Very proud of this one. Tearist will put a hole in your head. Jesse Miller will fill that hole with wisdom, with help from some impressive guests. Check it:
Guitar god and Megadeath mastermind Dave Mustaine (above, left, a lot younger) invited SPIN magazine into his home to document his most prized possessions, some of which were M&Ms, medieval weapons and a miniature horse named Rocky. We overheard some strange things whilst there–talk of an upcoming apocalypse the details of which shall be revealed to “the elites”–but this article is just the fun stuff. (Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you what Lauryn Hill has to do with any of this.) You know, anecdotes about selling pot, finding God, and buying crossbows for small children. Cool video too. Check it.
FREE. A special 20-minute rapid-fire edition of the Jesse Miller Talk Show proudly sporting the musical stylings of the hypnotically haunting, golden-throated god known as House of Wolves, a.k.a. Rey Villalobos. A show within a show (within a show) in the Gower Gultch. Info above. FB invite here.
Attack on Memory by Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings is the first contender (and admittedly an early one) for the Best Album of 2012. Find out why via SPIN.
The Internet had a lot to say about Ice Cube’s recent team-up with Eames in honor of the ongoing Pacific Standard Time project here in Los Angeles. Turns out we were all just waiting for an excuse to celebrate the dude again. Wrote a little something for the LA Weekly on a whim. Check it. (Even though, with due respect, my E-40 shout-out was omitted by the editor.)
Thanks to the Internet’s love affair with The List, turning over a new leaf into a new year has become, shall we say, blogally laborious. That said, I’ve yet to meet the pop culture freak or geek who would walk away from a chance to tally his or her bests or worsts in a public, numbered format. We’ve given you a few fond looks back at 2011 (Best Songs, Best Moments, Best Discovery … we’ve even had our own wildly would-be hit single mentioned in The Village Voice’s annual Pazz and Jop Poll), but it’s time to start looking forward, a month into this thing called 2012. Without further ado, check out our Pop Culture Resolutions, as well as three of the records we’re most looking forward to hearing in the new year (numbers 34, 54 and 55), both via The A.V. Club.
Sorta cheating on this Beauty With Teeth thing, which was intended as a recurring exclusive feature on this site, but very few records better embody the out-of-favor idea that beauty in music, often maligned as the hallmark of generic appeal, can be a really, really good thing. Looping back to the missing subject of that last sentence: Gavin Castleton’s Won Over Frequency. The A.V. Club critics were recently asked to highlight the best music we’d respectively discovered in 2011, regardless of release date, and this 2010 LP was my pick.
Check it: About a third of the way down the page, over here.
The good people over at Friends of Friends Music, in keeping with their founding each-one-teach-one ethos, asked their friends, and friends of friends, to contribute some sort of top ten (ish) music-related list of favorites from the past year. My contribution is below, but visit the FoF site to read entries by folks like Shlohmo, Ernest Gonzales (Mexicans With Guns), Lushlife, Clive Tanaka, Low Limit, TAKE, Garth Trinidad, Shaun Koplow and Jeff Weiss.
Like most folks that’ll contribute to this project, I could do this all day. To limit a “best of” list to ten entries is the cruelest of tortures to a real music geek, but the tradition exists for a reason: namely, to ensure we all get back to work. This isn’t definitive. These are the first ten wonderful music-related things that popped into my head, but considering the breakneck evolutionary pace and exponential expansion of our chosen medium, it seems fitting to shoot from the hip.
1) Destroyer goes Kaputt: There’s absolutely nothing I don’t love immensely about this album. Am I the only one who had an unrealized, unrecognized need to meet the lovechild of Steely Dan and Sade? Aside from Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, perhaps, but at least I know I’m not totally alone.
2) The Black Lips destroy a ballroom: Mere hours after watching Jared Swilley pinwheel a guitar body into the forehead of a grateful fan at Lollapalooza, I found myself thrashing in a chic hotel ballroom to “Bad Kids” while being pelted with TP rolls and complimentary vodka drinks. \\m//
Click on Kurt. If you don’t have Spotify, you’ll be directed to download it. It’s kind of phenomenal (minus issues over fair payment for artists), so get it.
Chris Writes Things 