A brief list of things I collect: 1) Music. 2) Beer. So when Diffuser asked me to pair 21 brews of my choosing with their alt/indie/rock album equivalents, well, the work was already done. This was a labor o— hiccup! Er, sorry. What was I saying? Oh yeah: pop cap, hit play, cheers.
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.
Been doing some blogging for SPIN lately, which included wrangling a trio of super sweet premieres from West Coast up-and-comers. Included: L.A. weirdos HOTT MT, who forced the lead Flaming Lip to do their bidding on camera; Costa Mesa beach bum kingpins the Growlers, who’ve dubbed America’s top-hatted human mascot a “dick”; and Nick Waterhouse, a San Francisco neo-greaser whose brand of soul revival won’t make you gag. Click below to dig in:
And some bonus Waterhouse for your troubles:
While we won’t be attending the big Hang in ‘Bama, we do have family in that neck of the woods. Jealous of those who’ll get to see Skrillex, Yelawolf, Mavis, the Lips, Big Freedia, Jack White, the Shakes and more from the comfort of a beach blanket. Check out our top ten picks over at SPIN.
The Lips unleash a tickertape explosion (Ian Witlen)
Day Two of Bonnaroo was my personal favorite, mostly thanks to the Flaming Lips who not only performed a full set of their own songs (with all the expected fanfare — see above), but covered Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in full with help from Stardeath and White Dwarfs. Read about that cosmic experience here.
And as on Day One, I contributed to Spin‘s “Best and Worse” coverage alongside some very sharp, funny scribes, this time covering Tenacious D, Damian Marley and Nas, the Gaslight Anthem and LCD Soundsystem.
Also: some serious reporting on McLovin and barf in “In Brief.”
Chris Writes Things 