Royal Headache – Royal Headache (What’s Your Rupture)
It’s the best week of summer vacation you ever had
Best Coast – The Only Place (Mexican Summer)
I wasn’t expecting much from the new Best Coast album, but god this is fucking awful.
Moments In Song #5 – Reptarz2 ‘Phonetics’
When you’re living in a small-town you have to make your own kind of fun. As the world becomes smaller, we’re going to see that whenever someone finds a new way to have fun, it’s going to spread like wildfire.
The Bastards Of Fate – Who’s A Fuzzy Buddy (This Will Be Our Summer)
Keep your ears tuned to the small towns. The future of music is living in South Dakota.
Sissy Spacek – Wastrel Projection (Handmade Birds)
Eventually someone was bound to out-scorch Melt Banana, bound to shave Harry Pussy into irrelevance, and bound to just come along and fucking liquefy your face.
Moments In Song #4 – Urge Overkill ‘Sister Havana’
“Dude! Oh my god! Urge Overkill’s here! They’re in the parking lot! They’re all out there! Come meet them!”
Willis Earl Beal – Acousmatic Sorcery (Hot Charity/XL)
There’s a righteousness at the heart of these songs, a riveting freedom that makes Contemporary Indie — cute, smug, obvious, self-obsessed, eager to please — seem hilariously and stupidly irrelevant.
Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls (Rough Trade/ATO)
Hey, I’m a modern guy. I can dig that art in the 21st Century is all about collage and recontextualization. But as collage artists, Alabama Shakes are essentially just ripping a page out of a 1967 issue of Life magazine and showing to us. Actually, that’s giving them too much credit. Life magazine wrote about the world, Alabama Shakes just writes about Alabama Shakes.
Sleigh Bells – Reign Of Terror (Mom & Pop)
As pop, it’s irritating and destructive. As rock, it could give a fuck. What more could you ask for?
Oh-Ok – The Complete Reissue (HHBTM)
In 1981, Oh-OK were already creating songs of child-like wonder laced with a hint of darkness.
Dirty Three – Toward The Low Sun (Drag City)
If you want to be immortal, have them play Dirty Three at your funeral.
Tunabunny in the UK, part three
I have to be at work in less than 12 hours. Throughout the day people will keep asking me if I had fun in England. I don’t even know how to begin to answer that question.
Tunabunny in the UK, part two
The Shoebox is packed. It’s hot and sweaty to the point where I would have trimmed my eyebrows before I left if I’d known they were going to be this soaked and heavy.
Tunabunny in the UK, part one
Here’s the thing about all the exhaustion and struggle, the sacrifice that goes into saving up money to fly over to another country. The show has to be worth it. A bad show will leave you crushed and broken nearly to the point of despair. This can be a bit nerve-wracking, but it makes you put everything you have into what you’re doing.
Coasting – You’re Never Going Back (M’Lady)
If The White Stripes had been obsessed with Flying Nun instead of the blues and Led Zeppelin, it would have sounded like this. For someone like me, it’s absolute heaven.
Fucked Up – Year Of The Tiger (Matador)
If I wanted some beefy, macho shithead to yell at me, I’d join the Marines. Or call my fucking dad.
Royal Baths – Better Luck Next Life (Kanine)
Better Luck Next Life is the sound of aristocratic decay. It’s spiritual exhaustion, the crumbling of an empire into petty, isolated camps of self-degradation.
of Montreal – Paralytic Stalks (Polyvinyl)
It’s a concept album about the fall of decadence, the inability to live any longer wrapped within one’s bullshit, the sound of someone pulling back the curtain on their personal Satyricon and recoiling in disgust.
Scott Creney reacts to Pitchfork’s reaction to M.I.A.’s Finger
Ryan Schreiber should be, if not ashamed, then more than a little embarrassed at the moment. Calling someone an asshole for raising a middle finger to a Super Bowl camera when you run a website and a music festival that has no problem promoting songs about rape, misogyny, and homophobia is empty and pathetic.
Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas (Sony)
LC follows the template he’s been following for the last 20 years. He’s still peddling his bedroom songs for the educated letch.
Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory (Carpark)
The anger on this album feels pretty real and palpable to me.
n+1 Publishes an Interesting Article About Pitchfork | Collapse Board Publishes a Response
While Pitchfork may be invaluable as an archive, it is worse than useless as a forum for insight and argument
Scott Creney reacts to Chuck Klosterman’s article about tUnE-yArDs pretty much exactly the way you’d expect him to
I’m not a huge fan of Tuneyards, but I think this article is a massive pile of shit. No maybes about it.
Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder (Tri-Angle)
It’s the difference between internet porn and actual sex, between Beavis and Bolaño, amusement and art.
