It’s Friday, which means we’re preparing for the inaugural Flavorwire staff trivia contest (really), and also that we are, as ever, rounding up the best songs we’ve heard this week. This week we adored new tracks from Liars, Julianna Barwick, and Scott & Charlene’s Wedding, marveled at the fact that Giorgio Moroder is soundtracking a Google Chrome racing game, enjoyed atmospheric goodness from oOoOO and When Saints Go Machine, got all morose with another new track from The National, and plenty more. All this goodness is streaming now, and it all awaits you after the jump. … Read More
The National
15 Things We Learned From The National’s Reddit AMA
Evidently, The National survived playing “Sorrow” for six hours straight over the weekend; today Matt Berninger and the Dessner brothers were online to do what turned out to be a pretty great Reddit AMA. This format can be revealing and fascinating when an interviewee puts a lot of effort into it, and The National answered a shitload of questions, doing so thoughtfully and extensively. Here are some of their most interesting responses.
… Read More
The 10 Albums You Need to Hear in May
As ever, we’re starting out a new month by poring over the schedules of upcoming album releases and distilling the slew of new music on offer into the form of a convenient list of the ten records you really, really should hear over the next four weeks or so. May looks like a particularly strong month — there are at least two albums that might well end up on our year-end Top 10 list (Savages and Majical Cloudz), along with a bunch of other good stuff from the likes of The National, Beaches, Standish/Carlyon, and plenty… Read More
The 10 Best Songs We Heard This Week: Kelis, Janelle Monáe
It’s Friday, which means we are contemplating the weekend ahead and also, as ever, rounding up the best songs we’ve heard this week. This week we heard not one but two great new pop songs in the space of seven days — from Kelis and Janelle Monáe (with some help from Erykah Badu) — something that happens once every decade or so! We also celebrated the returns of Carter Tutti and Kode9, got even more excited about upcoming records from The National and Pure X, listened to Owen Ashworth (he who was once known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone) doing gospel music, and more. Click on through and get a-listening, dear readers! … Read More
Elegant Retro Redesigns of Contemporary Album Covers
We do like a good redesigned cover or two here at Flavorwire, and we also like a bit of retro design action, so we were delighted when we spotted these redesigned covers for classic albums at The Design Blog. They’re the work of Brazilian designer Rodrigo Maia — the idea behind them is to marry contemporary album covers to a jazz-era cover art aesthetic, and they work a treat. … Read More
The 10 Best New Songs We Heard This Week: The National, Jay-Z
It’s Friday afternoon, which means that we’re resolutely ignoring the rain as we contemplate the weekend, and also looking back over the best new songs we heard this week. Over the last seven days, we’ve gotten all gloomily excited about the new National album, reminded ourselves that Jay-Z can still actually rap every so often, got all summery to new songs by Beaches and Woods, marveled at how beautiful the new Eluvium track is, enjoyed new stuff from Standish/Carlyon and Tin Trails, and more. All these tracks await you below — get streaming and/or downloading, readers! … Read More
The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories
1. James Franco explains that his band Daddy’s new song “Can’t Say Goodbye” was inspired by his father’s recent death. Watch the music video for the track — which features childhood home movies of the actor — here.
2. The National debuted four new songs during their performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties in England over the weekend. Listen to one of the tracks here. … Read More
15 Hilariously Negative Early Reviews of Classic Albums
Everybody likes reading a really nasty review every now and then, but sometimes critics get it wrong. Here’s a look at misguided reviews of albums that’d go on to be acclaimed as… Read More
Literary Mixtape: Lady Chatterley
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: D.H. Lawrence’s most controversial heroine, the lovely Lady Chatterley. … Read More
Duane Dalton’s Elegantly Redesigned ‘Album Anatomy’
You might be tempted to lump in Duane Dalton’s Album Anatomy series with the many “minimalist” renderings of pop-culture icons and artifacts that have flooded the Internet. But the Dublin-based designer is actually doing something a bit more interesting than many of his peers, pushing all the information about the record to the top and bottom of the image and using the center space to illustrate his own experience of it. Dalton writes that the project is “an exploration in the art of reduction. It breaks down album imagery into its purist [sic] form by discarding any unnecessary information. This is achieved using a strict grid that displays the relevant album details, which leaves a central void to convey a response to the album. This void is filled by my personal response to an album. It can be influenced by a key track, the cover art or the overall flavour of the album.” Click through to view some of our favorite Album Anatomy redesigns, and visit Dalton’s website to see many more. … Read More
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