Recently in Alternative Category

Steve Hauschildt, Tragedy & Geometry

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Steve Hauschildt is the quiet member of the trio Emeralds; his solo output is slim compared to the volumes amassed by bandmates John Elliott and Mark McGuire. His first widely available (non-CD-R) album is accordingly economical, making the most of its materials. It's not minimal, but it's rapturously focused. No gesture is wasted, and his pinging synthesizer fugues roll like perpetual motion machines. Klaus Schulze, Durutti Column and Detroit techno's John Beltran inform the dewy arpeggios, but the music is a universe of its own making. [Philip Sherburne]

Hear It Now!


Producers Corner: Dntel

Advertisement ASUS | Intel Producers Corner

Welcome to Producers Corner, our new video series in which we grill our favorite producers about their mysterious craft while following them around their natural habitat: the studio, of course. So far we've talked to folks like Pacific Northwest icon Phil Ek, fearless M.I.A. cohort Zakee and SF rock guru John Vanderslice. Today we make a home visit to Jimmy Tamborello, the electro-pop innovator who records as Dntel, has worked with the likes of Rilo Kiley and Bright Eyes, and is also one-half of celebrated indie-pop duo The Postal Service. He tells us why he prefers working from home (who doesn’t?), how to deal with writer’s block (buy something!), and why it’s better to work alone (you feel free to do dumb stuff). It’s all brought to you by ASUS and Intel. Enjoy.

ASUS | Intel Producers Corner Advertisement

Pixies, Come on Pilgrim

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Need we remind you that in 1987, most people were doing their best to catch a drop of Whitney Houston's brow sweat? Somehow, this record worked its way through the mire: eight tracks of howling rage, surreal folk-y pop, and Oedipal confusion. You should have every note of this record tattooed on your back. [Jon Pruett]

Hear It Now!




Live from New York City's CMJ Music Festival, here's our exclusive chat with intimate singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe, who discusses her love for Radiohead's The Bends and the indie flick Junebug, and how she got over her control-freak ways. Enjoy.




On the Record is a video series wherein rock stars gush about their favorite records -- for exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Wild Flag give it up for Minutemen.


Wild Flag
Wild Flag

Minutemen
Double Nickels on the Dime


Another Side of Santa Claus

20111122-HOLIDAY-SG-other-side-of-santa-560x225.jpg Kris Kringle is quite the mystery. Some believe he's just a jolly good fella that can do no wrong; others are a little more suspicious. What exactly does he do with those reindeer in the off-season? Who is he really kissing under the mistletoe? Artists like The Killers, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants, Sufjan Stevens and, of course, Weird Al have all questioned Santa's greater motives. The songs featured in this playlist suggest a different side to the typical portrayal of good ol' St. Nick. Is he really a gun-carryin', mullet-sportin', daddy-kissin' slave driver? Free the elves!

Click here to listen to my Another Side of Santa Claus playlist.

An Indie Winter Wonderland

20111123-HOLIDAY-SG-winter-indieland-560x225.jpg Holiday music is not just reserved for the fair crooner. In fact, many an indie artist has been struck with yuletide fever — or has at least shivered enough through a December day to be inspired to sing about hard winters and white snow. So this isn’t strictly hall-decking, bell-jingling music, but rather an array of tunes that represent both the jolly and the melancholy of the holiday season, from covers by Sufjan Stevens, She & Him and Rogue Wave to sweet originals by Snow Patrol and The Raveonettes to, well, stranger Christmas ditties from Beck, The Flaming Lips and Julian Casablancas. There’s also lots of talk about winter and snow — and if you’re dying to learn 50 ways to describe the white stuff, Kate Bush will educate you.

Click here to listen to my An Indie Winter Wonderland playlist.

Cheat Sheet: Merge Records

cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20111122-merge-records-560x225.jpg One of America's most successful indie labels doesn't run out of Brooklyn or Portland or L.A., but rather the modest metropolis of Durham, N.C., home of the Blue Devils of Duke University and the Bull Durham Tobacco Factory. It may not be the likeliest of habitats for a record label to blossom, but Merge Records has slowly risen to indie-powerhouse status.

