The Rumpus Interview with Jesse Sykes
The first thing you notice about Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter is Sykes’s voice. It’s a stunning blend of contradictions, cutting and vulnerable, breathy and scratchy, enigmatic and bare.
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Posts Tagged: rumpus original
The Rumpus Interview with Boots Riley of The Coup
Since returning from a brief hiatus in the mid-1990s, Oakland’s The Coup has flirted with perfection on three albums: 1998’s Steal This Album, 2001’s Party Music, and 2006’s Pick a Bigger Weapon.
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ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: ANI DIFRANCO’S LIKE I SAID
Both hands, please use both hands. Oh no, don’t close your eyes. I am writing graffiti on your body. I am drawing the story of how hard we tried.
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The Rumpus Interview with Merrill Garbus of tUnE-YaRdS
Merrill Garbus’s music is hard to define or readily summarize.
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The Rumpus Interview with Alice Bag
“She looks like a Babylonian Gorgon,” a reviewer once wrote of Alice Bag in a show review. Her then-band, the Bags, was at the forefront of the late seventies punk scene in Bag’s native Los Angeles.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jeremy Thal of Briars of North America
Jeremy Thal, who serves as a band leader for Briars of North America, is one of my oldest friends. We took Suzuki violin lessons together in Madison, Wisconsin, and our first instruments were fruit roll-up boxes with rulers taped on them.
...moreForever Changeless: The Beach Boys, The Smile Sessions
In June of 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band came out. Brian Wilson is said to have heard it and wept. Wilson, the Beach Boys’ main songwriter, producer, erstwhile bass player, and singer-of-high-harmonies, knew he’d lost the race with the Beatles.
The Rumpus Conversation Between Jon DeRosa and Karolina Waclawiak
Jon DeRosa is best known for leading the drone-pop collective Aarktica. Late last year DeRosa kicked off a new solo pop project with the release of the Anchored EP.
The Rumpus Interview with Todd Snider
While the electric guitar marks a departure from Todd Snider’s last few records, Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables falls squarely into the groove he hit after 2004’s East Nashville Skyline. A laid back traditionalist whose wry lyrics belie his stoner persona, Snider trades in smart, sharply observed songs delineating the travails of American have-nots.
Who Cares When Your Record Was Digitally Remastered?
I’ll admit I’m obsessive about dates in general, and music-related dates most of all. So when I started using the music-streaming service Spotify, I was pleased to see a year listed next to the name of every album in their expansive library—presumably the year when the recording was released, which I consider crucial information.
The Rumpus Interview with Geoffrey O’Connor
Aussie Geoffrey O’Connor, has been the lead of the band Crayon Fields, a Melbourne-based indie dream pop act since 2001. He recently released his solo debut Vanity is Forever, which is decadent in infectious dreamy synth lounge hooks.
The Dreams of a Shrinking Nation
I’ve been thinking a lot about the decline of the Japanese birth rate lately. It’s a peculiar obsession, admittedly, but one that should worry Japan lovers everywhere. And while it wasn’t on my mind as I hurried up Wilshire Boulevard early on the evening of Oct.
The Rumpus Interview with Luke Rathborne
Maine-born, Brookyln-based musician Luke Rathborne is still in his early 20s, but he is already off to a promising start. Rathborne has opened for the Strokes and played with Devendra Banhart, among other accolades.
The Rumpus Interview with James McMurtry
I call James McMurtry late one morning when I’m visiting Austin, Texas. By now, I’ve seen him play three times, in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and California, and I’m always struck by the way audiences in different parts of the country identify with his songs.
The Rumpus Interview with Mirah
Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn (born in 1974) came up in the fertile Olympia scene of the late ’90s. She was part of the K Records renaissance along with bands like the Microphones, the Blow and Old Time Relijun – all highly distinct, idiosyncratic groups with Calvin Johnson’s influence perhaps manifesting in the form of a primitivist or intentionally naïve approach.
Record Related #2: Wild Flag, Wild Flag, Wild Flag
Wild Flag, S/T (Merge) / live at The Bowery Ballroom, NYC, 10/18/11
Eleanor Friedberger, best known as half of The Fiery Furnaces, sings the ultra-catchy, ’70s-damaged “My Mistakes.”
...moreSongs of Our Lives: Simon & Garfunkel’s “America”
It’s Christmas morning, 2001 and I’m fifteen. I unwrap a record player, but am more immediately captivated by the record collection that comes with it.
The Rumpus interview with Jóhann Jóhannsson
The Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson specializes in disparate, subtly moving themes and careful musings on the ways in which industry and society intersect.
Silhouettes
I never thought I’d shoot a gun. But here I was, standing at the glass counter, looking down at an array of gleaming pistols laid out like deadly jewelry.
Record Related #1:
At the Looking Glass
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Mirror Traffic (Matador) / live at Webster Hall, NYC, 9/25/11
“I’m also a Jick.”
—Stephen Malkmus, Amoeba Hollywood in-store appearance, 8/24/11
Mirror Traffic opens with a fake-out.
...moreThe Rumpus Original Combo with Gabrielle Calvocoressi
“The opposite of transcendence (to me) is simply anyone who just makes pronouncements or qualifies themselves without doing the deep, ongoing work of inquiry.”
...moreThe Rumpus Original (Supersized) Combo with Kara Candito
“I think most contemporary poets occupy a fairly humble place in the universe, that we have few Byronic illusions about our fame. The act of reading my poems to an audience will always be a bit scary.”
...moreThe Rumpus Original (Supersized) Combo with Rebecca Wolff
How do you supersize a Rumpus Original Combo? That’s easy—just take a book review and an interview with the author, and add a Rumpus Original Poem to it!