I Will Never Like: Fever Ray and/or The Knife
C'mon, is this supposed to be creepy? Who hasn't spent their first night with a new music program pitch-shifting down random songs? It's fun for a couple of hours, but then the novelty wears off. The...
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The Origins of Super Ape
"Super-Ape is a mighty talking Ape with a caveman style outfit from the planet Krypton. Deeply troubled by Jor-El's prediction that Krypton was destined to explode, the Kryptonian scientist Shir Kan...
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I Will Never Like: Anything by Animal Collective As Much as "Sung Tongs"
Back in 2004 when I worked as a music critic for my college paper, my editor at the time gave me a burnt copy of Sung Tongs after I'd mentioned to him that I'd never heard Animal Collective. This was...
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Party's Over, Tell the Rest of the Crew: Nick Sylvester Takes It To Hipster...
If any of this is going to make sense, you're gonna need to read this first.It's Nick Sylvester, Pitchfork/Village Voice/freelance scribe, taking issue with Hipster Runoff's post "Animal Collective Is...
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Are You Serious?: Pitchfork Finds Out About Music From Kanye
First Raekwon's "Back from the Slums," now some new song by some random girl produced by Dave Sitek (which is predictably boring--sorry TV On the Radio fans, I'm just not hearing the genius). What's...
View ArticleI Actually Like: The 50 Cent/Rick Ross Beef
I remember back in 2007, Slate had an article about how YouTube was ruining rap beef. The basic idea was that rappers were spending all their time making low budget video disses instead of writing...
View ArticleAre You Serious?: Ponytail at the Laundromat
The above is 100% not cool. A handful of Queens residents just trying to do some laundry have to be aurally assaulted by the preschoolers-with-fingerpaint indie rock of Ponytail. On Pitchfork, the...
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Let Us Remember: "Get It Together"
Listening to J. Period's mega Q-Tip mixtape The Abstract Best (which would be flat out amazing if not for over half the songs being edited for profanity; seriously, what's the deal with that? In the...
View ArticleAre You Serious?: OJ Da Juiceman's "Culinary Art School"
Man, you know you're running out cocaine metaphors when you're stealing ideas from those culinary arts commercials that run on local TV in most cities. Here's the one that runs in Portland:Got to love...
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I Actually Like: Wavves
For someone with a healthy threshold for low production values and liberal doses of fuzz and feedback, I have to admit that the first time I heard Wavves, I was like "Whoa, that's just unlistenable."...
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Let's Get Deep for a Second: Drone For a Sad Day
I just found out this morning that my grandmother has passed away. And since drone music is the only thing that seems to capture that subtle mix of vague and visceral emotions that appear at times like...
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I Actually Like: Fabo, pt. 1
When you think about snap music, you think about silly dances and popping 909 drums, not sadness and drug-fueled paranoia. But the latter is all over the music of Fabo. Formerly of D4L, of "Laffy...
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I Actually Like: Fabo, pt. 2
I wanted to do a second part to my "I Actually Like: Fabo" post, partly because I couldn't figure out how to conclude the previous post and partly because there really is a lot more to say. While...
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Let Us Remember: The Greatness of ELO
I'm tired of people ironically enjoying the Electric Light Orchestra. What exactly is so lame about their music that it requires ironic distance? The fact that the band had silly cover art,...
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I Actually Like: Woods (with a few reservations)
Had I not been looking for new (non-rap) music to write about, I might have written off Woods as yet another band making shambling, slightly off center psychedelic rock music that's basically just...
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All Screwed Up: ESG's "Smoke On"
Over the past two months, I've developed an immense appreciation for the music of DJ Screw. At their best, Screw's mixes re-imagine and re-contextualize rap music, making it, in turns psychedelic and...
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Portland's Got to Be Good for Something: Valet Covers Boris
Valet's Naked Acid was one of my favorite records last year and for good reason. Few records combined all the disparate strains of 21st century psychedelic music, from drone to space rock to slightly...
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All Screwed Up: 4 Deep's "Rollin' 4 Deep"
Like ESG's "Smoke On," DJ Screw's version of 4 Deep's "Rollin' 4 Deep" is woozy as hell. You have to laugh when whoever is talking at the beginning of the song says "let's get crunk," since nothing...
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Let Us Remember: Smog's "Let Me See the Colts"
Smog's A River Ain't Too Much to Love is generally considered the beginning of Bill Callahan's kinder, gentler period, a period that, with the release of his new album, Sometimes I Wish I Were an...
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I Actually Like: Venice Is Sinking
On Thursday, I got an email from the Athens, GA band Venice Is Sinking, informing me of the release of their new album AZAR. Since it was the first email I've ever gotten from a band wanting me to...
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I Actually Like: Rye Rye and Blaqstarr's Blaqout Mixtape
Rye Rye and Blaqstarr's Blaqout mixtape is pretty overwhelming on the first listen. It's unquestionably club music, all crazy build-up and schoolyard chants and pounding bass drums and handclaps. But...
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The Right Track: Magik Markers' "7/23"
Magik Markers, like Sunburned Hand of Man and Mouthus, are one of those bands that explores the crusty margins of 60s rock music, the music made by those bands who were too sloppy and/or trippy to...
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I Will Never Like: Blu
Blu bores me. Sure, he can flow and his lyrics show some degree of writerly detail, but there is absolutely nothing compelling about his personality. Were he a singer and not a rapper, this might not...
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Let Us Remember: The Congos's "Ark of the Covenant"
In "The Upsetter," the 2008 documentary about Lee "Scratch" Perry, Perry blames the group The Congos and all their many rastafarian friends for tainting his Black Ark studio with rampant drug use,...
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Moving Day
Since Blogger thinks it's cool to delete an entire post without warning me beforehand, I'm moving this whole blog over to Wordpress. The new address is here. If you link to me, please update the address.
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