Founded in 1989 by Superchunk's Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan, the label released a handful of indie classics by the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel, The Magnetic Fields and Superchunk themselves during the 1990s. But it wasn't until a little collective called Arcade Fire found themselves on the Billboard 200 for 2004's Funeral that the label started getting its  due. Since then, bands like Spoon and She & Him have also had chart success, but perhaps the label's biggest feat to date was Arcade Fire's unprecedented Album of the Year Grammy win for 2010's The Suburbs. In the following year, albums by Wye Oak, Destroyer, Wild Flag and Telekinesis have helped earn the label further indie cred.

Below, we spotlight key albums from Merge Records' vast catalog. For a sampling of each album, check out our Cheat Sheet: Merge Records playlist.

Thurston Moore, Demolished Thoughts

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Demolished Thoughts may just be Thurston Moore's Sea Change -- an apt comparison, since Beck himself sat as producer. Moore's noisier ambitions are mostly left in the dust as he strums an acoustic and paints some of his most personal vignettes to date. The album's best supporting characters are Mary Lattimore's harp and Samara Lubelski's violin, soothing and assuring Moore through sleepy hymns ("Benediction," "Illuminine"), giving urgency to his darkest moments ("Circulation," "Mina Loy"), and adding instant drama to his cinematic twists and turns ("Blood Never Lies," "Orchard Street"). [Stephanie Benson]

Hear It Now!


Indie Roundup, November 2011

20111115-indie-RU-560x225.jpg As 2011 starts to wind down, we're highlighting some of the last remaining releases of the year. It's a mix of luscious dream pop from the likes of M83, Atlas Sound and newcomers Blouse, alongside creepy electro-pop from none other than the filmmaker weirdo David Lynch, symphonic rock from former Oasis man Noel Gallagher, bold romantic pop from Florence + the Machine and My Brightest Diamond, and even a new Twilight soundtrack for the tween in us all. There are also some tasty singles and EPs from Mazzy Star (!), Kurt Vile, moody post-punkers The Soft Moon and downtempo Grecians Keep Shelly in Athens.

For a sampling of every album mentioned below, go straight to our Indie Roundup, November 2011 playlist.


1. M83
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
This is the kind of music that'll have you holding up a jukebox for your true love. M83's sixth album runs like a relentless reverie set in an '80s cinematic wonderland where synths wiggle, wobble and billow to hair-raising levels. The two discs are meant to act like siblings, and each parallel track does seem to share threads of DNA: the horn blasts of "Midnight City" and "New Map," the acoustic strums of "Wait" and "Splendor," the seductive female purrs of "Reunion" and "OK Pal." Plus there are the ambient interludes, which come as welcome flashes of serenity amid such cathartic intensity. [Stephanie Benson]




On the Record is a video series wherein rock stars gush about their favorite records -- for exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Men give it up for Ani Di Franco.


Men
Simultaneously

Ani Di Franco
Living in Clip




Live from New York City's CMJ Music Festival, here's our exclusive chat with Brandon Welchez of the California noise-punk band Crocodiles, holding forth on how they got started (by "reacting to crap local bands," mostly), his love of abrasive music, and whether he plans to collaborate soon with his wife, Dee Dee of Dum Dum Girls. Enjoy.




On the Record is a video series wherein rock stars gush about their favorite records -- for exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Crocodiles give it up for Rodriguez.


Crocodiles
Sleep Forever

Rodriguez
Cold Fact


Advertisement ASUS | Intel Producers Corner


Welcome to Producers Corner, our new video series in which we grill our favorite producers about their mysterious craft while following them around their natural habitat: the studio, of course. So far we've talked to SF rock guru Patrick Brown, Pacific Northwest indie icon Phil Ek, genre-hopping M.I.A. cohort Zakee and wily Renaissance man Andrew W.K. Today, we visit Tim Green—who's worked with Bratmobile, The Donnas, The Melvins, Comets on Fire, Six Organs of Admittance and more—out at his absurdly beautiful Louder Studios enclave in Grass Valley, CA. Seriously, that place looks awesome. He gives us a tour, talks about his early production experiments (putting a tape recorder in the freezer, say) and much more. It's all brought to you by ASUS and Intel. Enjoy.

