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Music

The Best Cats in the World of Music

By Tom Hawking on

The Internet loves nothing more than cats, but it’s rare that we look beyond the cute photos and memes to more seriously consider their place in our world. Flavorwire’s Highbrow Cat Week is an attempt to remedy that, with a series of pieces devoted to analyzing their impact on the cultural realm.

Throughout this week we’ve been analyzing the place of cats in popular culture, and why they’re such an ongoing obsession for the Internet, along with various other fairly cerebral cat-related topics. But shit, it’s Friday, so perhaps it’s time to get a little less highbrow and just appreciate some of the cats we’ve known and loved in popular culture. With that in mind, here’s a brief survey of some of the best cats in the world of music — 15 of our favorite music-related feline friends. Let us know in the comments if you’ve any to add. … Read More

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Design

Storm Thorgerson’s Most Iconic Album Cover Designs

By Johnny Otis on

We were sad to hear of the death of British designer and artist Storm Thorgerson earlier this week. Thorgerson was a hugely influential and distinctive designer of album covers — he’s best known for his work with Pink Floyd, but he designed sleeves for all sorts of bands over the years. His style was instantly recognizable — heavily influenced by surrealism, and heavy on visual non-sequiturs that were both memorable and somehow disconcerting, presented with neither context nor explanation, apparently laden with meaning but defying simple interpretation. We’ve collected some of his most memorable designs here as a celebration of his life and work. … Read More

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Music

The Most Beautiful Song Lyric Tattoos We’ve Ever Seen

By Tom Hawking on

Song lyrics are clearly a popular choice for tattoos, but the vast majority of lyrical quotes are pretty much plain old script tattoos. We have nothing against this, but it’s interesting to see tattoos where lyrics are combined with an artistic flourish, so we’ve gathered some examples of truly beautiful work that we thought we’d share with… Read More

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New York

Forget Karaoke: Here Are 10 of NYC's Best Live Tribute Bands

By Heidi Vanderlee on

You thought earnest, shameless tribute bands were just for Las Vegas, didn’t you? While New York obviously has a wealth of original music to offer, we’ve been thinking: singing along to live renditions of “Fat-Bottomed Girls” could in theory be a lot more fun than pretending to care about DIIV. It’s time to take a break from nodding to noise bands and take your pick from this fine array of tributes to the classic acts we all totally still listen to, even though we’ll only admit it at karaoke. … Read More

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Music

10 Great State-of-the-Nation Albums

By Tom Hawking on

The new Dan Deacon album was released yesterday, and it’s perhaps the last thing we would have expected from a man once so interested in the idea of music as a purely sonic entity, devoid of any narrative or greater meaning: it’s a loose concept album about America. Deacon has written some interesting stuff about the ideas behind the album, which is entitled simply America, on his website, noting that “The inspiration for the music was my love of cross-country travel, seeing the landscapes of the United States, going from east to west and back again over the course of seasons,” while “The lyrics are inspired by my frustration, fear and anger towards the country and world I live in and am a part of.” The result is a fascinating state-of-the-nation album, a record that’s both personal and also vocal about the country of its creator. In celebration of its release, here are some of our favorite albums that address similar subject matter. … Read More

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Music

10 Bands That Changed the Sound That Made Them Famous

By Tom Hawking on

This week’s most notable release has been Fragrant World, the curiously titled new album from Yeasayer, which came across our desk a couple of weeks back and has been on occasional rotation at Flavorpill central since. Our impressions of the record are that it sounds basically like its predecessor, 2010′s Odd Blood, and thus nothing like the band’s debut, 2007′s All Hour Cymbals. Given the acclaim that their debut received, it’s curious and rather disappointing that Yeasayer have moved away from its wide-eyed eclecticism toward a more conventional sound. Still, they’re hardly the first band to change the sound that brought them to the public’s attention — we’ve put together a selection for your reading delectation after the jump. … Read More

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Design

Iconic Album Covers Recreated With Socks

By Emily Temple on

Now this is an entertaining way to spend laundry day. Neatorama pointed us towards The Sock Covers, a very clever Tumblr devoted to recreating famous and iconic album covers with, you guessed it, socks. Sure, it’s not high art, but it’s goofy and cute and irreverent in all the right ways — if a sock-version of Warhol’s iconic banana on The Velvet Underground & Nico doesn’t make you at least crack a smile, well, we just don’t know what to tell you. In addition, we have to say that we’re rather impressed by the anonymous author’s collection of socks. Click through to check out a few of our favorites from the project, and then head on over to The Sock Covers to see some more for yourself. … Read More

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Art

Awesome Miniature Cardboard Replicas of Famous Drum Kits

By Emily Temple on

You might think you’re a music fan, but have you ever spent hours painstakingly recreating the instruments of your favorite bands with gouache, cardboard, glitter and string? We didn’t think so. Hence the brilliance of Danish artist Rose Eken’s work, which we first spotted over at Dangerous Minds — the concept is disarmingly simple, but also completely unexpected and definitely wicked cool. Would you forgive us for saying that these drum kits rock? Click through to see some of our favorites from Eken’s 100 Drum Kits project, and then be sure to head over to her website to see even more of her work (including some gnarly guitars!). … Read More

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Art

The Artists Behind Some of the Most Cliched Dorm Posters

By Marina Galperina on

Do you ever think about how different the college experience would be today? Maybe we’re aging ourselves here, but just the thought of taking notes on a laptop — or an iPad! — is mind boggling to us old-fashioned spiral notebook types. Well, we’ve surveyed the slightly younger generation, and apparently not much has changed as far as college dorm decorations are concerned. You’ve gotta be kidding. Well, alright. Let’s hit up some dorm rooms and delve into the (still) most cliched and popular posters and the art therein. Girls! Van Gogh! And other usual suspects! Which ones did you have? ‘Fess up. … Read More

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Music

The 10 Most Genuinely Disturbing Songs About Mothers

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Mother’s Day this weekend, and while we love our mothers here at Flavorpill as dearly as anyone, we do get more than a little tired of the wave of Hallmark-card sentimentality that comes with the second Sunday in May. So we thought we’d commemorate the day with something a little darker than yet another list that features Tupac’s “Dear Mama” and Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” — instead, we thought we’d look at some of the more sinister and disturbing songs about mothers and/or motherhood over the years. They’re better songs anyway. … Read More

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