The Rumpus Interview with Julianna Barwick
With her haunting voice looped in a wordless glossolalia over pianos, keyboards, and other instruments, Julianna Barwick makes music like no other artist working today.
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Posts Tagged: music
ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: BOB DYLAN’S BLONDE ON BLONDE
The album was the warm yellow window of someone else’s house as you walk by on a cold night. Listening to it was the feeling you get when you look into this stranger’s window and wish you lived there.
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THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH OLOF ARNALDS
Iceland’s Ólöf Arnalds (cousin to contemporary classical wunderkind Olafur Arnalds) is only in her early 30′s, yet has already charted an impressive career path that is only gaining traction with the release of her latest full-length, Sudden Elevation.
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RECORDS OF YOU
He didn’t own a record player because he didn’t need to hear anything. He wanted only to maintain what the vinyl represented: ties to his childhood, ties to New York.
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Seeking Music Nerds!
Are you a true music nerd who wants to help out with team Rumpus Music? Then we’d like to hear from you!
We’re seeking rad aspiring music writers to help transcribe interviews, write blog posts, input entries into WordPress and assist with other general admin duties.
...more“A New World of Silence and Control”
What does it sound like when someone who grew up without music becomes a musician?
For British songstress Phildel, who was raised in an abusive home where she was forbidden to listen to music, that hypothetical question is a reality—and its answer is “It would sound pretty cool, actually.”
This Guardian profile goes into more detail about her intensely weird upbringing and the otherworldly music she managed to pry from it.
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Albums of Our Lives: Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co.
The news of Jason Molina’s death came to me in a storm. I was about to teach a class when I saw the first posts announcing that he was gone.
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Deep Throat #2: On Being and Unbeing A Singer
My face burned with rage, with shame, with humiliation. I was failing openly, blatantly, at the one thing I still somehow, in the back of my mind, expected to be perfectly capable of doing after more than a decade’s silence.
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“A Secret of the Heart on the Sleeve:” Jason Molina, 1973 – 2013
Now I’m in that rootless void of grieving the loss of someone I never really knew.
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ROCK OUT WITH YOUR BOOK OUT #1: JOLIE HOLLAND
I once read an interview with Jolie Holland in which she mentioned how her songs come through her from some other world.
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Diamonds and Rust #1: Nostalgia, Form and Noise
“We both know what memories can bring, they bring diamonds and rust.” –Joan Baez
...moreOff the Page and Into the Microphone
From Novels to Notes is a new blog by journalist Johnny Garcia chronicling songs inspired by fiction or poems.
It’s still getting started, but it looks promising: there are already two entries about PJ Harvey, and there are bound to be more once Garcia discovers those lines she cribbed from T.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: RUN DMC’S RAISING HELL
It was a cassette copy with no case, and my dad gave it to me a couple of years after he’d moved out. I was about nine. I knew enough about the album to yelp “This is priceless!” as I ran to my bedroom.
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Deep Throat #1: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
When I shut my mouth I lost a part of myself so ingrained, so accustomed, so integral I had not even known it was possible to lose it.
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THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH ERIN MCKEOWN
McKeown’s crowd-funded new album, Manifestra, is a dizzying ten-track blend of political blues and party songs, featuring radio-friendly handclaps, a New Orleans-style funeral march, and a jam she co-wrote with Rachel Maddow.
...moreRace, Class, and Indie Rock Music
No teenager wants to listen to their parents’ music. For Martin Douglas, that music was hip-hop, so he gravitated toward the world of grunge and indie rock.
The only problem: that world is very white, and Douglas is black.
In an astute essay titled “The Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show” after a Cocker Spaniels tune, Douglas explores what it was like to be “an outsider among the outsiders”—and what self-segregation along music-genre lines means for our culture at large.
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SONGS OF OUR LIVES: JOY DIVISION’S “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART”
She drew cartoon sketches of herself. I sent more mix-tapes. Within a few months, in the middle of a five- or six-page letter, she wrote that she loved me.
...moreNew Music from Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s new album, We the Common, comes out Feb. 5, and we definitely recommend giving it a listen.
Stephen Thompson, in his NPR review, describes Thao’s music as:
...moreQuirky but cutting, playful but forceful, controlled but ragged, Thao Nguyen is one of the most commanding and distinctive young singers around.
Why Country Music Loves Me
In a lace-curtained living room of a cabin by the Greenbrier River, four men I had just met picked up a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass and cracked my world open.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: NEKO CASE’S MIDDLE CYCLONE
The year 2008 tumbled out of itself and took with it the things that consumed my days. Within a month I had lost my job to the upholding of liquor laws, my college education to an unavoidable graduation, and my girlfriend to youth and general apathy.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: PETER GABRIEL’S SO
The only thing that could put me back right was a long walk in the cold along the Danube, with Peter Gabriel singing in my ear.
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Nick Cave Monday #5: “Bring It On”
In 2003, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released “Nocturama.” I love almost every record The Bad Seeds have released, but with “Nocturama,” I was disappointed.
I listened over and over, hoping I was wrong
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The Rumpus Interview with Chad Stokes of Dispatch
These guys gave up the dream of every fledgling college band. And yet, still, more than a decade later — they are arguably bigger than they would’ve been had they stayed together.
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The Rumpus Interview with Rachel Ries
Rachel Ries is a singer/songwriter from South Dakota with a homespun style, hand-sewing fabric sleeves for limited edition EPs and selling homemade jam at shows. Her music is an exquisite blend of folk, blues, and jazz, inspired by the sounds of the 1920s and 1930s.
...moreReservoir Sound Presents: ALEA IACTA EST
Released yesterday, ALEA IACTA EST, or “The Die Has Been Cast” is a new collection of music – envisioned as a “roadmap of styles” – from Reservoir Sound.
You can stream and download the album here.
...moreAmerican Protest Music Today
Who can resist an alliterative and engaging title like “Pussy Riot, Paul Ryan, and Protest Music in 2012 America?” Corey Beasley riffs on the contradictions of protest music in the current American pop music scene, or lack thereof despite a political climate rife with opportunity:
“But before I try to scratch my irk—this is what you do with an irk, yes?—consider another recent hot news item.
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Nick Cave Monday: “Stagger Lee”
Welcome to Nick Cave Monday, a new blog where The Rumpus lets me gush about the greatest musician in the world.
...moreMcSweeney’s Interview With David Byrne
McSweeney’s recently published How Music Works, a book by David Byrne that explains all aspects of music, from creation, to distribution, to performance.
In recent years, Byrne has released chapters of the book as individual works: this TED talk about architecture’s effect on music; and this piece for Wired about record distribution, in which he interviews Radiohead about their [then] recent “pay what you wish” release of In Rainbows, as well as explains exactly how the money, in a traditional major label record deal, from an album purchase is distributed.
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The Rumpus Interview with Ari Picker of Lost in the Trees
Upon hearing that Lost in the Trees’ A Church That Fits Our Needs was inspired by the suicide of lead singer and songwriter Ari Picker’s mother, Karen, my heart instantly broke.
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