Vivian Girls, "Share the Joy"
Was I wrong? Was it more “eh” or even “yeh”? Read the review over at Spin.
Review: Vivian Girls Go Meh for ‘Share the Joy’
Category: unsorted
Review: The Dodos Get Noisy on ‘No Color’
The Dodos, "No Color"
“Is it better to be on or be good?” sings the Dodos’ Meric Long on the San Francisco indie-folk duo’s new No Color. It’s an apt question: For 2009’s Time To Die, the group added a third member, contracted big-name producer Phil Ek, and introduced electric guitar into the mix—all attempts to be “on” that resulted in The Dodos’ most patently “off” work to date.”
So what about this time? Read the full review at The A.V. Club.
Music You Can Wear, with Mount Eerie
Playbutton presents "Wind's Poem" by Mount Eerie.
Go buy one of these things. And while you’re at it, one of everything that Phil Elverum sells. Nothing guilty about these pleasures, many of which are handmade (unlike this) and all of which are innovative (like this) although often in a homesteader kind of way (again, the handmade thing). I haven’t written much about Mount Eerie (a.k.a. Elverum, f.k.a. Microphones) over the years despite the fact that the dude’s on my all-time list of mythos-making music heroes partly because I like keeping something for myself and also because I want that mythos to remain mythic (like this show at The Smell). But that thing in the picture … it’s a self-contained, rechargeable digital music player that comes preloaded with one excellent album. There are others too.
Spin Highlights the L.A. Beat Scene
Nosaj Thing wows the crowd at Coachella.
This is later than late, but better than never. The Spin Magazine fellers definitely know a good thing when it bludgeons them over the head with experimental beatwork, then nurses them back to health with a warm, enveloping beauty. That, combined with my incessant badgering, resulted in a gallery highlighting some of the Los Angeles electronic talent that made it out to Coachella 2011.
Welcome Back.
Music journalism never dies. It just gets lazy.
Wanna intern for one writer’s music blog? I can’t pay, but I’ll teach you how to do make cool things like that (^), and tell you about the time I drank Alize and did the Humpty Dance on stage with Digital Underground, and we can laugh together at Hipster Runoff and people who haven’t heard of Arcade Fire. It’ll be grand and, most importantly, Aural Standards will be updated on the regular. Wouldn’t that be nice? Yes? Good, now that we’re agreed, please sign below. Fine print? Oh, that’s just food. I spill a lot. Yeah.
Live: Coachella 2011 Roundup, Day Three
HEALTH-y headbanging. (Andrew Herrold)
Late, late, late. The internet has already forgotten that Coachella 2011 ever happened, but for posterity’s sake, here’s what I wrote about it for Spin.
DAY THREE: Wiz Khalifa, Death From Above 1979, Duck Sauce (A-Trak & Armand Van Helden), HEALTH, Lightning Bolt, Ratatat.
Live: Coachella 2011 Roundup, Day Two
Badu? Bow down. (Andrew Herrold)
Late, late, late. The internet has already forgotten that Coachella 2011 ever happened, but for posterity’s sake, here’s what I wrote about it for Spin.
DAY TWO: Erykah Badu, Foals, Wire, Raphael Saadiq, Lil B.
ALSO: Animal Collective Debut Powerful New Songs (full review)
Live: Coachella 2011 Roundup, Day One
Sleigh Bells slay balls. (Erik Voake)
Late, late, late. The internet has already forgotten that Coachella 2011 ever happened, but for posterity’s sake, here’s what I wrote about it for Spin.
DAY ONE: Odd Future & Pharell, Sleigh Bells, Cold Cave, Crystal Castles, Ariel Pink*, YACHT, !!! (plus lil blurbs on Paul McCartney & Best Coast, Omar Rodriguez Lopez & Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Titus Andronicus & Lil B).
*The inimitable Carles of Hipster Runoff picked up on my Ariel Pink diss.
So Gone.
Boo hoo.
Feature: Skrillex is Breaking Out
Sonny Moore is Skrillex, an ex emo addict now owning the dance floor.
I interviewed Skrillex, a.k.a. Sonny Moore, for Spin’s latest issue (Strokes cover) and found the L.A. resident to be an exuberant force for positivity and creative freedom. I saw him perform at SXSW a couple of weeks ago and found him to be a party-rocking, crowd-surfing, bass-fiending maniac. All of which is to say, the kid represents the best of both worlds — he’s got the brains and — despite being the former singer for emo band From First to Last — he’s got the brawn. Read about him at Spin.
Chris Writes Things 