December 2011
9 posts
projects that will have to happen later
I keep thinking about the sound of that Destroyer album we were discussing the other day, its supposed lite-jazz uncoolness. Something else occurs to me: There’s a reason I always wind up using the term new-wave to describe it. There was a period, in the later 80s and the very beginning of the 90s, when a lot of rock, indie, and new-wave types, mostly English ones, had grown up into making...
I joined a club.
Every year, I get very excited about reading Slate’s Music Club, in which some of my favorite critics bounce letters back and forth about the past twelve months. This year I’m slightly nervous instead, because I’ve been asked to join them. Starting this morning, you can follow along as I try my best to keep up with Ann Powers, Jonah Weiner, Jody Rosen, and Carl Wilson — the...
i am confused by certain descriptions of...
tomewing:
This makes a lot of sense - that the reason I felt frustrated by my inability to detect the “strata of semiotic meaning” is because it doesn’t exist and the people talking the album up in that way are basically wrong.
Which leaves… what? Well, the references to Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, and the Aluminium Group help clear things up as well, in that I’m not fond of any of those bands either...
i am confused by certain descriptions of...
tomewing:
My sense with Kaputt is that it doesn’t travel particularly well: at least some of its power relies on a particular past, and on that past having particular overtones, and if that’s not so familiar or resonant it doesn’t work quite as well. Like, I didn’t listen to sax-y soft rock in the 80s but I didn’t NOT listen to it, it isn’t something which could ever code as horrible or...
Anonymous asked: where are you from?
“feel like theres a real correlation between millennials raised in an overly...”
– Today in Real Talk With Joe Schoech (via celebraterickysargulesh)
obligatory but fun
I put together a Spotify playlist of 50 songs/artists* I enjoyed this year, which — if you’re interested — you can get to via this Vulture post.
* By “artists” I basically mean there are lots of tracks from people whose albums I liked, as opposed to just 50 hot singles full-stop. Rubrics!
you will be buried in lists
The New York Magazine year-end culture issue is out, with a list (in no super-meaningful order) of ten of my favorite records from the year (I am not great at the TEN BEST, IN ORDER OF OBJECTIVE BESTNESS part), and a short piece about pop music’s mostly glorious (for now) return to seeming really classically “pop” again, maybe. (That idea is partly a suggestion I’d be...
Anonymous asked: It's ironic that you write Skrillex off as "broed-out" when his music clearly appeals to girls as much as guys. The assumption that his music must be for bros because it includes aggressive use of bass seems sexist to me. Girls like bass too! The current "pop-rave" movement is arguably fueled by girls, who come out in droves to see Skrillex, Bassnectar, and Pretty Lights...