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Alabama Shakes

Television

The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Christoph Waltz

By Alison Nastasi on

Geez, SNL. When you have someone as charming and crazy talented as Django Unchained actor Christoph Waltz starring as your host, can the writers please throw the guy a bone? The Oscar-winning star was a standout even with the cruddy material handed to him. The number of mediocre moments outweighed the best, musical guest Alabama Shakes gave a solid — but boring — performance, and the Carnival Cruise spoof in the show’s cold open was only ok. We detail the best (and more of the worst) moments from last night after the jump. Give us your votes for the winners and losers, below. … Read More

Music

The 10 Best Record Store Day Black Friday Releases

By Tom Hawking on

We’re generally skeptical about the consumerist crapfest that is Black Friday — spend Thursday giving thanks for everything you do have, and wake up early the day after to throw elbows like crazy at your fellow shoppers to spend a shitload of cash on everything you don’t have — but if there’s one thing we do like buying, it’s music. Happily, Black Friday does tend to bring a decent amount of music-related specials, mostly via the folks at Record Store Day. As such, we’ve dutifully thumbed through this year’s list of special releases to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff, and shared our shopping list after the jump. What’s caught your fancy this year? … Read More

Music

20 Brilliant Musicians on Why They Make Music

By Tom Hawking on

Here at Flavorwire, we’re constantly fascinated by the creative process and what drives people to be artists. In the past, we’ve looked into musicians discussing their songwriting process, and we’re similarly interested in what drives people to start creating in the first place. We’ve delved around and come up with a selection of quotes from our favorite musicians about how they got started on music, why it is they do what they do, and/or what they’re hoping to achieve with the creation of their art. The results are both revealing and fascinating.… Read More

Music

Famous Bands and the Indie Musicians Who Should Open for Them

By Tom Hawking on

You may or may not have seen that new show called Opening Act last night, wherein a team of “industry judges” – viz. Mary J Blige, Olivia Lee, and that unpleasant English guy from Popstars and So You Think You Can Dance – judge various hapless bands for the right to support huge stars like, um, LMFAO or Jason Mrazzzzzzzzzzz. Still, the show did get us thinking about how plenty of great bands have started their careers by playing some support slots that seem hilarious in retrospect, from Radiohead opening for Alanis Morrissette to Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees. And that, in turn, got us thinking about support slots we’d love to see some of our favorite bands play. In view of this, we thought we’d amuse ourselves by looking at some dream hypothetical line-ups, featuring some big-name (or biggish-name, at least) headline acts, past and present, along with the indie bands we’d love to have seen open for them. … Read More

Music

10 of Music’s Unlikeliest Buzzbands

By Tom Hawking on

Boys & Girls, the debut album by Flavorpill faves Alabama Shakes, is out today. The band’s rise to prominence has been one of the more heartening stories of 2012, and not only because their music is great and entirely deserving of all the acclaim that’s been showered upon it. No, we’re also delighted to see Alabama Shakes somehow achieving full music industry buzzband status, with their decidedly un-hip rock ‘n’ soul sounds turning up in the most unlikely places (like MTV’s Buzzworthy blog). They join the ranks of similarly incongruous buzzbands from over the years, musicians who’ve ridden a wave of hype despite being unfashionable, unmarketable or just plain unlikely candidates for success. We’ve selected some other such bands after the jump — who did we miss? … Read More

Music

5 Albums to Stream for Free This Week: Alabama Shakes, Arctic Monkeys

By Tom Hawking on

Welcome back to another edition of our regular Monday stream-a-thon, wherein we hunt down the best and/or most notable records streaming for free over the Internet. There’s plenty of interesting music to be heard this week — first and foremost, there’s the arrival of the Alabama Shakes album, along with a bunch of b-sides and rarities from Arctic Monkeys, Robert Pollard’s bazillionth solo album, a collaboration between Quantic and Alice Russell, and the original cast recording of the Newsies musical. Click through and listen to your heart’s content! … Read More

Music

10 Albums You Need to Hear in April

By Tom Hawking on

Spring is here, and so is the spring release schedule. Rejoice! May and June are both shaping up to be excellent months as far as album releases go, and while April doesn’t have quite the same volume of goodness, there’s still going to be plenty of good music to hear over the next four weeks. We’ve pored over the schedule to select the ten records we reckon are going to be worth hearing — there’s everything from the return of Orbital and Spiritualized to Malian songhaï blues, spooky pop music, and punishing, nasty hip hop. We’d love to know what you’re looking forward to, so do let us know via the comments section. … Read More

Music

Flavorpill’s 12 Musical Acts to Watch in 2012

By Tom Hawking on

With 2012 well underway and our feet back under the desk, we’re turning our attention toward the coming year, and what it might hold for the music world. Predicting the course of music is a slippery task at the best of times, but even so, we’re preemptively tipping seapunk as silliest new genre, The Black Keys as the band who’ll earn the Kings of Leon Award (being hated by everyone who used to like them), and the Can box set as the best re-release of the rest of the millennium. But what of artists to watch? Well, after the jump, we’ve chosen the 12 artists who we reckon will (or at least should) own 2012. Let us know your nominations! … Read More

Music

10 Artists Who Really Should Have Made NME’s 2011 Cool List

By Tom Hawking on

So the NME just published their 2011 Cool List. As ever, it’s a bewildering document that proclaims the likes of The Killers’ Ronnie Vanucci, the Arctic Monkeys’ drummer and, yes, Lana Del Rey to be cool, which makes us wonder if the NME’s writers have the same understanding of that particular word as we do. Anyway, we appreciate that setting yourself as arbiters of “cool” is asking for trouble (especially if you then proceed to include two members of Kasabian in your Top 10), but the fact remains: there are some people missing from the NME‘s list who we think should be there. We’re not sure if this makes these people “cool” or just generally awesome, but either way, here are 10 non-NME-approved musicians who we think were just great during 2011. So there. … Read More

Music

Flavorpill’s Essential Holiday Season Music Events

By Tom Hawking on

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and all that. But if you’d rather pass the holiday season seeing some awesome bands than sitting inside gorging yourself on turkey and roast vegetables, then we’ve got you covered with this roundup of the shows that we’d love to be attending over the next month or so (if our budget extended to jetting all over the country to see them all, which sadly it doesn’t). Anyway, have a read and let us know what’s on your gig-going itinerary for the next month or so. We can make it through this together. … Read More