F

Flavorwire

Cat Power

Music

10 Songs That Make You Cry

By Alison Nastasi on

Most movie audiences will be choosing between two big releases for the upcoming holiday weekend: Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables. If you don’t mind secretly sobbing in a dark theater, and your mom is tagging along (moms really love Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman), you’ll probably find yourself transported to 19th-century France for the adaptation of Victor Hugo’s famous novel. The trailer for Les Mis reveals footage of Anne Hathaway as the ill-fated prostitute Fantine performing a weepy, whispery rendition of the beloved “I Dreamed a Dream.” Whether you appreciate movie musicals or not, the song instantly turns on the waterworks for a lot of people. It’s a heartbreaking lament. This got us thinking about other tunes that call for Kleenex and a shoulder to cry on. For a song to tap into such emotion is an incredibly intimate thing, and not all of the reasons are sad ones. Sometimes the sheer magnificence of a piece of music elicits a few tears. We selected a group of tracks that tend to make people sob. What songs really bring out your cry face? … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Why?, Cat Power

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week there’s another new track from the new Why? album, some reissued goodness from Chris and Cosey and Crime & the City Solution, AC Newman’s entry in the Song Title of the Year competition, killer mixes from Nicolas Jaar and Blackest Ever Black, and a whole heap more. Since all this action costs precisely nothing, what are you waiting for? All the download links await after the jump. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Some leaked photos of Joel Kinnaman wearing his RoboCop suit on the set of Jose Padilha’s upcoming remake are drawing criticism from film bloggers due to its derivative, Dark Knight-inspired design. [via Huff Post]

2. Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis will guest star on the upcoming season of The New Girl… Read More

Music

The 15 Albums You Need to Hear in September

By Tom Hawking on

You know summer is well and truly over when the humidity recedes, the days start getting shorter and the big album releases start coming thick and fast. Yep, it’s almost time for the September rush, and this year the crop is particularly good — so much so, in fact, that we’ve expanded our usual round-up of 10 albums you need to hear in the month to come to a bumper list of 15. As ever, we’ve also rounded up the rest of the month’s notable releases: the good, the bad, and the ugly. So tell us: what are you looking forward to hearing in… Read More

Music

A Longish List of Long Songs That Are Totally Worth Your Time

By Tom Hawking on

As you might have read yesterday, we’re going quietly bananas over the new Swans record, which is definitely our favorite album of August and quite possibly our favorite thus far of 2012. It’s also home to two tracks that clock in at above 20 minutes long, one other that’s just over 19 minutes, and a couple more that push 10 minutes. Songs that long are always a risky proposition — the whole idea of the ultra-lengthy epic is often associated with prog and its multitude of sins, but the realms of a 10-minute-plus song are also home to some of our absolute favorites. Here’s a nice long selection to get the discussion started — what did we miss? (If you say “Stairway to Heaven” we reserve the right to trace your IP and throw fish food at your window.) … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Cat Power, Matmos

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week brings a pretty eclectic haul of tracks — there’s a Cat Power remix that (whisper it quietly) is better than the original, along with new Matmos (hooray!) and new tracks from Thee Oh Sees, Nü Sensae, and Paul Banks. There’s also a cut from what might be our favorite sneaky under-the-radar release of the last couple of months (the debut from Brooklyn band ERAAS), a whacking great 20-track Chemikal Underground sampler, and more. In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Cat Power, John Maus

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week, there’s a new Cat Power track (yay!), a new/old John Maus track (YAY!), a taste the new album from Purity Ring (definite yay!), more Clams Casinos instrumentals, another Peaking Lights mixtape, and a shitload of other tracks that definitely warrant various connotations of the word “yay.” In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More

Music

Listen to “Ruin,” a New Song from Cat Power

By Caroline Stanley on

Fans of Cat Power know all to well that it has been almost six years since The Greatest and a decade since You Are Free, but luckily, the long wait for original material is finally over. Sun, which Chan Marshall performed and produced herself, is scheduled for release on September 4th, and today we have our first taste of what to expect from the album. Click through to give “Ruin” a spin now, and let us know what you think of the bouncy track, as well as Marshall’s drastically different cropped ‘do (a byproduct of her recent breakup with Giovanni Ribisi), in the comments. We’re going to go with “bitchin’” on both accounts. … Read More

Music

10 Gorgeously Melancholy Albums to Soundtrack Your Summer

By Tom Hawking on

A couple of weeks back, we had a look at a selection of indie rock summer anthems, and earlier in the month our Pop for Skeptics maven Rohin Guha nominated a selection of more poptastic summer jams. But the thing is, summer doesn’t conjure up images of pool parties and general sun-drenched revelry for everyone — for some (and you can count us among their number, especially in the insufferable humidity of NYC), it’s a pretty melancholy time of the year. And yet, luxuriating in that melancholy can be somehow just as satisfying in its own way as splashing around at the beach — so here’s a selection of 10 albums to soundtrack doing just that. Suggestions are welcome, of course. … Read More

Music

10 Albums We’ve Been Waiting Far Too Long For

By Tom Hawking on

This week saw the release of the new Santigold album, which has been four years in the making, although somehow it seems a lot longer. While we’re not entirely sold on Master of My Make-Believe, it did get us thinking about the fact that 2012 is shaping up as a good year for ticking off the list of long-awaited records that will (hopefully) be arriving at last. After the jump, we’ve pulled together a selection of 10 albums for which we’ve been waiting far too long — shit, some of them have been pending for longer than Chinese Democracy was! Did we miss anything? … Read More