In most every way, Air’s “Once Upon A Time” (mp3)—the best song from the underappreciated Pocket Symphony—is a fitting counterpart to LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends,” which I wrote about here. Where James Murphy trains a worrying eye on the detrimental effect non-stop partying and single-minded careerism can have on friendships, Air, as only [...]

A piece I’ve had milling around my brain and/or hard drive for the past three years is up over at Pitchfork today. About how Hitchcock used music in Rear Window to echo his feelings (most defnitely not mine, though) about mass-cultural passivity. Music from radios ironically soundtracking your activities, that sort of thing. It’s [...]

At a time when polluting corporations skate by unscathed by regulation and the effects of global warming equals an Oscar win, one might think that documentaries like Discovery Channel’s Planet Earth could be a form of unintentional protest, right? Showing how gorgeous and sublime the world around us that we never see is, increasing [...]

For whatever reason, I never got around to writing this song up last year, or including it on my year-end mixes, even though it was an iPod staple for a good portion of the fall and winter. Maybe it’s the change of weather, but today is the first day of spring, and “I Understand” [...]

In case you haven’t heard, Kompakt (you know, the label whose CD tracklistings inevitably show up in iTunes IN ALL CAPS) is back, with two stone-cold instant micro-classics to be released this year, Gui Borratto’s Chromophobia and the Field’s debut full-length From Here We Go Sublime. Borratto’s “Beautiful Life” has been draining my iPod’s [...]

The jury is still out on whether Portugal the Man’s new record It’s Complicated Being A Wizard is the alchemistic answer to Three-Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.” But it’s fun nonetheless to imagine the group storming an imaginary Oscar stage and accepting the Best Song Award for soundtracking the [...]

If, after today’s release of Sound of Silver, James Murphy were still only the same hipster smartass who introduced himself to the world with the ironic “Losing My Edge,” or just the guy who writes intense jams devoted to getting bodies on the floor (”Movement,” “Disco Infiltrator”) or even a shameless fanboy who makes mirror-image [...]

What a surprise this song was in the middle of Mortise and Tenon, the debut full-length from Louisville’s Sapat. “Dark Silver” (mp3) is the tightest, most consistently rhythmic song on a record chocked full of lengthy, stylistically varied prog workouts (another of which is written about here). Embodying and manipulating much of what [...]

Nothing huge to report here, really—a typically solid show from one of the 4 or 5 best touring bands in existence, even though they seem to change lineups every other tour. The Daniel/Eno connection still provides the backbone, and my direct namesake Eric Harvey (whose presence on Gimme Fiction allows me to lie and [...]

The things to like about Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis), are numerous. He’s a lab technician from Pittsburgh by day, and by night rents cars to play his immaculately created mashups to crowds of sweaty acolytes, without telling his boss. For all intents and purposes, the music is impossible not to like, for [...]