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Dirty Projectors, Vampire Weekend Headline Amazing Occupy Sandy Benefit Lineup

By Judy Berman on

Despite the pervasive assumption that Occupy Wall Street is defunct or irrelevant, in the weeks since Hurricane Sandy struck, the movement has mobilized countless volunteers to fill the gaps left by government agencies and larger humanitarian organizations. Now, in order to sustain its efforts, Occupy Sandy has announced a benefit concert… Read More

Books

Literary Mixtape: Sir Gawain

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: The Pearl Poet’s classic Arthurian tale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. … Read More

Music

What Pitchfork’s Top 10 Songs of 2011 Say About Us

By Judy Berman on

It’s that time of year again, when everyone from New Yorker critics to mp3 bloggers who barely write a single sentence about the songs they post embark upon that great equalizer: the best-of list. This week, Pitchfork has revealed its writers’ 100 favorite tracks of 2011, and as usual, it provides some subliminal insight into where young, indie types’ (we’ll do everyone the favor of not using that word) heads have been over the past 12 months. Indulge us in our overanalysis of what the site’s top 10 songs of the year say about us, after the jump. … Read More

Celebrity

Lady Gaga’s Old LES Apartment is Now On the Market

By Emily Temple on

If you were ever wondering where Lady Gaga — or to be more precise, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta — spent some of her formative years in Manhattan, here it is, you’re in luck. Gawker pointed us towards Miss Germanotta’s old Lower East Side apartment, a tiny one-bedroom 176 Stanton Street, nice enough (though we sort of doubt this was the decor when she lived here), and altogether too small to fit even one element from any of her current favorite costumes. But good news for those of you who are gaga for Gaga: the apartment is renting for $1,850 a month, which is actually rather reasonable for that neighborhood, hopping as it is. Plus, not only will you be renting hundreds of places Gaga might have touched, stepped on, or licked, the apartment also features “french doors, a marble bath, and a spacious floor-plan.” Click through to see more photos, and then, if your interest is piqued, check out the listing here. … Read More

Music

The Best Indie-Pop Singles (and Albums) of 2011

By Sophie Weiner on

Los Campesinos! have come a long way in five years of playing music together. When we heard the Welsh band’s Sticking Fingers Into Sockets EP in 2007, we were instantly enamored of their twee-pop earworms with lyrics that you couldn’t help shouting along to. Since then, they’ve released three albums, each with progressively darker lyrics and a more aggressive, dissonant sound. So we were amused and unsurprised to hear that their new album, to be released tomorrow in the US, would be titled Hello Sadness, and were excited to absorb it in full (it’s now streaming over at NPR).

But Los Campesinos! are hardly the only twee band to grace us with new music in 2011. For those of you who are new to the indie-pop world, or who haven’t visited it in awhile, allow us to catch you up. Pop music has always been more about singles than albums, particularly in the age of iTunes. Inspired by Hello Sadness‘s lead single, “By Your Hand,” we’ve gathered up a selection of the best indie-pop songs of this year. As a bonus, we’ve also rated how well the album stands up in comparison. Enjoy, and tell us what we left out in the comments. … Read More

Music

10 Indie Rock Side Projects You Should Know

By Heidi Vanderlee on

Real Estate inspired us to mix Budweiser with Sprite and embrace Hawaiian print last summer. But more recently, frontman Matthew Mondanile quietly slipped in through the vulnerable cracks of our childlike subconscious, instantly winning us over with the lo-fi comfort rock of Ducktails, whose new album, Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, dropped on Woodsist this week.

In fact, plenty of indie rock royalty have lower-profile side projects hiding up their sleeves that are every bit as brilliant as their better-known, blogosphere-friendly bands. After the jump, we introduce you ten more such acts that should be on your radar. … Read More

Design

Guess That Swag Curtain

By Kelsey Keith on

Celebrities and real estate, a one-two punch that makes the real estate blogs go wild. Case in point: this ostentatious 10-room penthouse — located on a prime section of Fifth Avenue facing Central Park — on the market for $13.9 million. Sure, that’s a hefty chunk of change, but check out all the murals that come with! (We’re not sure how much of the velvet furnishings are included.) See if you guess the conservative “man of the people” who decorated this trainwreck, after the… Read More

Architecture

Purchase a Piece of History: Julius Shulman’s Pad On the Market

By Kelsey Keith on

Julius Shulman, who died this summer at age 98, was the photographer who put California architecture of the 1950s and ’60s on the cultural map. No surprise, then, that Shulman’s own home was a rough gem in the canon of modernist cool. Raphael Soriano designed the 3-bedroom home for Shulman and his first wife Emma at 7875 Woodrow Wilson Drive in Los Angeles. We have no idea what’s considered a reasonable home price in the Hollywood Hills (in fact, our primary source of information on the neighborhood is Lynchian and/or all those Shulman shots of homes from sixty years ago), but $2.5 million doesn’t seem too outlandish for such a well-preserved piece of design history pie. Find out what you get for all that dough, after the… Read More

Music

The Flavorpill Mixtape II: Free Downloads from Thom Yorke, Fool’s Gold, Julian Casablancas, and Girls

By Stelios Phili on

Exciting news: Your latest Flavorpill Mixtape has arrived. Your ears are salivating. Your fingers are ready to click ctrl + left click and ‘save as.’ Ten essential downloads from this past week in music after the jump — all free for the taking! Take a listen, and then leave us a comment with what you think. … Read More

Film

An Open Letter to Michel Gondry: Buy This House

By Caroline Stanley on

Around the time we first launched Flavorwire we told you about a run-in we had with our Oscar award-winning neighbor Michel Gondry in Williamsburg. We haven’t seen him shooting any music videos around the hood since (perhaps we scared him off), but now 59 Orient Avenue, the house that was once Kate Winslet’s apartment in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — and eventually became a squatter’s paradise around this time last year — is for sale. … Read More