Swinging Modern Sounds #104: Paradise
For me, performance is a conversation with the sacred and timeless, the sublime.
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Posts Tagged: songwriting
The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project: Jeff Tweedy
“The fact is we’re all living part of one long song.”
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Swinging Modern Sounds #103: Song Turned Blue
I’m not writing confessionals; I’m trying to write hooks.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #97: It’s a Wonder We Can Even Feed Ourselves
What follows, then, is a sort of first-thought-best-thought discussion of MORE BLOOD, MORE TRACKS.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #96: Voices of Displacement
Thank God music has wings and it can fly wherever, even countries we can’t reach.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #95: Omnidirectional
If you love this album as much as I think you’re going to, make sure to tell a friend.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #94: I Think I Might
This is a deep dive, therefore, into the site of brilliant, uncompromising contemporary work.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Katie Alice Greer’s Found Magazine
[B]eing a weirdo is what creativity is all about.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #91: In Four Equal Parts
Part of what makes Belly important and lasting, that is, is that they really think and feel a lot.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #89: In Praise of Tom Petty
Because Petty was so prolific and so popular, the intense craftsmanship of his body of work has been hiding in plain sight.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #88: Music for the Masses
The interview, like the project Iso Omena, is both funny and revealing.
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Picking the Green Path: A Conversation with Ansley Simpson
“The green path takes far more work to even recognize—it takes bushwhacking.”
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Swinging Modern Sounds #86: Transcendentalism!
The point is not to control the medium, the point is to interact with the medium, to find out what’s natural to it and what’s native to it and work with that, respond to that.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Soccer Mommy’s Clean
“I’d always wanted my music to sound this way, I just didn’t have the means before.”
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Making Sense of the World: A Conversation with Dessa
Dessa discusses her recently released album, Chime, where she stands on the intersection of poetry and performance, and self-care for busy artists.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Historian by Lucy Dacus
“Someone’s profession. Feels like my name more than a musician.”
...moreAlbum of the Week: Loma by Loma
“[T]here was an unspoken feeling of urgency, and a sense that a big change was coming for all of us, and I think we all tried to channel that into the work.”
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Language Is Sensational: A Conversation with Eileen G’Sell
Eileen G’Sell discusses her debut collection, Life After Rugby, how and why she chose her book’s title, and challenging gender categories.
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Something Bigger and of Greater Value: Talking with Bruce Cockburn
Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn discusses his new album, Bone on Bone, songwriting, and the benefits of not selling out.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Annie Hart’s Impossible Accomplice
Annie Hart, singer, keyboardist, and bassist for Au Revoir Simone, is debuting a solo album, IMPOSSIBLE ACCOMPLICE, out via Uninhabitable Mansions.
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The Driving Thing of It: A Conversation with Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey discusses his decades-long music career, working on cover songs written in another language, and finding longevity in the music business.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #82: Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark: A Symposium
…yet she did what she did, and in the process made the most successful album of her career.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #80: I Just Don’t Want to Wait Around Anymore
Mulcahy’s Possum is, like the animal titularly referred to, a sly and imaginative affair…
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Finishing What You Start: A Conversation with Musician Matt Kivel
Matt Kivel discusses his latest release, Fires on the Plain, the ways in which cinema inspires his music, and how he reads his critics.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Weyes Blood’s Mysterious Kris
To this day no one really knows where my kris came from or whether or not it’s a significant part of my family history, if it’s a random object or an heirloom with an untold story.
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Sound & Vision: Leah Hayes
Allyson McCabe talks with Leah Hayes, acclaimed illustrator, graphic novelist, songwriter, and musician.
...moreAlbum of the Week: Molly Burch’s Please Be Mine
Torch songs, i.e. “sentimental love songs, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited love,” were once the flagship of every respected crooner: with sultry lonesomeness, a smooth voice would dance above the elegant orchestra accompaniment, singing of lovers lost or unreciprocated romance. Fitting comfortably in the gap between Angel Olsen and Lana Del Rey, […]
...moreAlbum of the Week: Allison Crutchfield’s Tourist in This Town
Allison Crutchfield has been making music her whole life: with her twin sister Katie first, then in bands like P.S. Eliot, Bad Banana, and Swearin’, founded with her former partner. Now, Crutchfield has just released her first solo album, Tourist in This Town, via Merge Records. In her own words, “[i]t’s a record about change—change of scenery, of partner, […]
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Swinging Modern Sounds #77: People Give Me Things, Part One
[T]he thing about receiving music from other people is this: there is always some grace associated with the transaction.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #76: American Songbag
In the broadest sense, I think of this work as being about the stuff of life: excitement, love, disappointment, pride, nature, cities, war, loneliness, work, class distinction, communication.
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