ASUS | Intel Producers Corner Advertisement



On the Record is a video series wherein rock stars gush about their favorite records -- for exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Sarah Jaffe give it up for Wye Oak.


Sarah Jaffe
The Way Sound Leaves A Room

Wye Oak
Civilian


20111108-ben-and-zooey-SM-560x225.jpg Once upon a time, there was a young doe-eyed beauty of rising Hollywood fame. An inspiration for deadpan girls with cutesy fashion sense and a taste for retro indie-pop, she had everything but her Prince Charming. One day she met a like-minded lad, bespectacled and slightly nerdy, but nonetheless a sensitive troubadour of rising hipster fame. He claimed he would "possess" her heart; she batted her eyes and purred, "You really got a hold on me."

The lovers waltzed into a whirlwind romance -- "no perfect truths, just our love," he ascertained; "I was made for you," she coyly replied. Their courtship led to marriage, but, alas, no baby in a carriage. Feelings started to wane, hearts began to splinter -- distance and fame proved to in fact be a perfect truth of despair. "I should have known better," she sang; "You can do better than me," he sulked, and soon they were off on their own… single, rich and still quite beautiful.

Thus is the tragic tale of dear Ben Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel, best told through the former lovebirds' tuneful poetry, wherein they unabashedly sing of love and, ultimately, loss. Get yourself a box of tissues, kids.

Listen here: Hearts Unpossessed: The Sad Musical Tale of Ben & Zooey


senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20111108-proto-hipster-560x225.jpg With Rhapsody turning 10 years old next month, let's flash back exactly a decade to salute the class of 2001 — the generation that brought us, for better or for worse, the hipster.

Now, "hipster," that most desiccated of straw men, is an oft-abused term, and it's also a cipher of sorts: if no one hip enough to be a hipster cops to being one, then who's left to populate the demographic? Nevertheless, their habits are well documented. (Like dark matter, theory confirms their existence even when their actual capture eludes us.) And nowhere is that truer than in their musical tastes.

To understand why the hipster emerged when it did — the literary journal n+1 locates the contemporary hipster's emergence in 1999, which is good enough for our armchair sociology session — just look at the musical landscape of the turn of the millennium. Consider a few touchstones from that year: The Strokes' Is This It, Daft Punk's Discovery, Jay-Z's The Blueprint. Epochal albums all, and all from radically different corners of the musical universe, but all contributing, in their way, to the development of what we might call the hipster sensibility.

We're generalizing here, but I think you can describe the hipster's approach to taste as a voracious connoisseurship, a kind of competitive curiosity — the desire to know more about more different kinds of music before anyone else. The hipster sensibility is a constellation of tastes; rooted in self-aware styles of indie rock and hip-hop, it quickly grew to encompass New Wave, Krautrock, funk carioca, Baltimore club, Chicago house and countless other niche sounds. (In this sense, the contemporary hipster is a walking, talking incarnation of The Rock Snob's Dictionary.)

That sensibility is everywhere in the music of 2001, a pivotal year for many reasons — from The Avalanches' post-everything sampledelia to Miss Kittin's arch electro, from Yeah Yeah Yeahs' sardonic downtown chronicles to Radiohead's new sincerity. It's a complicated nexus of cool, sincerity, irony, pose, distance, guilty pleasures and unabashed enthusiasms. Untangle its DNA and get in touch with your own inner hipster with our playlist.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Senior Year, 2001: The Proto-Hipster


