Tag: Black Lips

Remember the Coachella Cruise?

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Posterity Post: I wrote thousands of articles while on staff at SPIN, and blogged none of them.

Well, do you? This guy does. He was there and it was awesome. On the first day, Pulp performed in the boat’s massive internal ballroom, while Broaters on the top deck got gross in the hot tubs. On the second day, Father John Misty played to a bunch of rich, unappreciative assholes, and Grimes hosted a game of bingo. On the third day, James Murphy poured rare wine and Black Lips convinced me to eat escargot. I documented the weirdness for SPIN. Continue reading →

The Best of Coachella 2012 Weekend One: M83, Jeff Mangum, Hologram Tupac, Refused, A$AP Rocky, At the Drive-In, Death Grips, Azealia Banks and more…

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It was Aural Standards’ ninth Coachella (and tenth, counting Weekend Two), but it may have been our most memorable yet. While Sacramento’s Death Grips left a deep, seeping impression in our minds (boot-shaped) and Hologram Tupac enjoys a second life as a lasting meme, it was the reunions that did us in. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come are two of our favorite albums of all time (At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command flies high on that list as well), but never did we imagine we’d witness those songs performed live by the folks who actually made ’em (NMH auteur Jeff Mangum was billed as a solo act). Cheers to the folks at Goldenvoice for throwing scads of money at the problem until it resolved itself. Here are our five faves from each of the first three days. Below is a list of what we covered with excerpted bits. Click on the DAY to read full reviews at SPIN.

FRIDAY
1. Refused: thick, primal slabs of punk that seemed to rattle the scaffolding…
2. Death Grips: Run DMC meets Aerosmith, cranked on incredibly foul PCP…
3. M83: doors opening infinitely to bigger and bigger doors, a galactic gasp…
4. Frank Ocean: for the line about Coachella, the screams were deafening…
5. The Rapture: rogue groups of get-down circles spilling from the sides…

SATURDAY
1. Jeff Mangum: he opened his mouth and for 50 minutes, we were his…
2. Flying Lotus:  a wild genre-crushing journey, heady but head-knocking…
3. Black Lips:  Cole dropped trou and executed a searing solo with, well…
4. Azealia Banks: fast-rapping and boasting over minimal sub-bass rumble…
5. A$AP Rocky:  a perfect storm of N.W.A., Public Enemy and Bone Thugs…

SUNDAY
1. Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg: who rose from below the stage but Tupac himself…
2. At the Drive-In: a high-octane inferno of post-hardcore mania…
3. AraabMUZIK: conducting a symphony of melody, effects and percussion…
4. Le Butcherettes: she ran out into the field, arms out like an airplane…
5. Gotye: the massive human traffic jam stretched 50 yards in every direction…

Tomorrow, we get caught up with Weekend Two.

A Few of Our Favorite Things, 2011: Black Lips, Stephen Colbert, Sensitive Bros, Ambient Beats…

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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//  

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