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Great Albums With Embarrassingly Bad Cover Art [NSFW]

By Tom Hawking on

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Mosquito is officially on the shelves, and our first impressions of the record haven’t changed much: we rather like it. The cover art, though… well, that’s an entirely different matter. We’re sure there’s some reasoning behind adorning the sleeve with a lurid pink giant mosquito sinking its proboscis into the ass of a baby (a baby with green lipstick on, we hasten to add), but until we know what it is, the album is going straight to the top of our list of great albums saddled by awful cover art. Here are some of the… Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Frank Ocean, Pissed Jeans

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means that we’re hungover as hell from our very own Silent Drape Runners’ Lil B party last night, and also that it’s time for our regular roundup of new music to get your hands on this week. Happily, the music industry is back in full swing after the holiday season, so much so that we’re back on the downloading kick from this week onwards. This week stuff you can get for free includes an Outkast reunion, sort of, along with new tracks from Lost Animal, Pissed Jeans and Junip, a bunch of antipodean indie pop, Blood Orange covering Kindness, and three entire albums (a new one from rising NYC rapper MaG, a rarities comp from Four Tet, and a new EP from Raekwon.) Get hold of all this action after the jump. … Read More

Music

5 New Tracks You Need to Hear This Week: Frank Ocean, Blanck Mass

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means we’ve come to the end of the single most barren week in the music industry’s release schedule. It’s like a snowy wasteland out there, kids! As such, we’re downscaling our regular list of 10 new tracks to hear — and, ideally, download — to five for this week, but at least they’re five good ‘uns: there’s a hitherto unreleased track from Frank Ocean (complete with an ALL CAPS lyric sheet from the man himself), along with the unexpected return of Blanck Mass, a taster from the new Low album, Dent May getting all “1999″ on our collective asses, and a present from Pulp to the denizens of the good ship Coachella. Click through and get listening. … Read More

Music

What Pitchfork's Top 10 Songs of 2012 Say About Us

By Tom Hawking on

Seventeen years after Ryan Schreiber first started banging out reviews in his Minneapolis bedroom, Pitchfork’s end-of-year lists are probably the most anticipated in the music industry — both because for all its failings the site remains the Internet’s most popular and thus most influential hive of music criticism, and because it holds its lists until pretty much everyone else has published theirs. Over the last couple of years, we’ve amused ourselves by pondering what the songs in the ’Fork’s Top 10 say about its readership (which, of course, includes us) — and so, with the publication yesterday of this year’s winners, we’re giving the exercise another go-around. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Musical theater geeks, drop everything: A new international trailer for Les Misérables has landed online, and unlike the previous teaser, it includes juicy snippets of “One Day More” and “Do You Hear The People Sing?” Are we the only ones getting chills?

2. A benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy called… Read More

Music

The Flavorpill Guide to DIY Pop Culture Halloween Costumes: Music

By Tom Hawking on

Halloween: it’s always more complicated than you want it to be. Even if you’ve got your plans set, it’s a struggle to find the perfect costume — without resorting to the same crappy, overpriced, pre-packaged getups everyone else will be wearing. Thankfully, just as we have done for the past two Octobers, Flavorpill is helping you out with a series of easy DIY costume guides tackling various pop-culture realms. Don’t worry — there’s no sewing involved. Thus far we’ve looked at costumes inspired by TV, film and books, and this week we’re moving onto the world of music. If you’ve ever wanted to indulge your (perhaps vaguely spooky) inner rock star type, then look no further — from Grimes to “Gangnam Style,” we’ve got you covered. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. In case you missed it, Animal Collective went on Conan last night to promote their new album Centipede Hz, playing “Today’s Supernatural” behind set pieces that looked like weird glowing teeth. Watch a clip of the performance

Music

Photo Gallery: All Tomorrow’s Parties NY 2012

By Tom Hawking on

Rumors of All Tomorrow’s Parties’ demise, it appears, have been at least somewhat exaggerated. The festival’s well-publicized financial problems, along with its move from Asbury Park to a location on the Lower East Side that goes by the name of “Basketball City,” raised speculations that this year’s event wouldn’t live up to past glories. But while the location was definitely a downgrade from the Jersey boardwalk, and a couple of late line-up switches meant we missed out on seeing Chavez and an acoustic Lee Ranaldo set, this year’s festival remained a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. Flavorpill’s ace photographer Leila Morrissey was in attendance — check out a gallery of highlights after the jump. … Read More

Television

The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Seth MacFarlane

By Emily Temple on

And, we’re back! Last night, season 38 of Saturday Night Live premiered with a pretty solid episode featuring host Seth MacFarlane and musical guest Frank Ocean. As you might have heard, this season is seeing a few major changes:  Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg are gone (and Jason Sudeikis is on his way out), Aidy Bryant, Tim Robinson, and Cecily Strong have joined as featured players, and they’re finally letting Jay Pharaoh play Obama. And he’s good at it! Based on that fact alone, we have to say that we’re psyched for the next few months. We’ll have to see how the cast changes shake out over the weeks to come, but for now, click through to watch the sketches from last night that we loved, and the ones that made us cringe, and let us know if you agree with our assessments in the comments! … Read More

Television

Watch Seth MacFarlane’s ‘SNL’ Promos

By Caroline Stanley on

Forget the sweater-worthy chill in the air; here’s your first real sign that summer is officially over: The promos for the season premiere of Saturday Night Live have arrived online. If you thought Seth MacFarlane was a weird choice of host (sure, he’s a talented writer and his voice work is hilarious, but outside of a guest role on Gilmore Girls, we haven’t really seen much in the way of live acting from him), then watching these clips probably isn’t going to make you feel much differently. The interaction between MacFarlane and Kenan Thompson feels pretty flat, especially given that this is the first show of the season. Regardless, we’ll be tuning in on Saturday night to see what musical guest Frank Ocean has up his sleeve — apparently it involves John Mayer. … Read More