Friday Mixtape: Horn Jamz

20111101-horn-jamz-560x225.jpg Devoted readers of The Mix (hi, mom!) might remember that my last Friday Mixtape was called Piano Jamz, and consisted of jams featuring pianos. That playlist was kind of a happy accident: by simply culling together a bunch of songs I dug that featured one or more of those 88 keys, I managed to crisscross a whole slew of genres, eras, sounds, etc. It was a neat exercise, and so I've tried again, this time with horns. The brass in these jams is all over the place -- it's featured front and center, during solos, and is occasionally so cleverly deployed you won't even recognize it as brass at all (dig experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson's mind-bending "Judges," which is one guy, one horn, and no effects or loops (seriously)). Stylistically, we range from classic brawny rock to excitable indie rock to orchestral trip-hop to hip-hop to, of course, jazz. No Horn Jamz playlist would be complete without Gerry Raferty and Chuck Mangione, and for those who didn't know Biggie sampled it, be sure to check out Herb Alpert's "Rise." Finally, having come of age in the '90s Orange County ska revival scene, I had to throw in some No Doubt and Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Here's to stuff that blows.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Horn Jamz




On the Record is a video series wherein rock stars gush about their favorite records -- for exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Wild Flag give it up for Prince.


Wild Flag
Wild Flag

Prince
Purple Rain


Source Material: Radiohead, Kid A

20111101-radiohead-SM-560x225.jpg Rhapsody named Radiohead's Kid A its No. 1 album of the '00s. Released in late 2000, the album now reveals itself as a sort of ominous oracle pointing us toward a future of technological dependence, where words lose meaning in binary code and digital devices serve as conduits of emotion.

Radiohead started to deconstruct this sort of Brave New World mentality with 1997's OK Computer. Ironically, that album's acclaim only made them feel further alienated. So instead of going the way of raw sentiment (i.e. "Creep") for their next round in the studio, the band took the opposite approach, breaking down pain, passion and paranoia into digitized sound manipulations — even tweaking Thom Yorke's schoolboy wails into android chatter and spectral purrs. Yorke's lyrics themselves came from a place partially detached from human consciousness; he was influenced by Dadaist poetry, which involves writing one-liners, putting them into a hat and drawing them out at random. The result of all this is an album that sounds beamed in from the insular surface of the moon. Its opaque textures glisten with twinkling music boxes, bustling horns, fanciful harp, crystallized hums, dissonant reception and plenty of unidentified flying clatter.

Kid A ultimately became a prototype for the electronic experimentation and cross-pollination of genres that would influence and define much of the music released in the '00s. But it didn't completely come out of nowhere. Radiohead did their research: those blips, bleeps and ambient drones were inspired by the innovative work coming out on British indie label Warp Records in the '90s, including music from Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada; another U.K. label, Mo' Wax, brought fragmented trip-hop and jazz-tinged hip-hop to the attention of the band through artists like DJ Krush and DJ Shadow. That storm of brass sweeping through "National Anthem" has its roots in the free jazz stylings of Charles Mingus. Those tripping motorik beats and scattered loops bear the fingerprints of Krautrock kings Can, Neu! and Faust. And the piece of gear known as an Ondes Martenot was inspired by the pioneering work of French composer Olivier Messiaen — one of the first electronic instruments, its sound is like a cross between a deranged string quartet and a shivering theremin, and Jonny Greenwood's experimentations with the Ondes on tracks like "Kid A" and "How to Disappear Completely" helped rocket Radiohead's sound into the farthest of galaxies.

Friday Mixtape: Late Night Tales

20111024-FRI-MIXTAPE-late-night-tales-560x225.jpg LateNightTales is a mixtape series that "invites the world's best artists to delve deep into their music collections to create the ultimate 'late night' selection." MGMT, Midlake, Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Jamiroquai, The Cinematic Orchestra and others have curated their own LateNightTales, featuring their favorite nocturnal aural pleasures. These compilations not only reveal the curators' influences, but also offer a wide range of candlelit gems with which to soothe and seduce.

It's a great series (definitely check out the latest one by MGMT), so I thought I'd create my own Late Night Tales mixtape. I'm often drawn to music primed for late nights anyway — tunes slick with midnight-oil mystique and back-alley grime; tracks fueled by booze, narcotics and self-pity; and songs that are darkly detached, desolate and sometimes downright depressing. For me, this means the sexy devilishness of trip-hop (Massive Attack, Tricky), the grandiose moping of post-punk (The Cure, Joy Division), the machinest grit of industrial (Suicide, Nine Inch Nails), the cinematic melancholy of post-rock (Sigur Ros, Mogwai), and some of the darkest singer-songwriter mire known to man (Cat Power, Johnny Cash). This is the kind of stuff the sun could never handle.

