape is designed to bum you out



We've been pretty bummed out by "Hellhole Ratrace" by Girls lately. It's a beautiful song, but it's beautiful in that way where you have to hang your head while you're taking in the beauty. So with that in mind, here's a soundtrack for the bummed-out.
  • 1. This gut-punch of a tune by the Drive-By Truckers, “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” is based on the true story of the family of musician Bryan Harvey. They were killed randomly during a series of spree murders in Richmond, Va. in 2006. It’s one of the strongest in the Truckers’ catalog, but man, you wish they never had to write it.
    2. Begging to be coupled with the previous tune is this one by Antony and the Johnsons, “Another World,” which deals with the very issues the Truckers dealt with, but in a more direct fashion. We must hate you for giving you two gut-punches in a row.
    3. You can tell that Girls singer Christopher Owens, a former Children of God member, had to fight really hard for his optimism. On “Hellhole Ratrace,” he’s straddling the line between pain and optimism. Optimism wins.
    4. Even Elliott Smith’s rockier songs were doused in bitter. “Don’t Go Down” is very bitter, plus it was from the death-allusion-filled “From a Basement on the Hill,” Smith’s posthumous final album. Gut punch number 4. (Sorry.)
    5. We’ve all been here. End of a relationship, drunk, trying to reconcile, showing up unannounced. Being the very kind of drunk jerk you despise. OK, we all haven’t been there, but Casiotone for the Painfully Alone has, and he’s singing from experience on “Destroy the Evidence.” Fortunately, this gut punch has a little levity thanks to the Casio backing.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

05 Oct 2009 21:33

tags

Music: Did Guns & Roses rip off someone else’s electronic song?

  • 0:45 of soundscapes led to a lawsuit for Axl source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

05 Oct 2009 09:47

tags

Music: Black holes and revelations: Muse tells Glenn Beck no thanks

  • Glenn Beck is on his radio show, praising the modern equivalent of U2 for its libertarian political stance, saying their music is “absolutely fantastic.” source
  • By the end of the show, Beck gets a phone call from Muse’s people telling him to apologize for making the remarks. He retracts them – quickly. 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

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

25 Sep 2009 18:59

tags

Music: Pitchfork likes Girls, throws them a huge rating

  • 9.1 rating for Girls’ “Album,” a fuzzy chunk of catchy pop source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>