Conventional Wisdom Spun Through Blender So Many Times It Comes Out Hip
Apparently that album Rumours your folks were always going on about is pretty good.
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The Return of the Vaselines
"The album's got a cute title, with the double meaning of 'check out how hot we are" and 'hooking up again with the person you used to date.' Almost any of these simple two-riff, verse-chorus songs would have made a perfectly acceptable addition to their original records (and they're better than anything either Kelly or McKee has come up with since they broke up); in particular, 'I Hate the 80's' is a welcome bit of grumpy oldsterism and 'Turning It On' is built on juicy love/hate sentiments. The band's twanging, strummy arrangements and McKee and Kelly's bedroom-eyed thrust-and-parry are exactly like they were the first time around." -Pitchfork gives [...]
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Contemporary Cliche Used To Describe 38-Year-Old Album
"Isaac Hayes' game-changing film score, which launched the soul/funk soundtrack craze in the early '70s, is given a deluxe reissue." – Pitchfork.
I wonder in what ways said reissue might change the game today?
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Party Rocker Andrew W.K. Says He's the New U.S. Cultural Ambassador To the Middle East
Andrew W.K. is (maybe) a party rocker and motivational speaker. He is also, by his own unreliable admission, an actor who plays "Andrew W.K.," which is a creation of a shadowy group of entertainment industry lawyers and mind-control experts. He may or may not be "Steev Mike" or "Dave Grohl." Also, he/it is mostly known for a single ridiculous orc-lite 2001 punk-pop anthem called "Party Hard" and a live-action show about exploding things, with children, on the Cartoon Network. (Late-night masochists will also know him from frequent appearances on the alternate-universe Fox News program "Red Eye.")
Whether he's a self-created troll or something entirely more [...]
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What's So Bad About Ghostface Killah's New Album Cover?
I mean, it's nothing as glorious as his last one, Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry, but I don't think the cover to Ghostface Killah's new album, Apollo Kids, is as Pitchfork says, "truly unfortunate." In fact, I kind of like it.
I don't know what the problem is. The font? What, like only Ratatat is allowed to play with Judas-Priest-style '80s-metal electro-lettering? The colors of the notebooks? Garish. But eye-catching! And, hey, Ghost is nothing if not colorful. The custom-printed "Apollo Kids" pencil? That's the best part! It's all of theme and it's got a positive message. Stay in school, kids!
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The Source And Pitchfork Both Give Bun B's New Album A "5"
In a victory for subjectivism, the rap music magazine The Source and mostly-rock music website Pitchfork have both awarded Texas rap legend Bun B's new album Trill O.G. a quantitative rating of 5 in their record review sections. But the two ratings mean very different things, as a 5 is The Source's highest rating, while Pitchfork's scale goes up to 10.
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Artic Monkeys Review Related Through Series Of Screens
The new Arctic Monkeys record, Humbug, is out today! (It's pretty good.) Please enjoy this ABC webcast which features a review of the album by some Pitchfork writer. The ABSOLUTE best part is the way they make it seem like he is TALKING TO YOU THROUGH THE WEBSITE. It's almost interactive! The future is finally here! Seriously, though, check out the record. It's a little more abrasive then the previous two, but there are people who like that.
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Beirut, "The Rip Tide"
It's Friday, and still so hot that all I want to do for the rest of the day is drink seltzer water and watch this new Beirut video over and over and over again. It's directed by Houmam Abdallah and Beirut's Zach Condon says it has "brought the song somewhere that I had only been able to describe to myself, now available for others to see and feel it much more as I had in the process of writing it." That's about the nicest thing a musical artist could say about a video for one of his songs, isn't it? But I wonder whether they had to [...]
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Bruce Springsteen And The E-Street Band And The Roots, "Because The Night"
Bruce Springsteen appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show last night, and played "Because the Night" with who-woulda-thunk-it backing from a supergroup combo of the E-Street Band the Roots.
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Big Boi Goes Off The Dome In A Barber Shop
You know Big Boi is incredible. You know he loves penguins and that he discovered the phenomenal Janelle Monáe and that his album Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son Of Chico Dusty comes out July 6. But did you know how well he can freestyle? (I didn't. That particular talent always blows me away. How do people think that fast?) In this clip, he riffs on the black-and-white tiles that make up the floor of the New York barber shop that serves as the setting for the latest installment of Pitchfork TV's highly stylized hip-hop series Selector. Also, in the accompanying interview, he reaffirms his [...]
