Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (May 2013, Part 1)
In part 1 of this month, reviews of She & Him, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Satinder Sartaaj, and Lady Antebellum.
Music
Music
The Dancehall Meets the Sound Installation for Some "Hard Love"
What happens when you immerse the vocals of a dancehall queen who thrives on pulsing beats in the droning of an art sound machine? That was the experiment set up between Jamaican dub vocalist Warrior Queen and New York artist Marina Rosenfeld in P.A./Hard Love, which had its premiere last weekend at
Art
Singing for Shy People with Voice-Activated Instruments
As the Cat Stevens–loving Maude declared to a morose Harold in the 1971 film Harold and Maude, "If you want to sing out, sing out!" But for those of us who are too self-conscious or cursed by shrill tones and off-key octaves, having such belting confidence is hard. For such introverts, Ranjit Bhatna
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (April 2013, Part 2)
In part two of this month, reviews of Lil Wayne, the Strokes, King DJ, and Michael Bublé.
Music
Fagen's Critical Catalogue (April 2013, Part 1)
I've talked about Michael Tatum before, but that Kitty song compels me to cite this marvelous Tatum sentence, about Skrillex: "…any hairstyle that resembles a palomino's hindquarters when viewed from an elevated height commits cosmetological crimes so outrageously grotesque they could send Korn's Jo
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (March 2013, Part 2)
In part 2 of this month, reviews of music for autobahns, a rough guide to samba, Kacey Musgraves, A$AP Rocky, Monoswezi, Modestep, OneRepublic, and Teleseen.
Music
Watching the Planets Collide with Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, and Bryce Dessner
Space-themed music experiences were having something of a moment last week. While Oktophonie at the Park Avenue Armory brought the stark coldness of the world beyond our earth in minimal electronica, over at the Brooklyn Academy of Music there was Planetarium, a collaboration between Sufjan Stevens,
Art
Destroying Boundaries With Experimental Musician Feng Hao
BEIJING — Feng Hao speaks with a firm and straightforward attitude. He does not like long sentences, nor does he enjoy the elliptic dialectic typical of Chinese speech. He listens carefully to my questions and takes his time before answering them. Then he resumes his thoughts in a short statement th
Music
Bubble Bath: Deconstructing Pazz & Jop
Every year, the Village Voice holds an annual poll, inviting nearly every critic in the biz to vote on the best albums and singles of the given year. Because of its size, it’s generally the best way to measure yearly progress in pop music: the numbers actually mean something. The thing is huge; 493
Music
From Park Avenue to the Moon
One person's final frontier is another's impersonal void, or at least those are the two experiences of space you're likely to have at Oktophonie at the Park Avenue Armory. On the first of its performance run that started this week, the crowd, some grudgingly, took off their shoes and put on white "c
Music
Fagen’s Critical Catalogue (March 2013, Part 1)
Since January I’ve been squeezing an extra review into each catalogue, and, nearing the end of February, it finally cost me a deadline. I’m pretty satisfied with the way things turned out, though. As of this post since March last year, I’ve reviewed 100 2012 albums, not bad. High points here are a C
News
Smithsonian American Art Museum Acquires the Life's Work of an Imaginary Soul Singer
Between 1968 and 1977, Mingering Mike released around 50 albums, each with its own hand-drawn album art, and played sold-out shows around the world. Yet if you haven't heard of the prolific soul and funk singer, it's because he was entirely fictional, but the art was real and has just been acquired