…for my extended absences from this site. I’m in the middle of a notably crunchy semester’s end, and I have to devote the lion’s share of my free time, away from papers and book reviews, toward trivialities like going to the bathroom and buying coffee creamer. I promise I’ll be back after [...]

Spektrum’s Fun at the Gymkhana Club is a dance record for patient people. It’s got all the parts necessary to get people out on the floor: slinky basslines competing for space with squiggly synths and paper-bag-lined drum machine fills, all coated with the alluring, pansexual croon of singer Lola Olafisoye, who manages to [...]

I suppose it was a given from the first moments when rock became pop music that stories like the one Owen Ashworth tells in “Young Shields” (mp3), one of the best singles of this past year, would become a staple of the form. The song elevates young love and passion to the highest realms [...]

I have to apologize to the two people who received excited IM messages on Friday when I was about 4 minutes into the first track on the new Beatles repackaged-hits collection Love. I was in a certain mood, one that accomodated hearing an acapella version of “Because” that segued into what I thought was [...]

So the Concretes sorta imploded this year, huh. On their first two records, they’d taken the road that many Swedish bands took to notice in America, which is as follows: find one or two pretty distinct American pop traditions, combine them, and then write a bunch of songs that adhere to a very [...]

It became safe to assume with the release earlier this year of At War With the Mystics that we’re never going to see another Soft Bulletin or Transmissions From the Satellite Heart from the Flaming Lips. Yoshimi was a dumbass cartoon retread of the basic sentiment and cinematic sweepishness that the band had honed [...]

The female voice singing “The Model” (mp3) appeals to me in certain unmentionable places. Perhaps it’s the alluring timbre or its knowledge of its own androgynous cool, which of course leads to the unmistakable acknowledgment of Nico, and a lyric like “She’s a model and she’s looking good, I’d like to take her home, [...]

So those of you who count yourself among the frequent readers of this site (bless your dear, dear hearts) might recognize this song from a post I wrote last month on OOIOO’s infectious song UMO, from their great, polycultural album on Thrill Jockey, Taiga. When I heard OOIOO’s song, I was instantly transfixed by [...]

The Knife played in Los Angeles on Saturday night, their third and final North American show for this tour, and from what I can gather, for the forseeable future. Apparently, their intricate and complicated stage design is too much of a pain and to haul from city to city, and they don’t have ELO’s [...]

If you wanna read some jabberwocky from Pere Ubu’s David Thomas where he tries to academically defend the title of his new album, read that jabberwocky here. It doesn’t explain much, but it doesn’t really need to, you see. Because the simple act of Thomas even writing an addendum to an album that [...]