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Great Albums With Embarrassingly Bad Cover Art [NSFW]

By Tom Hawking on

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Mosquito is officially on the shelves, and our first impressions of the record haven’t changed much: we rather like it. The cover art, though… well, that’s an entirely different matter. We’re sure there’s some reasoning behind adorning the sleeve with a lurid pink giant mosquito sinking its proboscis into the ass of a baby (a baby with green lipstick on, we hasten to add), but until we know what it is, the album is going straight to the top of our list of great albums saddled by awful cover art. Here are some of the… Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Wire, Kristin Hersh

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means that we’re watching the snow come down in New York and wishing we were in Austin, and also that it’s time for our regular roundup of new music to download for free. This week there’s a new Glass Candy track from the upcoming After Dark II compilation, along with an unreleased Kristin Hersh track from a new solo record, a taste of John Vanderslice’s David Bowie covers record, a new/old Wire track, new songs from Mudhoney and Thee Oh Sees, and a bunch of other stuff. None of this will cost you a dime, so click through and get a piece of the action! … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Thee Oh Sees, Prince Rama

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, which means a) we survived the apocalypse and b) it’s time for another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week we have Prince Rama welcoming in the post-apocalyptic age, along with Thee Oh Sees covering the Velvet Underground, another beautiful home recording from Marissa Nadler, melancholy songsmithery from Willy Mason and El Perro del Mar, retro-futurism from Chrome Canyon and Ital Tek, and various other goodness for your downloading delectation. Since all this action costs precisely nothing, what are you waiting for? All the download links await after the jump. … Read More

Music

The Most Insanely Prolific Artists in Music

By Tom Hawking on

This week sees the release of Ocean Roar, the new record by Phil Elverum, aka Mount Eerie. Apart from being a rather lovely record in its own right, Ocean Roar is notable for being the second Mount Eerie record of the year, following May’s similarly excellent Clear Moon. This makes Elverum one of 2012′s more prolific musicians, although not necessarily the most prolific, because a couple of the music world’s most famously productive musicians have also had busy years. You’ll find a rundown of these super-busy types, along with some of music’s most prolific artists, past and present, after the jump — as ever, feel free to jump in with further suggestions in the comments section. … Read More

Music

The 15 Albums You Need to Hear in September

By Tom Hawking on

You know summer is well and truly over when the humidity recedes, the days start getting shorter and the big album releases start coming thick and fast. Yep, it’s almost time for the September rush, and this year the crop is particularly good — so much so, in fact, that we’ve expanded our usual round-up of 10 albums you need to hear in the month to come to a bumper list of 15. As ever, we’ve also rounded up the rest of the month’s notable releases: the good, the bad, and the ugly. So tell us: what are you looking forward to hearing in… Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Cat Power, Matmos

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week brings a pretty eclectic haul of tracks — there’s a Cat Power remix that (whisper it quietly) is better than the original, along with new Matmos (hooray!) and new tracks from Thee Oh Sees, Nü Sensae, and Paul Banks. There’s also a cut from what might be our favorite sneaky under-the-radar release of the last couple of months (the debut from Brooklyn band ERAAS), a whacking great 20-track Chemikal Underground sampler, and more. In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More

Music

10 MP3s You Need to Download for Free This Week: Joanna Newsom, Joe Jackson and Iggy Pop

By Tom Hawking on

It’s Friday, and we’re back with another installment of our regular roundup of downloadable MP3 goodness from around the web. This week, there’s a live version of a new track that Joanna Newsom played recently, which will no doubt have fans salivating. There’s also Joe Jackson duetting with Iggy Pop, Corin Tucker being raucous, an undiscovered Exile on Main Street cut*, and new tracks from Thee Oh Sees, Mungolian Jetset, and The Raveonettes. (*Possibly.) In other words, there’s plenty of interesting sounds awaiting you after the jump, and since they won’t cost a penny or land you an RIAA lawsuit, as your attorneys we advise you to start downloading immediately. … Read More

Music

Retromania: Throwback Bands That Don't Suck

By Tom Hawking on

A little earlier this year, we ran an article about the things we felt were wrong with indie music in 2011. One of the points we mentioned was that a lot of music (indie or otherwise) has become a sort of endless spin cycle of recurring trends that come around in metronomic 20-year phases. We stand behind this observation, but in retrospect, we feel we could have argued the point a wee bit better (as Simon Reynolds does in his must-read book, Retromania) — we don’t mean to imply that all bands who take their cues from the past are terrible, because there’s clearly a fine line between inspiration and pastiche, and there are many excellent bands who fall on the right side of that line. With the release of Amy Winehouse’s posthumous compilation this week, we thought we’d look back at her career, and also some other fine throwback artists who’ve adorned the last decade. … Read More

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A Brief Journey Through the History of Garage Rock

By Tom Hawking on

The recent Dallas installment of the Sailor Jerry’s Presents concert series saw one of our favorite bands taking to the road: San Francisco garage combo Thee Oh Sees, who are touring the US in support of their new album, Carrion Crawler. Apart from being a pretty great rock band in their own right, Thee Oh Sees are also the de facto standard bearers for a new generation of garage-rock bands. As such, they’re heirs to a sound with a rich history, and one that’s definitely worth investigating — so step into the garage with us and crowd around the turntable as we spin ten discs that are key touchstones in the long story of the genre, then check out more upcoming events from Sailor Jerry’s Presents. … Read More

Music

The Flavorpill Mixtape: Junior Boys, Flaming Lips, Thee Oh Sees

By Margaret Eby on

Happy royal wedding week, everyone. If you’re anything like us then you will be…well, not paying attention. If all the British royalty hype is making you crazy, then the only solution is to plug in some headphones and ignore it to the tune of this week’s mixtape. We’ve got new ones from the Flaming Lips, Liturgy, and Thee Oh Sees, not to mention Seattle’s dreamy Seapony and Belfast’s Girls Names. To snap them up, right click + “Save As” or scroll to the bottom to download the whole mix. … Read More