A buffet of bizarre rock magicians go “poof” at the Troubadour tonight. Bring earplugs, drugs and an appetite for glory. I haven’t heard Kurt Vile’s new album yet, but judging by vinyl-only limited-edition LP God Is Saying This To You, you’ll want to get there early. Later this week: I’ll be at Ted Leo at the Echo on Friday and probably scalping tix for the National at the Wiltern on Saturday. More dates on the ongoing calendar.
Blogger Stops Deleting Posts Willy-Nilly?: Months and months after bloggers like yours truly abandoned Google’s Blogger thanks to inscrutable post deletions due to DMCA complaints, they’re announcing that things will be different from now on. Thanks for the support, guys. (Here’s the LA Weekly article — from February! — on the phenomenon. Yes, I was quoted.)
Critics’ and journalists’ “Death of the Album” axe has been grinding for a minute now, but since Pitchfork’s Rob Mitchum added his voice to the increasingly whiny — and wrong — chorus of unresearched, anecdotal opinion-as-trend-pushing today (aside: this is why blogs have ruined journalism) with a review of likely P4k best of the decade candidate Kid A, let’s discuss this real quick.
Is The Single An Album-Killer?: iTunes and digital downloading have, yes, made it extremely easy to cherry-pick individual tracks from albums; to create mish-mash playlists; and with the iPod’s “Shuffle” feature, to ignore album sequencing at will. Thus: The death of the album!!! Uh, based on what? In practical terms, listening habits have evolved — not altered. The playlist has replaced the cassette mixtape. iTunes and services like Pandora have replaced FM radio, which, if you’ve forgotten, always played singles — not albums. In the 1990s, a thriving CD singles market made top sellers of tracks from Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Madonna and more. In 1997 — before Napster — 67 million CD singles were sold, a number that kicks the shit out of modern digital sales. Singles! Newsflash: This didn’t stop people from buying Mariah Carey albums. Or, you know, Radiohead albums. And remember “Hey Jude?” That was a single. Read the rest of this entry »
Bootlegs of most of my favorite musicians — Wilco, Ryan Adams, Radiohead, even Elliott Smith — are not in short supply. But the Softies never quite gathered that Grateful Dead-inspired fanbase during their brief career as indie pop’s premiere melancholic duo. There is some evidence of their existence in the live music fossil record, though — a crisp 2000 show I posted here, and this, a richly lo-fi recording from the band’s 1996 heyday. Cuddle up with this one, gang. Read the rest of this entry »
As New York Magazine’s Mark Graham noticed in his review of fresh ingenue Diane Birch’s recent NYC coming-out show, there’s been an embarrassment of vintage-leaning pop star riches lately, from Amy Winehouse’s modernized Motown to Adele’s spin on Dusty Springfield. Diane Birch’s debut, Bible Belt, springs straight from the 1970s — not the bootcut denim and beards that characterized the Laurel Canyon scene (and today’s inheritors in Fleet Foxes) or the coke-fueled arena rock of Fleetwood Mac, but pure pop music: the emotive Los Angeles session sounds of Carole King and Elton John. Read the rest of this entry »
Jams: Radiohead’s rumored Wall of Ice EP didn’t leak. (They did release a new song, though). Ryan Adams’ new hair-metal song. A First Look at Girls’ weird, wild Album.
The great thing about Album, the debut of Girls (not to be confused with Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls, Girls Against Boys, Sun City Girls, Girl Talk, Girlsareshort, or groups with actual girls), among its many great things, is that I have no idea what the hell the band is trying to do. In an already infamous interview with the U.K.’s Guardian, the duo talked about growing up in a cult, palling around with millionaires and taking handfuls of prescription pills on the regular, so they may be unreliable narrators as it is, but listening to Album doesn’t make the group any less inscrutable. Read the rest of this entry »
Bootlegs of most of my favorite musicians — Wilco, Ryan Adams, Radiohead, even Elliott Smith — are not in short supply. But the Softies never quite gathered that Grateful Dead-inspired fanbase during their brief career as indie pop’s premiere melancholic duo. There is some evidence of their existence in the live music fossil record, though — a crisp 2000 show 
As New York Magazine’s Mark Graham noticed in his 
Jams: Radiohead’s rumored Wall of Ice EP 
