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26 Dec 2009 17:02

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: The best singles of 2009, in no particular order

  • Lots of great singles came out this year – pieces of memorable mind candy worthy of (more than) a few minutes of your time. Here are a few of our faves.
  • one Instant euphoria, in just a few words. What else could you want?
  • two Crocodiles hit our Jesus & Mary Chain soft spot; they get in easily.

30 Oct 2009 20:25

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World: Anyone got a lot of money sitting around to give to some pirates?

18 Oct 2009 11:01

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Offbeat: A teenage girl’s sailing the world solo in a pink yacht. A. PINK. YACHT.

We specifically cut the 16-year-old girl out of this photo because we wanted to emphasize the pinkness of the yacht. She didn’t even do it for breast cancer! source

08 Aug 2009 17:08

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Music: Saturday Mixtape: Who rules more, YACHT or The Dodos?

  • 1. We needed some euphoria, and Dananananaykroyd (what an annoying name!) provides it in spades on their latest album, “Hey Everyone.” “Pink Sabbath” makes us want to leap in the air like the coolest six-year-olds ever.
    2. The Dodos are awesome. Hewing a little more closely to the “Sung Tongs” sound than Animal Collective does now, 2008’s “Visiter” was an underrated gem. And new album “Time to Die,” which we ganked “Longform” from, keeps the quality high, avoiding the fate of fellow blog buzz bands.
    3. We’re suckers for sensitive white guys singing in unison. And you don’t get more sensitive than Kings of Convenience (featuring unsung indie hero Erelend Oye), whose “Winning a Battle, Losing the War” always wins our hearts.
    4. YACHT’s killer “See Mystery Lights,” which looks like a huge breakthrough for the duo, has a lot of highlights, but the highest is “Ring the Bell,” a slow-building calling card for DFA’s newest act.
    5. Like Grizzly Bear, Nurses plays in the space between electronic and natural sound, and while their victories on “Technicolor” split evenly between the percussive, the vocal and the digital, they do it with a little more flair than Grizzly Bear. Pure engagement.source

06 Jun 2009 12:43

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Music: We pulled five songs out of a hat for this week’s Saturday Mixtape

  • 1. YACHT is the digital-leaning indie act most likely to make a breakthrough this year, and “Psychic City,” with its instinctive catchiness, will probably be the reason why.

    2. After years of hearing the album was an unheralded classic, we finally grabbed a copy of American Music Club’s 1991 platter “Everclear,” and the simmering fury of emotive, personal AIDS hymnal “Sick of Food” confirmed this was a good purchase.

    3. Rootsy acoustic stompers Hoots and Hellmouth are perhaps one of the hardest-touring bands on the East Coast, and new album “The Holy Open Secret,” along with pretty track “Three Penny Charm,” shows their continued improvement as both musicians and dust-kickers.

    4. One of the best things that came out of Wes Anderson’s 2004 movie “The Life Aquatic” – the film itself was just OK – was the novel way it exposed American audiences to Brazilian singer Seu Jorge via David Bowie covers. “Suffragette City” is one of the best.

    5. You would not believe this song is from a 22-year-old Scottish dude who’s on the way to becoming one of the U.K.’s biggest pop stars. Paolo Nutini sounds like Louis Prima doing ska on “10/10,” and it sounds very timeless.source