It’s often hard for me to believe it when bands say they have no direct influences on their sound. And when I recently spoke with The Joy Formidable’s bassist, Rhydian Daffyd, I heard a familiar refrain: “Sometimes we feel like we live in a bubble.” Yeah, yeah. Bands always hem and haw when asked to […]

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The New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones on 30 Years of Sonic Youth. The band’s 16th and best album in years and years, The Eternal, is out now on Matador. Seems that 2009 might be Sonic Youth’s year. Haven’t seen this much buzz about them since I was in high school. Fender has even commissioned two signature […]

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Slate’s music critic, Jody Rosen, isn’t a big fan of The Decemberists. I, too, share Rosen’s distaste for the most pretentious little Lord Fauntleroy in all of corporate subsidized nerd folk in one Colin Meloy. His reedy voice – embarrassingly overwrought lyrics notwithstanding – is of a timbre my ears find repugnant. When I dislike […]

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I just happened to be listening to NPR last night and caught an interview with Ben Kweller and was sort of taken aback how much his speaking voice sounds like his singing voice. Most people sound nothing like themselves when they sing, but Kweller’s sort of laid-back, eternally youthful, stoner cadence is unmistakable. NPR has […]

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Highly amusing, snark-fueled take-down of Britney’s MTV documentary Britney: For the Record, where the tag line "No topic was off limits…No question went unanswered" becomes obvious bullshit. Bottom line: Britney is still just as crazy/vapid/superficial/clueless as ever, just with stricter monitoring of her career by a swarm of handlers. So, the crazy is just barely […]

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Chuck Klosterman famously reviewed Chinese Democracy for Spin as an April Fools joke that worked because the album has become such a mythical clusterfuck that nobody actually thought it would ever be released. Least of all Dr. Pepper. Now that Axl has proven everyone wrong, does he get the last laugh? Surely not. The jokes […]

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Slate has employed Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein to test it out and review music video games before. This time it’s for Wii Music. The piece is cleverly titled “Wii Will Rock You.” An excerpt: The game shows you a fantastical sonic world but falls short of letting you invent your own. Instead, one’s enjoyment of Wii […]

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