Category: Music Review

10 Years Later WHY?’s ‘Alopecia’ Is Still One of One

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READ IT AT JOYFUL NOISE

Music journalists don’t really share this kind of work but the project is important to me so here it is. I was hired to write the “bio,” “onesheet,” or whatever you prefer to call the press materials being used to promote the 10-year anniversary reissue of one of my very very favorite albums, Alopecia by the band WHY?. My fandom for all things Anticon (the label/collective from whence sprung WHY?) is a well-known fact among those who know me or read anything I published between the years of 2003 and, like, 2018, so I see no sense in hiding this thing that I am really quite proud of. Click through and scroll down. And buy the record if it isn’t sold out already.

PODCAST: GEEKIN’ ON WYCLEF FOR THE CARNIVAL’S 20TH

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LISTEN AT BILLBOARD (in iTunes too)

I dug mantle-deep into Wyclef Jean’s The Carnival on Billboard’s Pop Shop podcast. This was easy because The Carnival is kinda sorta definitely very much one of my favorite albums of all time. The occasion for the chat was, of course, the LP’s 20th birthday (I’m sure you had it marked on your calendar), and the episode was part of Andrew Unterberger’s “Coming Around Again” series. He tags me in around 25:10. Sound quality leaves a lil’ bit to be desired ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Take Two: Nevermen, St. Lucia, and Rihanna

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READ MORE AT KPCC

Back in the saddle! In this week’s installment of “Tuesday Reviewsday” (peep the podcast on iTunes or at NPR), I chitchat about Rihanna’s Anti, share my favorite cuts from St. Lucia’s Matter, and super duper gush over the arrival of Nevermen—that’s the supergroup comprising freak king Mike Patton, werewolf/singer Tunde Adebimpe, and the night-terror-having cosmology-creating avant-rap poet laureate Doseone. Geeked. Listen below or via one of the links above.

Kendrick Lamar’s Album of the Year (and 4 more)

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READ IT AT SPIN

It was an honor and a responsibility to write about Kendrick Lamar’s incredible To Pimp a Butterfly. It’s a monumental work that’s owed much more than I could give, but helping to crown it SPIN’s Album of the Year is a good start. I spilled ink on four others that made the year’s 50 Best LPs: Deerhunter’s Fading Frontier at No. 7, Protomartyr’s The Agent Intellect at No. 20, Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late at No. 23, and Blur’s Magic Whip at No. 37. Peep the whole list, which not only includes a ton of great music, but words by people I dig a whole lot.

Take Two: Lazyboy Empire and SPORTS

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READ MORE AT KPCC

Sweet sax prevails on this episode of Tuesday Reviewsday. The voice of my usual co-anchor Shirley Halperin was beamed in from New York, so I couldn’t actually see her grooving to Lazyboy Empire’s batshit “Vampire” track, but of course it happened. I also spoke on SPORTS and their new (final?) album, All of Something. TRD is now podcast on iTunes. It’s below too:

Take Two: Open Mike Eagle and Destroyer

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READ MORE AT KPCC

I was joined by the estimable Nic Harcourt for the latest installment of Tuesday Reviewsday, which is now a podcast on iTunes. My picks for this week? An EP, The Catcher of the Fade, from the L.A.-centric squad anchored by Open Mike Eagle, Busdriver, and Milo. And an album, Poison Season, by Destroyer. Listen up over at NPR member station KPCC, or right the heck here:

SPIN’s 300 Best Albums of the Last 30 Years

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READ IT AT SPIN

I went big for this, taking on 30 of the 300 albums. Click through this hulking document for my posts on (in alphabetical order, no spoilers): Arcade Fire, At the Drive-In, Beastie Boys, Beck, Belle & Sebastian, Björk, Bright Eyes, Broken Social Scene, Clipse, Cloud Nothings, Dirty Projectors, the Flaming Lips, the Fugees, Frank Ocean, GZA, Interpol, Jimmy Eat World, Justin Timberlake, the Microphones, My Bloody Valentine, Neutral Milk Hotel, Pixies, Portishead, the Postal Service, Radiohead, TV on the Radio, the Unicorns, Vampire Weekend, the xx, and Wilco. So many of my all-time favorites in here, and so many I’d never had the chance to write about.