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.
Tag: Bjork
The 30 Most Anticipated Albums of 2015
It’s fun to peruse this list now that we’ve actually heard LPs like Kendrick Lamar’s powerful To Pimp a Butterfly and Björk’s vulnerable Vulnicura. Neither disappoints. Your move, Justin Bieber.
SPIN: Coolio Relives 1994 Through Music
My final act as a SPIN staffer was to lock myself, photographer Nathaniel Wood, and Coolio in a small conference room with a laptop fulla hit songs from 1994 — the very same year that gave us “Fantastic Voyage,” of course. We played a hybridized game of “jukebox jury” and “name that tune,” and Coolio shared some wild memories about 2Pac, Nirvana, ICP, and Boyz II Men.
News: Music’s Worst Hats, Space Thump from Yuk, Origami On Vinyl, Baths Rmxes Brad Laner
Quick bloggy bits from around the L.A. underground (and up). Share ’em.
- FEATURED: The Ten Worst Hats in Modern Music History*
- MP3: Space Thump from Producer Yuk from My Hollow Drum
- Echo Park’s Origami Vinyl Hosts Album Making Seminar
- MP3: Beat Star Baths Remixes L.A. Legend Brad Laner
(all stories via West Coast Sound, via L.A. Weekly)
* “We’re pretty sure Empire of the Sun derives its power from the insane headdresses of frontman Luke Steele. Out of, erm, respect to that epiphany, we present to you the ten most hideous, god awful, what-in-the-funk-where-they-thinking hats in modern music history.”
Mayer Hawthorne Hooks Up with Virginia Beat-Maker Nottz, Drops Etched 12-Inch for ‘I Need You’
Feature: Dirty Projectors interviewed by SMS
The Dirty Projectors may be responsible for the year’s best album, a manic and schizo piece of art-pop released last month titled Bitte Orca. It’s the kind of record that begs a lot of questions — thoughful questions that couldn’t, say, be crunched into the 140-character limitations of a Twitter post, or squeezed to the parameters of a series of SMSes. And yet, the latter is exactly what went down when, after ducking my best attempts to conduct a proper interview, DP’s David Longstreth at last offered his undivided attention — via text message. Click here to read the story (via LA Weekly), which unfolds this modern narrative in the context of the new album’s importance.