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Against Music’s Reductive Obsession With Newness: A Defense of Savages

By Tom Hawking on

Cometh the hype, cometh the backlash. Like a lot of the music press, Flavorwire has been enthusing over London four-piece Savages ever since they emerged last year. Out this week, their debut album, Silence Yourself, delivers on the promise of their first singles and killer live show. But with the release of that album, a counter-narrative is emerging, especially in their native UK. It stems largely from the sort of contrarians who haunt Internet comment sections (and celebrity Twitter feeds), but also appears in the occasional (semi-)professional review: Savages are derivative and dull, goes the argument, a rip-off of post-punk/goth luminaries like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division. They’re not doing anything new. … Read More

Music

The Unread Biographies of Famous Musicians

By Tom Hawking on

Late last week, we read with interest in the NME that Nick Cave the musician was exhibiting at Grand Central. How was it, we wondered, that it had escaped our notice that Cave was working on an immersive site-specific sculpture featuring dancing horses? Happily, over the weekend we did some research and brushed up on our Cave biography, along with that of some of our other favorite musicians. Read on, and learn some things that you’ll never have imagined could possibly be true! … Read More

Music

A Selection of Fascinating Musical Manifestos, 1910-Present

By Tom Hawking on

A couple of years back, the Guardian published an article called “The Lost Art of the Pop Manifesto,” bemoaning, well, the lost art of the pop manifesto. The article harked back to the golden age of punk, when bands published manifestos as often as they made records, and lamented that bands these days just don’t seem to do the same thing. We’re not so sure, though — so in honor of The Knife’s recently published manifesto, which did the rounds earlier this week, here’s a look at some of our favorite manifestos past and present, from pre-WWI futurism to post-millenial hippie utopianism, from stuckism to an erudite tract on black metal. … Read More

Music

A Selection of the Flat-Out Weirdest Careers in Music

By Tom Hawking on

As we noted yesterday, we’ve been going quietly gaga about the new Scott Walker record ever since we got a copy of it a few weeks back. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Bish Bosch is that, weird as it is — and, mark our words, it’s really fucking weird — it’s still not as strange as the career trajectory of the man who made it. Walker’s journey from the fresh-faced MOR pop idol of his Walker Brothers years to the experimental maverick who’s just made what’s arguably his best album yet at the age of 69 is one of music’s most unlikely stories, and got us thinking about other unusual career trajectories. We’ve put together a selection of our favorites, so click through and let us know what you make of it all. … Read More

Music

10 of the Funniest Love Songs in History

By Tom Hawking on

Jens Lekman’s new record I Know What Love Isn’t is out this week, and on the whole it’s a pretty morose affair, as befits its status as a breakup album. Still, even on a record this subdued, Lekman’s signature humor can’t help but shine through, despite the fact that he’s left some of his funniest recent songs (namely “Waiting for Kirsten” and “An Argument With Myself”) off the tracklisting. The fact that Lekman’s songs are often as witty as they are moving is something that we’ve always liked about him — after all, love is frequently as bewildering, ridiculous, and, yes, funny as it is wonderful and inspiring, and love songs are a whole lot more effective if they eschew clichéd romanticism for realism. With that in mind, here’s a selection of wry, witty, and/or plain old silly love songs that make us laugh, starting with one of Jens’ best. Let us know your favorites in the comments. … Read More

Music

Your Favorite Musicians’ Unexpected Favorite Records

By Tom Hawking on

You may have read recently that Mitt Romney Paul Ryan is the world’s most unlikely Rage Against the Machine fan, and the spectacular WTF-ness of his inexplicable declaration of fondness for left-wing agitrock will endure as one of the stranger moments of the 2012 campaign trail. The whole strange business also got us thinking: well, there are plenty of features around wherein artists have been asked to choose a selection of their favorite albums or songs. Surely there are some wacky choices in there? We got reading, and yep, there are some real winners to be found… so here’s a selection of such choices that we found particularly interesting — either selections we’d never heard of, or selections we just wouldn’t have expected. Who’d have thought that Bradford Cox was the only person in the world to like the second MGMT album, or that Frank Black was into weird faux-Greek music, or that both Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were experts on reggae? Read on for more… … 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

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: John Maus, Light Asylum

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 track from Flavorpill favorite John Maus’ new rarities compilation, a collaboration between The Soft Moon and Ultravox’s John Foxx, a live Light Asylum recording, brooding techno from Yakine, a surprisingly good synth track from John of Peter Bjorn & John, an entire sampler for Cornershop’s record label, and plenty of other good stuff besides. 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 Free MP3s You Need to Download This Week: John Maus, Azealia Banks

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness, both from around the web and from our own servers. This week there’s a new track from our favorite synthpop academic, John Maus, along with chartbusters from Azealia Banks and Nicki Minaj, dark weirdness from Zambri and Lorn, a smattering of old-school punk, and a challenging, oblique lyrical masterpiece from Best Coast. 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

The 15 Best Dark and Weird Records of 2011

By Russ Marshalek on

Is it just us, or do most of the “best albums of 2011″ lists this year tend towards a certain amount of sameness? That’s understandable given the undeniable greatness of a handful of records, but on the whole, when we’re facing down a few weeks of holiday stress, travel woes, and inane over-festivity, we’re generally not in the mood to listen to something as milquetoast as Bon Iver. Give us something darker, moodier, bleaker to get us through those days of familial celebration. Something from, say, the record label Blackest Ever Black.

So, both as a holiday coping mechanism and as an alternative to all the best albums lists that have placed that unfortunately boring Real Estate record so near the top, we present an alternate best of 2011, recognizing 15 records that are twisted, dark, and out there. Take note: we’ve purposely left out metal, as that could be its own list entirely. … Read More