One zillion yesses
NEW BILL CALLAHAN ALBUM IN SEPTEMBER, THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Look at that grinning face! Has he ever publicised an album with a grin before?! Stone cold proof that it’s going to be as nourishing and welcoming as this kind of feeling.
Song for My Father »
For Father’s Day, the singer of The Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon shares an unreleased song, an homage to his father’s survival and painful past.
This is wonderful.
This is why we can’t have nice things ETCETERA
Matthew Weiner is truly out-gifing himself this season.
“Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.”
– Feels like fate that I read this part of Out of the Vinyl Deeps the morning before listening to Yeezus for the first time.
Bat For Lashes / TOY: "The Bride" »
It probably goes without saying that the Middle East’s idea of wedding music does not always entail cutting a terrible …
This is also a fine song. More Bat baying at the sky, please!
Fat History Month: "Sad History Month" »
That name, coupled with albums called Bad History Month and You Can Pick Your Nose, You Can Pick Your Friend’s …
As someone said on Twitter, “Jonathan Richman and Laura Snapes have something in common: they’re in love with Massachusetts.”
These New Puritans: Field of Reeds »
Releasing three markedly different albums over the past seven years, the Puritans have earned the trust of their audience. Their latest is an uncomprimisingly self-possessed record that finds them shedding any assocations they once had with the wider rock world, reinventing themselves as a neo-classical ensemble.
I reviewed These New Puritans’ wonderful new album for Pitchfork. It’s the first Best New Music I’ve ever given!
This film! I hope it wins all the Oscars or Emmys or whatever it’s eligible for. No-one could beat Rob Lowe for Best Supporting (or supported) Face.
Speedy Ortiz: "No Below" »
So far, Speedy Ortiz’s singles and preview tracks from their forthcoming debut, Major Arcana (due July 9 on Carpark), have …
Speedy Ortiz are so sick, I wanna interview them just so I can ask HOW ARE YOU SO COOL. Which is basically the subtext of any interview I ever do with a band I love, tbh.
Neko Case: "Man" »
You could imagine that Neko Case’s gloriously expressive voice might have helped Zooey Deschanel carve out her own countryfied singing …
Neko Case’s new song RULES OKAY
Snapes’ Law
Defined as: As soon as people see people’s concise explanations for shit getting Wikipedia pages and the word “law” - with a capital L! - appended to their name, everyone gonna start doing it.
Megan Jasper, the punk who saved Sub Pop | Seattle Times Newspaper »
Late to reading this, but: hell yeah, Megan Jasper.
“
I really have taken a liking to meeting people, I have some fairly high social anxiety myself but I’m fortunate in that by the time I get to the merch table I’m in a pretty intense mood so it’s easier. (If people say hi to me before a show, I am usually pretty awkward and unapproachable.) But I mean, this is important to remember: I am not anybody special. Really really really really really. I know, I get, that one sort of naturally feels an awe for the person who’s written a book or a song or a poem that really connected: I feel that awe when I meet the people who’ve made music that was there for me in my darkest hours. But they’re just people really. They have a gift that they honor by really putting it to good use, and I’m intensely grateful for it, but they aren’t saints or people of, y’know, special personal qualities. It’s almost like…if I meet a person who’s written something that changed my life, the thing I should be in awe of is the moment: it’ll be a big moment for me. I’m connecting with the source of something that made a difference in my life. But the people themselves, these aren’t avatars of God or anything. What’s special is their work, not them.
So my advice would be to think about these ideas a little and understand that I am not really special in any way. I write things that maybe for some people prove useful, and that’s really cool, like very very cool: that we can connect like that, that there’s this space in which the magic of making and receiving songs or poems or whatever occurs. But don’t think of me as anybody who’s, like, in possession of some ultra-human qualities or anything. If you meet Liza Minnelli on the other ok do feel free to freak completely out on my behalf. But me? I am just a guy, I’m glad to meet people who’ve connected with my work, be at ease, I am not a big deal.
”
