WIXIW is a shoo-in for our top five albums of 2012, so it was a particular pleasure to visit the strange space where it was created — well, at least in part. There are a few tiers to this story, and a decent amount of subterfuge, but the stuff that keeps us guessing is the stuff that keeps us coming back. Furthermore, WIXIW happens to be the most accessible work in their catalog to date, so find out what osmosis and singing underwater has to do with it. Read at SPIN.
We’ve joined SPIN’s Twitter reviews team. Watch us completely dismiss or irresponsibly champion an album in 140 characters or less! This week:
A strikingly beautiful record from some strikingly bearded men: My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Son Volt’s Jay Farrar, Centro-Matic’s Will Johnson, and Varnaline’s Anders Parker. Read all about it at the A.V. Club.
So we did this. In the same week that we hung out with Liars in their makeshift music bunker, we hightailed it to NRG in NoHo where we were greeted by walls lined with platinum packs from such luminaries as Hoobustank and Papa Roach, and–as it turned out–a couple of the nicest, most sincere dudes in the music biz. The men of Linkin Park are good men indeed. They follow golf and basketball, and geek over old stories about performing with Stone Temple Pilots or banging on Rick Rubin’s SP1200, and are excited to play you their new songs. Head on over to SPIN to find out what they’ve been up to. And here’s this:
Another thing that made Coachella 2012 so unforgettable was the fact that we experienced it twice. Our comrade in arms Christopher R. Weingarten did a helluva job summing up the weirdness of all that (read “Why the Hell Did We Go to Coachella Weekend Two?” via SPIN) while we here at Aural Standards took the chance to see just about everything we’d missed on the first run. Below are are four favorite sets from each day. Below you’ll find a list of what we covered with excerpted bits. Click on the DAY to read full reviews at SPIN.
FRIDAY
1. Wallpaper: when he clapped, they clapped; when he bounced, they leapt…
2. Gary Clark Jr: Black Keys could’ve learned a thing or two about the blues…
3. Explosions in the Sky: floating in on a pillow of harmonic resonance…
4. Ximena Sariñana: her powerful voice and innate charm won us over…
SATURDAY
1. St. Vincent: jagged blasts of guitar like vines of cherry bombs blowing…
2. Feist: the hulking, honking horns added a marching band-sized heft…
3. David Guetta: even 50 feet back from the tent’s edge, it was a furnace…
4. Miike Snow: Lykke Li coaxed the ancient viking vibes out of the music…
SUNDAY
1. Growlers: putting it down for the wastetoids, beach bums and shitheads…
2. Modeselektor & Thom Yorke: he bopped and jittered to the hyper beat…
3. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80: unceasing rhythms flagrantly defying the heat…
4. Girl Talk: taking breaks only to dance, head-bang or hype his loyal crowd…
Check out our coverage of Weekend One, plus other weirdness here.
In addition to reporting on the best sets of Coachella 2012 Weekend Two, the inimitable Christopher R. Weingarten and I were tasked with documenting all the weirdness that was fit to print. Or Tweet, at least. We did the latter from @SPINfestivals, and freed the most salient bits of odd from our notebooks after each 12-hour day, usually between the delirious hours of 3 and 5 a.m. Via SPIN.
1. Friday Fieldnotes: Clever Boozing, Gary Busey’s Face, Fake Mustaches
2. Saturday Fieldnotes: Side Boob, David Hasselhoff’s Handshake, Melted Vinyl
3. Sunday Fieldnotes: Eminem’s Lip-Sync, Hologram Humor, Radiohead’s Fam
Highs and lows. Dense but breezy. Hand percussion meets big synths. Read about Tanlines’ official LP debut over at The A.V. Club. No longer lost…
Chris Writes Things 