Click here to listen to my Friday Mixtape: Late Night Tales.

Advertisement ASUS | Intel Producers Corner

Welcome to Producers Corner, our new video series in which we grill our favorite producers about their mysterious craft while following them around their natural habitat: the studio, of course. This week we visit Pacific Northwest titan Phil Ek, shepherd of innumerable indie-rock classics from Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, The Shins and more. Watch as he shows us around his inner sanctum, laments the plight of new up-and-coming producers, and tries to explain how much work this job really entails. It's all brought to you by ASUS and Intel. Enjoy.

ASUS | Intel Producers Corner Advertisement

20111024-alt-folklorico-560x250.jpg Over the last decade or so, many Latin artists have carved out a new style by stitching indie rock, hip-hop, electronic and pop together with folk and traditional music to create a sonic tapestry that's at once comfortably familiar and chicly cutting-edge. New York outfit Pistolera call their indie-rocking brand "alt-folklorico." But fashionable innovators have sketched out similar models in a diverse range of genres, from the urban-regional movement in Latin hip-hop to the folk electronico crafted by knob-twiddlers like Mexican Institute of Sound. One of the genre's founding mothers is Lila Downs, who has made a career of digging into her Mexican heritage to create nueva ranchera, neo-norteño and other kinds of rich, rootsy pop. Her latest album, Pecados y Milagros, is redolent with the homey accordions, sweeping strings, warm brass and dramatic vocals of regional Mexican music — but with indie-pop twists. Dig into the new roots Downs and other artists are putting down with our alt-folklorico playlist.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Alt-Folklorico y Mas




Recently Rhapsody teamed up with our friends at Om Records to present Soundcheck, a series of cool after-work shows featuring up-and-coming bands at a swank San Francisco hotel. It seemed like a good idea to interview all those bands on the hotel roof as well. Here, then, is our dispatch with indie-folk titans Thao & Mirah, who hold forth on the importance of beer in cooking, the beauty of San Francisco and how their distinct approaches to songwriting still somehow mesh perfectly (it involves “holding the door for each other”). Please also see our South Park Session on T&M, wherein we convinced them to do a concert for us in a park near our office. Enjoy.


The power of one woman with a mic and a guitar is a force to be reckoned with. Now double that. Thao Nguyen (of The Get Down Stay Down) and singer-songwriter Mirah do just that on their debut, adding tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus as producer for a trifecta of Bay Area female fierceness. The quirkier spots point to Garbus, like the clickety-clackety punch of opener "Eleven"; her eccentric touches balance beautifully with Thao's subtle grit and Mirah's softer inclinations. Whether they try on waltzing folk, sun-kissed acoustic, loopy pop or big-band jazz, it all fits like a glove. [Stephanie Benson]

Cheat Sheet: The Smiths

cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20101214-the-smiths-CS-560x225.jpg The Smiths may just be one of the greatest indie rock bands of all time. They've certainly influenced a wealth of artists since their '80s heyday. The proof is in the enduring quality of their songbook and in the legions of new fans they continue to win all over the world. This is a band that can play a mix of 1950s rockabilly, '60s folk-rock, stark post-punk, lush orchestral pop and stately piano ballads. They had a punk rock drummer and a funk bassist, and Morrissey and Johnny Marr were one of the great songwriting partnerships. Marr was riding such a creative peak with The Smiths that he can't even remember what he did to come up with some of the guitar sounds he made. Likewise, Morrissey's game-changing lyrics are thought of as bookish and self-pitying, but they can be full of ribald, street-smart humor, brutal violence and moral complexity. For all the talk of heartache, the lyrics are often biting and witty.

