July 2012
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How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love LCD... →
In an idiom where posturing is the name of the game, James Murphy out-cools everyone by being himself. This NPR article (linked above) gets it right. Can’t wait to see Shut Up and Play the Hits.
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Blog: I've Been Thinking About Phil Ochs →
Here’s a piece I wrote for my friends over at Full Stop. As the title would suggest, it’s about Phil Ochs. I’d just watched There But for Fortune, the documentary about him, and now I find myself in the throes of a Phil Ochs kick. Follow the attached link or go to the Full Stop Tumblr to read more.
fullstopmag:
It’s tough to say if a figure like Ochs could exist now....
April 2012
1 post
Worst Album Covers of All Time | The Tastebuds.fm... →
Pretty Self Explanatory. I haven’t heard any of these albums, but now I’m kind of afraid to.
February 2012
2 posts
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Happy Valentine's Day (Don't Get Dumped)
In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve made a Valentine’s playlist. I’m sure everyone has more or less soundtracked the day, and these are by no means the only songs that pop into my head. But they’re among the most consistent offenders on Feb. 14ths over the years. Some you may have heard these songs, some you may not have. If you haven’t heard them, I encourage...
January 2012
4 posts
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Oral Tradition in the 2010s | Full Stop →
This is a link to a piece I wrote in December of 2011 for my friends at Full Stop, but it has at least some bearing on what I do here at BoTR. The piece, in a nutshell, is about the relationship between a receding culture of oral transmission and the dominance of recorded music and the ramifications of this state of things.
I know, that’s quite a nutshell. It’s quite a nut. Enjoy.
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Watch“A Memory”
Katie Buono
Down By The Riverside - 2011
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Katie Buono - Down by the Riverside
I went to college with Katie Buono – we would play the occasional open mic night at the local coffeehouse, but the only time we actually played pop music together was when we played a version of “Julia” together on a friend’s recital. Between those firsthand experiences and my peripheral knowledge about what she was up to, I knew she was one of the people at school who knew what she was doing....
“Maybe we could spend extra time in 2012 thinking about how we, as individual...”
– Mark Richardson: A Proposed New Year’s Resolution for Music Critics
December 2011
1 post
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Best of 2011
Now seems to be as good a time as any to look back on the year in music that was. Best-of lists can be divisive things — I never agree with anyone else’s, most likely no one will agree with mine. The hope here is that you’ll check out some of these records that you haven’t yet. So, here’s my two cents.
10. J Mascis - Several Shades of Why (Sub Pop)
The last two...
November 2011
6 posts
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Less Talk, Less Rock
Today the AV club ran an astute – if overdue – article by Stephen Hyde about how Rock is no longer an appropriate catch-all term for popular music. The article itself is worth checking out, but the basic gist is that since Rock is an inadequate signifier since its place atop the charts has been taken over mostly by hip hop artists. The same can be said for pop: the radio station I...
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The Beach Boys - Smile
I wrote this article for Oberlin’s Wilder Voice’s May ‘08 issue. I’m reprinting it now, in honor of SMiLE’s release, which happened last week about forty years too late. The gist was to take a look at the allure of unreleased albums through the eyes of perhaps the most famous one, and the one that got me hunting for more jettisoned gems like the ones you find on...
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STNNNG - Dignified Sissy (Modern Radio, 2005)
A big no-no in review-writing (or any kind of writing) is to lead off with a cliché, e.g. “never judge a book by its cover.” In this case, though, it’s truly appropriate and truly inapplicable. If you don’t judge Minneapolis pigfuck band STNNNG’s (pronounced “Stunning”) debut album by the image above, you’re missing the point. Like the painting, aptly titled “Bear Attack,” Dignified Sissy is a...
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Elyse Weinberg - "Elyse" (Tetragrammaton, 1968)
Elyse Weinberg released her debut album, Elyse, on David Crosby’s short-lived Tetragrammaton label in 1968 (re-released and reconfigured on Orange Twin, 2010), so she was a part of a scene that included Crosby, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. There are common sounds in all of their songs that you can hear right off the bat, which is why they all caught on at around the same time. Even Weinberg,...
September 2011
14 posts
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Happy Birthday - Happy Birthday
For better and for worse, mimicry is one of pop music’s great inevitabilities. Every band has at least one reference point – the successful ones go further than their influences in some respect or other. That said, the problem with this sort of aping isn’t mimicry itself, but the fact that people rip off the same bands. So it’s refreshing when a band takes cues from someone who isn’t necessarily...
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Persona - Som
There’s something to be said for parsimony in pop music, especially pop music coming out of the ‘70’s. In an age of rococo decadence and ornamentation (as well as that whole post-dandy aesthetic I still can’t quite wrap my head around), it took hutzpah to make a no-frills album. That’s, in part, where punk rock came from, and it’s at least part of the impetus behind the minimalism...
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Klaatu - 3:47 EST
If the search for the next Dylan – or next anything – seems unfair or silly, the Canadian band Klaatu’s backstory does it one better: Klaatu’s claim to fame is that people thought they were the Beatles in disguise. Part of it is the Capitol Records connection, part the sound. Listening to their first record, it makes quite a bit of sense. It may be the best imitation of The Beatles that exists....
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Pip Proud - Eagle Wise, 1968-1969
For the most part, people seem to have dropped the search for the next Bob Dylan. Good thing, too. It’s an unfair, procrustean standard to measure songwriters against. That’s, in part, why it’s never been successful.
Fortunately, that search is what got Pip Proud noticed, however briefly. Touted as the Australian Dylan, Phillips Records Polydor signed him and released two of his albums: Adrienne...
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Lee Hazelwood - "Requiem for an Almost Lady"
To say that time forgot Lee Hazlewood isn’t quite right, but he’s not exactly a household name, either. He’s the other half of the Nancy (Sinatra) and Lee tandem, the pop genius behind “These Boots Were Made for Walkin.’” His crotchety baritone and air-tight lyrics put him in the same league – in a lot of ways – as Leonard Cohen, or at least Tim Hardin, but he’s got a wry streak that you’d be...
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Kellarissa - Moons of Neptune
Kellarissa (nèe Larissa Loyva) was hardly a new face on the music scene when her record came across my desk at WOBC, but I’d never heard of her at the time. Turns out, she’s a household name in some circles. An alum of P:ano, The Choir Practice, and Gigi, she toured with Destroyer in support of her sophomore effort, Moons of Neptune. At the time, I was on a Nico kick, so this record was right up...
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