rock and roll
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Swinging Modern Sounds #93: Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy
I see both subjectivity and objectivity as constructions.
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Album of the Week: Something to Tell You by HAIM
Four years after releasing their impressive debut album Days Are Gone, HAIM are back with their long-awaited sophomore project, Something to Tell You, out now via Polydor. The three Angeleno sisters Este, Danielle, and Alana have kept their distinctive, classic rock…
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Sound Takes: A Charlie Brown Christmas
But what distinguishes Guaraldi from his superiors is his respect for the tried and true. If “O Tannenbaum” has worked for a few hundred years, maybe it’s worth kicking around the block a time or two.
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Covers and Cultural Appropriation
It’s been a major issue since American popular music first expanded its sonic territory from traditional country and folk songs: the cultural appropriation of sounds, and even entire pieces, that became more marketable (and thus lucrative) once they were performed by…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #73: Prince Rogers Nelson, Guitar Player: A Symposium
I started thinking about additional, more slantwise ways we might talk about his legacy. What if I organized a bunch of guitar players?
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The Rumpus Interview with Bruce Bauman
Bruce Bauman discusses his latest book, Broken Sleep, why rock isn’t dead (yet), how humor makes life bearable, and why we should reinstate the draft.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #70: Alien Now!
Maybe, in terms of idiom, The Dabbers are like a thrash rock and roll version of the Cocteau Twins, or what the This Mortal Coil would sound like if the Dead Boys tried to cover one of their albums.
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Song of the Day: “It Ain’t Easy”
David Bowie’s name is on everyone’s lips this week due to the sad passing of the legendary artist after an eighteen-month struggle with liver cancer. It is as difficult to summarize Bowie’s achievements as it is to define him. The innovator…
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Rock & Home
Can domestic life and rock & roll flourish together in contemporary novels? Should they?
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An Ode to Maxwell’s
It’s been a year since Hoboken’s pivotal indie rock club and restaurant Maxwell’s has closed its doors, but it’s going to take much longer than that to wipe away its memory.
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“Music and Words Go Together So Nicely”
If writing and rock music go together like peanut butter and jelly, this New York Times essay is the diagonally cut sandwich bread that delivers them to your taste buds. In it, J. Robert Lennon probes the economic and artistic similarities…