Here, we celebrate their work with a Cheat Sheet featuring new, remastered versions of nearly every record in their catalog. Also, be sure to check out our playlist: Cheat Sheet: The Smiths


20111011-beirut-SM-560x225.jpg When Beirut burst (OK, shuffled quietly) onto the scene in 2006, Zachary Condon's rotating crew wowed fans and critics alike with both his precocious songwriting and the globe-trotting, youth-belying range of stylistic sources he employed. As the legend goes, the New Mexico native dropped out of school as a teenager and went bumming around Europe, where he discovered and thoroughly absorbed folk and pop music traditions from French musette to Balkan brass to (especially) Roma/Gypsy folk. Back home, he wove his sonic discoveries into the tapestry of his debut album, along with bits and pieces of other influences, like the mariachi music he often heard while growing up in Santa Fe, the inclinations of his fellow globally inclined American singer-songwriters, and, of course, a lot of indie rock and pop. Then he filtered it all through a sweet, pensive haze that constituted both a gesture toward Roma music's palpable sense of yearning and his own take on the tradition.

In short, Gulag Orkestar was a remarkable (and remarkably mature) debut for a young singer-songwriter who has gone on to live up to the hype (and continue his sonic globe-trotting) on subsequent albums, including this year's The Rip Tide. Join us as we retrace Beirut's steps and take a deep dive into that debut album's roots and routes; your ears can follow along with this playlist: Source Material: Beirut, Gulag Orkestar.


Indie Roundup, October 2011

20111011-indie-RU-560x225.jpg For this month's Indie Roundup, we highlight a couple dozen new releases. We include big names like Björk, Feist, Ryan Adams and Wilco, but we also put the spotlight on several underground greats like '90s revivalists Big Troubles, minimalist dream-poppers Gem Club, manic garage-rocker Mikal Cronin, bedroom-pop lamenter Youth Lagoon, and Swedish electro-shoegazers I Break Horses. Discover some great new music here!

While reading, check out my playlist: Indie Roundup, October 2011


1. Feist
Metals
With "The Bad in Each Other," Feist's fourth album begins at a leisurely plod before it's quickly swept up in an orchestral squall; "Graveyard" then starts with sparse acoustic picking before funereal horns trudge and a chorus of Feists chants, "Whoa-oa-oa, bring 'em all back to life." This is how most of the first half of Metals flows — the drama sneaks up on you as Feist's lullaby coo never ceases its warm embrace. But after "A Commotion," the liveliest track here, the second half seems hypnotized by its own siren, slowing down to a rustic crawl that hints at the record's Big Sur origins. [Stephanie Benson]


20111004-FRI MIX swamp-dogg-560x225.jpg I've made a personalized mixtape every month for the last five years, combining au courant new hits, old favorites, random stuff overheard in convenience stores, Songs of Personal Emotional Relevance (the one from August 2008 mostly involves my wedding, which explains, for example, "Billie Jean"), ambient stuff that relaxes me in airports (very popular genre), etc. etc. As an example, I thought I'd share the January 2008 volume, which I think hangs together pretty well, considering.

Very brief notes: So we've got hot new indie-rock stuff (Vampire Weekend, the Juno-ascendant Kimya Dawson), recent events I was woefully late on (Franz Ferdinand's LCD Soundsystem cover, plus J. Holiday's luxurious "Bed," a/k/a the greatest song of all time), a track from the There Will Be Blood soundtrack done by a dude from Radiohead, actual Radiohead (was still absorbing In Rainbows, you see), reliable favorites ("Love Is the Drug," Electric Six), a highlight from the crazy Mars Volta concert I went to (they played for, like, eight hours), Marvin Gaye complaining about attorney fees, Youssou N'Dour singing sweetly, Lez (well, Led, but this'll do) Zeppelin wailing uncouthly, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk wailing even more uncouthly. Plus Alicia Keys' "Like You'll Never See Me Again," because she played it on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve or whatever right after the ball dropped, and I dug it a lot. If you only have time for one song here, though, by god make it Swamp Dogg's version of John Prine's "Sam Stone," which is incredible, and plus his name is Swamp Dogg. Nothing here was airport-affiliated, oddly enough. But don't hold that against them.

