It took me going to Seattle to learn about The New Yorker magazine. I was visiting my friend Rob and he was really surprised that I didn’t read the magazine all the time (my reading always seems to surprise people, see The Believer.)
Upon my first read of the magazine, I was surprised to see that the first twenty pages or so are taken up with upcoming shows: films, concerts, sports, everything. I actually wondered how much content would be left after all that small print.
Since then I have learned that Sasha Frere-Jones writes columns in here quite of
ten. For reasons known only to my head, I was convinced that Sasha was a black woman. Little did I realize that he is not. And that he was in a band that I have a CD of called Ui. He is an excellent resource for all things music, whether I like the artist he’s talking about or not. Some entries are here. This audio entry about Auto-Tune is simply fantastic.
But of course, there’s a lot of content. And the first thing you get are letters. I don’t think I have EVER looked at the letters section. (more…)
I’ve been reading Entertainment Weekly for years and years. I think I subscribed back in like 1993 or so. And I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it. I’ve canceled my subscription on a number of occasions, mostly because I believed that it didn’t cover enough of the indie stuff I enjoyed (which is still largely true). But then I’d see an issue and realize that it is a fun magazine to flip through, so I’d re-subscribe.
read the entire half-a-column-length of an article. But they removed that, and it’s back to simple reviews.
SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Made in USA (1986 released in 1995).
The liner notes explain a lot of what was behind this disc. The then largely unknown Sonic Youth was asked to score a cool indie film, which later became a less cool more mainstream film and ultimately went straight to video.
SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-EVOL (1986).
Ah, EVOL. Here’s where Sonic Youth became Sonic Youth. Who knows how much Steve Shelley had to do with it, but he shows up and the band becomes amazing. The cover art is pretty darn scary and yet the music inside is amazingly beautiful. While by no means a commercial album, the album is chock full of melody.
SOUNDTRACK: FRIGHTENED RABBIT-Midnight Organ Fight (2008).
My friend Jarrett introduced me to this band. He rather casually called it his favorite album of the year, so I figured it was worth checking out.
SOUNDTRACK: MORRISSEY-Years of Refusal (2009).
I’ve been a fan of The Smiths for years. And I think that Morrissey’s debut, Viva Hate, is on par with much of the Smiths’ catalogue. Over the years his output has been mixed, but with Years of Refusal he comes fighting back with a really solid disc. The disc is so good that if one had no idea of who he was, one could easily get into it with no preconceived notions of Morrissey, The Smiths or any of that glorious past.
A few years ago I was visiting my friend Roman. He asked me if I read 
After the insane hardcore mess of Land Speed Record, this EP is a bit of a change. It’s still pretty hardcore, but now you can tell that the noisiness of the guitar is deliberate. Bob Mould is playing around with multiple layers of feedback and distortion to create a wall of noise that sometimes hides, sometime accentuates the overall sound.
SOUNDTRACK: THE REPLACEMENTS-Hootenanny (1983).
This is the second full length from The Replacements. For a band that just released two punk albums (one’s an EP), naming your new one Hootenanny is pretty ballsy. As is the fact that the first track sounds like, well, a hootenanny (even if it is making fun of hootenannies.)
SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-The Hazards of Love (2009).
I first played this disc a few times without really listening to it, just to get a feel for it. And I was surprised by how heavy it sounded. The harshest moments of the disc really stood out to me, and I was quite surprised, as I think of the Decemberists as more folky than this.
I Just Read About That... 