F

Flavorwire

The Mountain Goats

Music

Hear The Mountain Goats Premiere New Songs at the Ecstatic Music Festival

By Judy Berman on

Everyone we know who caught The Mountain Goats’ Ecstatic Music Festival set last weekend in New York has spent the entire week raving about it. The performance featured songs from Transcendental Youth, John Darnielle’s collaboration with the classical vocal quartet Anonymous 4 and Owen Pallett, which centers around a small, desolate, and melancholy community… Read More

Pop Culture

A Selection of Delicious Pop Culture Cookies

By Emily Temple on

All the cookie art that’s been flying around the web recently has made us feel a little hungry. And since our favorite time to eat cookies (or any other junk food for that matter) is while we’re also enjoying some pop culture in one of its many forms, why not combine the two? After all, it can only improve a cookie to put Ron Swanson or Bruce Springsteen or David Bowie on it, right? If you love them, you can savor the added sweetness of a tribute to your favorite icon, and if you hate them, well, you can chomp their heads off. Click through to see our roundup of pop culture cookies we’d love to dip in a huge glass of milk, and let us know which one is your favorite in the comments. … Read More

Music

10 Songs to Soundtrack Your Romantic Crisis

By Judy Berman on

There are love songs, of course. There are break-up songs. And then there are songs about relationships that don’t fit into either of those categories — the ones about love affairs that aren’t ending, even when something has gone seriously, perhaps irreparably wrong. Romantic crisis anthems, if you will. The newest of Montreal album, Paralytic Stalks, which is out this week, is all about a relationship in peril; the band’s mastermind, Kevin Barnes, recently told Spin, “The general theme of the whole record is trying to keep myself together when I’m faced with all this madness, trying to keep my relationships together.” It struck us that we don’t hear these stories told in song nearly enough — and since Valentine’s Day, with its perfectionist conception of love, is around the corner, this seemed like a good time to compile them. … Read More

Celebrity

The Best Celebrity New Year’s Resolutions on Twitter

By Emily Temple on

Celebrities: they’re just like us. That is, they make New Year’s resolutions and promote them on Twitter whether any of their friends care or not — though, to be fair, they probably have more friends who do care than anyone else you know. And of course, just like our own New Year’s promises, some of these celebrity resolutions are thoughtful and from the heart while others are meant in jest, and many fall somewhere in between. Whether revealing a dream to stay alive forever, a need to pare down, or a staunch resolution to make friends with a lion, and whether completely tongue-in-cheek or sweet and sincere, click through to read fifteen of our favorite celebrity New Year’s resolution tweets, and be sure to let us know your own resolutions in the comments. As for us, well, we resolve to stop looking at Twitter so much. … Read More

Music

Watch The Mountain Goats’ Intimate Cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

By Judy Berman on

If you haven’t been following AV Club’s Holiday Undercover series, which has found the likes of Wye Oak and Little Scream covering both classic carols and Christmas-appropriate tracks by everyone from the Velvet Underground to Low, you’re missing out on a vital bit of seasonal cheer. But the high point of the set is its final installment — a close-up video of the Mountain Goats (that is, John Darnielle) performing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” While Darnielle plays it straight, sweet, and typically intense for most of the song, fans can rest assured that he throws a respectable black metal aside in at the 2:51 mark. … Read More

Books

Literary Mixtape: Scheherazade from 'Arabian Nights'

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: Scheherazade, the Persian queen of a thousand stories. … Read More

Music

10 of the Most Memorable Fictional Characters in Music

By Judy Berman on

We talk a lot, here at Flavorpill, about our favorite characters from books, film, and TV. And, although we’ve made a habit of compiling mixtapes for everyone from Nancy Drew to Josef K, it isn’t often that we consider the music world’s own fictional creations. After the jump, we attempt to right that oversight with an incredibly subjective roundup of music’s most memorable characters. Add your suggestions in the comments; if we get enough great ones, we might just publish a follow-up post of reader picks. … Read More

Music

Be a Part of ‘Tallahassee Turns Ten’, the Mountain Goats Tribute Album

By Emily Temple on

This morning, David over at Largehearted Boy tipped us off to a great idea from some serious Mountain Goats fans. Nine years ago today, The Mountain Goats released their classic album Tallahassee on 4AD, and in a year, a group of artists and fans led by Blade Barringer plans to create a cover album called Tallahassee Turns… Read More

Music

A Google Map of Every Location Mentioned in a Mountain Goats Song

By Judy Berman on

Mountain Goats fandom is no casual endeavor; their discography looks something like this, and that’s not even including the many, many songs that have never been released. The intense relationship between John Darnielle’s audience and his music has been extensively documented, and each Mountain Goats concert is basically an excuse for several hundred people to celebrate the joys of unhappiness together. (In case you assume we’re making fun, know this: We’ve been to at least six of them.) All of which is to say that there is absolutely nothing surprising in the news that one zealous disciple has created a global Google map pinpointing each of the myriad places Darnielle mentions in his songs and annotating it with the relevant lyrics — from the Denton, TX of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” to the Shanghai of “Lady from Shanghai.” Gawk (or, if you’re a Mountain Goats superfan, point out the egregious omission of your choice) after the jump. … Read More

Music

Strange Musical Trends: Non-Metal Songs About Metal

By Tom Hawking on

Many adjectives have been used to describe heavy metal over the years, but “fashionable” has rarely been one of them. Metal has always been its own world, the province of long-haired dudes whose lack of engagement with what is or isn’t considered cool by everyone else probably forms a large part of the reason why they’re metalheads in the first place. It’s no doubt a little galling for such veteran metalheads that all of a sudden, it’s fashionable to like metal – everyone from Lady Gaga and Megan Fox to Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus is turning up in metal T-shirts and proclaiming a love of all things heavy. There’ve also been a slew of non-metal songs about metal over the last few years, some good, some less so – we’ve rounded up a few below. We can’t help but wonder what Varg Vikernes thinks of it all. … Read More