Music
For many, the mere existence of Lizzie Grant and her alter ego Lana Del Rey serves as a cold slap in the face to the big-budget feminist empowerment campaign enacted by even richer and more famous people like Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.
Music
Christmas albums are largely dismissed by mainstream rock critics, and with good reason—consisting mainly of the same old songs over and over again, they’re filler product designed to rake in the cash while the corporate titans who created them take a year off to enjoy private cruises and improve th
Music
Former Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore’s new album The Best Day begins with eight downward arpeggios, which is pretty funny given his reputation as an obsessive guitar technician.
Music
If Shabazz Palaces are the future of rap, as their label claims, then rap is bound for obscurantist whimsy — inventive and engaging though their records are, these proud bohemians have reached such a rarefied level of willful avant-garde perversity that it can take forever to hear how their musical
Music
Taylor Swift has become a megaplatinum superstar largely through the construction of an artificial but rather appealing character. To call her the girl next door would downplay the dizzy self-involvement and feisty autonomy that made her a star in the first place.
Music
Founded by conductor/saxophone whiz Andy Williamson, the Bombay Royale are eleven Australian troublemakers who play their own hammy, modernized style of Bollywood movie music.
Music
If the War on Drugs’s Lost in the Dream is a brilliant soft-pop masterpiece, a theory I am perfectly willing to entertain, it is brilliant in a way more suited to a platinum bestseller than to a critics’ record.
Music
Swans, led by one Michael Gira, are the only band around right now to combine the abrasive militancy of classic American noise rock with mind-boggling avant-garde imagination.
Music
Parquet Courts have been compared to Wire, Television, the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, Sonic Youth, the Feelies, the Fall, Minor Threat, Flipper, Guided by Voices, Archers of Loaf, Silkworm, of course Pavement, and I could go on.
Music
As for iSweat Fitness Music, ah, blame it if you will on my own schlocky taste.
Music
It has come to my attention that the radio edit of Future's "Move That Dope" has been christened "Move That Doh" in a classic censorship joke.
Music
In part 2 of this month, reviews of Lana Del Rey, Sam Smith, Indian Ocean, and Kitten.