Friday Mixtape: My Own Personal January 2008


The Wide World of Wilco

20110927-WILCO-SG-main-560x225.jpg Wilco have now been around so long and put out records of such consistently high quality, it's tempting to take a new one for granted. But don't make that mistake with their latest opus, The Whole Love: it's both wildly ambitious and comfortably lived-in. To celebrate its arrival, we've whipped up a slew of Wilco-centric content, from an extended look at The Whole Love to playlists celebrating their all-time greatest hits and their many side projects to an in-depth exploration of the influences behind their 1996 breakthrough, Being There. Enjoy.


20110927-WILCO-SG-play-banner_560x80.jpg



20110927-WILCO-SG-ext-review-150x150.jpg


Another classic? A deep dive into Wilco's adventurous new album.   20110927-WILCO-SG-being-there-SM-150x150.jpg


Being There, Decoded: Revisiting the biggest influences on the band's 1996 breakthrough
20110927-WILCO-SG-jeff-tweedy-150x150.jpg


Wilco's Greatest Hits: Prepare yourself for a career-spanning monster playlist
  20110927-WILCO-SG-nels-cline-150x150.jpg


Wilco's Extended Universe: Side projects, solo jaunts, guest stars and more
20110927-WILCO-SG-neko-case-150x150.jpg


Ladies of Alt Country: Neko Case, Lucinda Williams and other crucial innovators
  20110927-WILCO-SG-dwight-yoakam-150x150.jpg


Alt Before Alt Was Cool: Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, and other fearless Wilco predecessors



20110927-WILCO-SG-being-there-560x225.jpg Wilco's Being There is one of those albums that was tailor-made for The Mix's Source Material treatment. The double-disc set is a ramshackle song cycle about all things rock 'n' roll: rock fandom, growing up on rock, rock as livelihood and so on. Even when Jeff Tweedy — using as he does that deadpan croon that makes you think he's either bored or stoned or both — rhapsodizes on the struggles of love and romance, he views them through the prism of ... the rock.

A big part of this hyper self-awareness is the way Being There wears its influences on its sleeves. The thing is littered with lyrical allusions and sonic references, as if it's a kind of Masonic Bible for rock 'n' roll: if decoded properly, it will open up a secret history. This is something I discovered not long after the record dropped in the fall of '96. I was a senior at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo back then. I was also a record store clerk "in the middle of awkward musical transitions," according to old pal and author Bryan Charles (who chronicled our college days in his Wowee Zowee book for Continuum's 33 1/3 series — Wilco are also mentioned). Moreover, I had "disowned the traditional in favor of screeching free-form noise." Thus, Being There's American rock vibe was the last thing my antennae were attuned to at the time.

But two other close friends, Steve and Rob, big Wilco fans whose tastes I genuinely dug, got me hooked regardless. As the autumn turned into one of the Midwest's harshest winters in decades, I used Rob's Escort GT to run errands quite a lot, and the discs were always in the car. Every time I borrowed it I worked on this decoding process: the lines in "Misunderstood" were lifted from punk icon Peter Laughner's "Amphetamine" ("Take the guitar layer for a ride ..."); there was a nod to Pink Floyd in "Far, Far Away" ("... on the dark side of the moon"); and "Hotel California" had turned into the "Hotel Arizona," where they made the band "wanna feel like stars." This process has never stopped, in fact. Through the years I've discovered more, like the way the fiddle jam "Dreamer in My Dreams" is surely a brazen reimaging of the Sir Douglas Quintet deep cut "Funky Side of Your Mind," or how "Kingpin" and Bert Jansch's "Open Up the Watergate (Let the Sunshine In)" share the exact same slinky groove.

20110927-WILCO-SG-ext-review-560x225.jpg There's an interview floating around in which Nels Cline, the experimental guitarist and composer who has found refuge in Wilco's enduring current lineup, paints a picture of a band at the peak of its powers. "We can make a dozen different records if you stuck us in the studio tomorrow and gave us one week," he says. He lists them: a noise record or a pop record or a folk record. All in one week.

Given the fact that the band's current roster — Cline, singer Jeff Tweedy, drummer Glenn Kotche, bassist John Stirratt, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen — is probably the most progressive and multifaceted lineup in the band's history (if not the entirety of American rock), there's little doubt they could. But if The Whole Love, Wilco's eighth record, the record they did make, sounds like a band that could go in a dozen different directions on a whim, it's notable for moving so conscientiously and uniformly together, making it one of the most engaging Wilco records in the better part of a decade.

