Joanna Newsom must be the most enigmatically fascinating figure in indie music today. Though she’s shrouded in a barely-tangible sense of cultured innocence—her closeness with her astrophysicist and musician siblings, her compositions and lyricism refined by academia yet bejeweled with … Read More
Oscar Hyde having provided you, in his nefariously multifarious style, with all the juicy historical context you could possibly desire [see prior article], I find myself relieved of the standard duty to explain that “Newsom has two parents” and “Newsom … Read More
In an interview with Pitchfork in August 2008—shortly before they were to play at Terrace Club for Lawnparties—bassist Ira Wolf Tuton said that his band, Yeasayer, “always wanted to be the biggest band in the world.” This remark is a … Read More
Close your eyes. Are they closed? No, good point, I guess you’ll need to keep them open to read the Powerpoint. Okay, close them when you can, and otherwise close your inner eye, or eyes. The number of inner eyes … Read More
Whenever people ask me, “What do Andy Samberg and Beethoven have in common?” I usually point to the obvious: “They both have big hair” or, “they both lived in different centuries.” The comedian and the composer both sport unwieldy manes … Read More
The unbridled happiness of Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album, released January 29, 2008, coincided with and perfectly complemented the second semester of my senior year of high school; I remember capering with my friends in their basements, half-shouting the lyrics … Read More
If you’re the kind of person who treats pop music like the Plague, I’ve got news for you: You’re missing out. This March saw the release of one of the most ambitious and exhilarating albums of the year, and it’s quite defiantly pop-tastic. Certainly in its ingredients, The-Dream’s “Love Vs. Money” is no different from most other high-budget pop records. It’s filled with stuttered percussion, growling synths, and syncopated auto-tune vocals, as well as those Atlanta chants that have become a regular fixture of chart-toppers recently — you know, that slurred and drunken “ayyyy” that seems to make up the chorus of every rap single these days.