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10 Great Songs about 21st-Century Politics

By Tom Hawking on

“The financial crisis has been a difficult topic for songwriters to wrestle with,” Dorian Lynskey told The New York Times last year. “What do you say about a financial crisis where the villains are obscure and the solutions are obscure? That’s a challenge.” The idea that there’s not much political music being made these days has been a popular one of late, but frankly, we’re having none of it. Sure, perhaps there aren’t the flag-waving anthems that characterize the ’60s, but there are still plenty of politically aware songwriters these days. Why, this very week, there are at least two politically weighty records dropping — the new Bruce Springsteen album, and the official release of Cass McCombs’ song about Bradley Manning. We thought we’d celebrate with a selection of the finest lyrics thus far about 21st-century politics. Suggestions are, as ever, welcome. … Read More

Music

10 of the Most Outrageously Talented Multi-Instrumentalists in Music Today

By Tom Hawking on

Andrew Bird’s new album Break It Yourself is out this week, and while we’ve never been huge fans of the whistlin’ violin-totin’ Midwesterner, we certainly appreciate the diversity of his talents. Bird is one of the most impressive multi-instrumentalists in music today, and with both he and another musician who can apparently play pretty much anything he picks up — namely Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood — releasing new music this week, we thought it’d be a fine time to survey a selection of similarly outrageous talents. We’ve tended to focus on contemporary musicians here — after all, it gets a little tiresome to hear about Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, and John Paul Jones all the time — so let us know if you have any other suggestions. … Read More

Books

Literary Mixtape: Clay from ‘Less Than Zero’

By Emily Temple on

If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Clay, the apathetic protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis’ first novel, Less Than Zero. … Read More

Music

Stereotyping You By Your Favorite Album of 2011

By Tom Hawking on

Last week we stereotyped you by your favorite books, and this week it’s time to apply a bumper edition of our gratuitous generalizations to the world of music. Our stereotyping posts have become something of a tradition at Flavorpill, but still, here’s our obligatory disclaimer: this is an entirely tongue-in-cheek exercise, so don’t get all offended — and also, as ever, several of our favorite records are on here, and we’ll totally own up to all the stereotypes that apply to us. Anyway, with that said, here are 50 albums that keep cropping up on end-of-year lists and the sort of people that like them. … Read More

Music

Our Favorite Dark Ladies of Rock ‘N’ Roll

By Tom Hawking on

As we mentioned earlier in the week, we’ve had Zola Jesus’s new album Conatus on constant rotation of late, and boy, can we ever recommend it. Although Nika Danilova’s not keen on being labelled goth — “What would be the point of making goth music? It’s already been done,” she told Q magazine in January — she certainly shares some kinship with the likes of Siouxsie & The Banshees and Dead Can Dance, female-fronted or female-centric acts whose music carried a certain ominous air. In this sense, Danilova is the latest in the line of what we might call the dark ladies of rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve selected our 10 favorites after the jump. Who are yours? … Read More

Music

10 Indie Rock Memoirs We’d Like To See

By Nicole Rallis on

When the news broke that Neil Young is writing an all-encompassing memoir, it got us thinking about what other musicians — and specifically which of our favorite current indie rockers — we’d like to see compose tell-all autobiographies. Mysterious band break-ups, high-profile couplings gone awry, reclusive behavior, extensive touring, and cult childhoods exposed would all make for awesome, page-turning reads for those of us who have always been curious about the private goings-on behind the music. So, in hopes of giving our favorite potential memoirists a gentle push, we’ve complied a list of  ten artists whose lives who we’d love to learn more about. … Read More

Music

The 10 Things That Are Killing Indie Music in 2011

By Tom Hawking on

You may have noticed that we love indie music here at Flavorpill. And by “indie,” we don’t necessarily just mean music released on independent labels (a term that’s becoming increasingly meaningless these days anyway). These days, “indie” has become similar shorthand to what “alternative” meant in the 1990s: music that exists outside the world of the production-line chart pop that major labels really wish we’d still shell out $25 a CD for. Anyway, definition-based quibbling aside, indie music is a subject that’s dear to our heart — without it, we’d be forever marooned in major label hell, and thus we get upset about the things that we feel are undermining its health. Like the 10 things you’ll read after the jump, for instance. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. P.J. Harvey has taken home this year’s Mercury Prize for her album Let England Shake, making her the first singer to ever win the award twice. [via

Music

15 Essential Women Punk Icons

By Judy Berman on

Rolling Stone readers polls are the worst. Remember their “Top Ten Live Acts of All Time,” which was so terrible the entire Flavorpill staff came together to post an alternate list? Well, the aging rock magazine has done it again: Last week brought “Readers Poll: The Best Punk Bands of All Time.” And guess what? Not only did Green Day — Green Day! — take the #1 spot, but there wasn’t a single woman on the list. So, in an attempt to correct this latest grievous error, we have compiled a list of 15 essential women punk icons. Let’s be clear: These are hardly the only noteworthy women in punk. They’re simply the ones we think have absolutely earned a spot in any discussion of the best punk bands of all time. … Read More

Art

Gallery: Laurie Masters's Oil Paintings of Rock 'n' Roll Stars

By Tom Hawking on

We recently stumbled across an impressive trove of rock ‘n’ roll portraits by Ontario artist Laurie Masters over at Behance Network. Masters is apparently entirely self-taught and creates her portraits of celebrities from photographs – she was originally a musician, and as such it’s perhaps no surprise that her work focuses largely on musicians (PJ Harvey, M.I.A., the Arcade Fire), although her subject matter also encompasses a variety of other artists and actors. Endearingly, she also creates dolls of her subjects, some of which can be seen at her website (apparently Flight of the Conchords were particularly impressed by their stuffed likenesses). We’re not necessarily always fans of the whole painting-directly-from-photos idea, but Masters’ rock ‘n’ roll portraits are an interesting and ongoing project. We’ve collected some of our favorites after the jump. … Read More