Case in point: "Art of Almost." The sprawling opener sounds more like Radiohead's Amnesiac than the no-brand Americana of Wilco's 1995 debut, A.M.. Just as the band is fading off into a pixilated oblivion of digital blips and square-wave guitar distortion that kind of resembles Summerteeth with smarter noise and more effusive hooks, Kotche suddenly seems to raise one hand up in the air and start twirling his drumstick, charging ahead into a dead-simple, double-time rock 'n' roll backbeat. What does Nels Cline do with this? He goes off, tearing around the edges in a fuzzy post-rock freakout. This is not a band making a noise record or a pop record or a folk record: in one song, they're making all of the above.

That song's experimental edge is a bit of an outlier on The Whole Love, most of which is less toothy and more straightforward. Much of the record recalls the essential best of the band: a weave of dollar-bin sounds (the cheapie organ riff recalling ? and the Mysterians on "I Might," the retooled vaudeville jive of "Capitol City," even a bit of E.L.O. on "Dawned on Me") and Tweedy's usual songbook of ambiguous confessions, suggestive images and self-aware rocker clichés. There's a wholeness that has only surfaced on a few of Wilco's most remarkable records, like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth. But there's a clear-eyed elegance to the record that is new for the band, too. After drug records and post-drug records and breakthrough records and "return to their roots" records, The Whole Love is older and wiser, promising a late-career greatness. So if the The Whole Love isn't wholly folk, or pop, or noise, it sounds instead like something we haven't heard in a long time: a fully articulated Wilco record.

Cheat Sheet: A Pop-Punk Timeline

cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20110927-pop-punk-560x225.jpg Pop punk is one big, fat oxymoron if you think about it, but if The Ramones were the first punk band, then "Blitzkrieg Bop'" and their obvious affection for teenybopper pop also made them the first pop punk band. Punk, in its earthiest of roots, may just be poppier than any self-aware devotee would ever admit. But since The Ramones, the genre branched off into several differing sectors, some more snot-nosed and anarchic than others. This Cheat Sheet highlights more of the latter: groups that nail the requisite sneer but add irresistible pop charm that even a mom could love (well, maybe), full of punks more likely to scream about orgasm addictions, getting stoned in the afternoon, suburban stagnancy and losing their nose-ringed sweetheart than any unjust isms. Starting with 1976's Ramones, we travel through time and highlight 20 of pop punk's most successful and influential albums to see how the genre has grown, changed and thrived.

Click here to listen to my playlist: Cheat Sheet: A Pop Punk Timeline.


The Ramones
Ramones (1976)
Forget about "Anarchy in the U.K.": Punk started the minute the needle hit "Blitzkrieg Bop." The Ramones' debut has it all: buzz saw guitar riffs, insanely catchy tunes and an obvious love for 1960s teen pop. Their original "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" is even more authentic than the cover of "Let's Dance." The extra demos show they had it from the start. — Nick Dedina




R.E.M. RIP

20110920-r.e.m.-quits-560x225.png There are certain bands you choose, and certain bands that choose you. It seems like the latter catch you when it matters -- when the time, place and circumstances are just right. For me, R.E.M. was that band, right about the moment when Reckoning was playing on a tape deck in a crappy, prefab, carpeted apartment near the campus of Central Michigan University. The tape deck belonged to Jason, an art major with kinda longish "Andre-from-the-Real-World" hair that he was always pushing out of his face. He was dating my sister. He taught me how to play several chords on the guitar.

I'd argue that no matter who the 13-year-old was at the center of that story, they'd have little choice but to fall in love with R.E.M. And when I say "in love," I'm not fooling: my then-girlfriend and I followed the band on the Monster tour, enduring set after set from Luscious Jackson on muggy Midwestern summer evenings. Michael Stipe's fractured whine narrated my early high school years.

Like every intense, hormone-soaked infatuation, it didn't last. Part of it was that R.E.M. were one of those bands cursed by drawing the largest audience for their lousiest songs. ("Shiny Happy People"? Seriously?) