Music
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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.
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Rumpus Sound Takes: Seattle Continues Moving the Music World Forward
Shabazz Palaces Black Up (Sub Pop) Shabazz Palaces’ new album, Black Up, reminds us that even though all art builds upon everything that comes before it, it still needs to be mindful of influencing the future.
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R.E.M., Todd, and Me
I’ve been wondering if R.E.M. purposefully scheduled their break-up announcement for autumn.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #30: What Is and Is Not Masculine
I’m writing about this profile, because I think this profile is a failure.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Interviews Tracy K. Smith
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club chats with Tracy K. Smith about her collection Life on Mars/
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Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life #3
How I Became a Music Critic: At age 19, I was assigned to review Bob Dylan in concert, despite the fact that I had very little sense of who Bob Dylan was. I was doing a summer internship at my…
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Chordal Wheeling
There are geeks, there are music geeks, and then there are the chordal crusaders, the modal moradeurs. In their own words, “powerambient” band Chord summons the feeling “of a single note being rendered into an unsolvable riddle–a harmonic Gordian knot…
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The Underworld Through Folk
Singer/Songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, a folk opera set in a post-Apocalyptic Depression-Era, illuminates the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus through the twangs and harmonies of folk music. If that seems like a disjointed mix of influences, listen to Hadestown…
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I’m Still an Animal
I was actually glad to hear “Animal” on the new 90210 last week. The second most luscious (“Sans Soleil” wins that prize) and first most catchy track on Miike Snow‘s self-titled 2009 debut, fit perfectly with the elevated high school…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #18: Some Questions About the Tradition
Johnny Cash’s late covers are superior to their original recordings, but are they traditional?
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Lights in Your Throat
The 2009 music release schedule is winding down, so people have started making their arbitrary top-whatever lists. While such rankings might be more potent some years from now, when we see which albums are actually still in rotation (like tomorrow’s…
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Soul Pas de Deux
The music always gets me, right where I’m sure Bach meant it to, somewhere between my stomach and my heart.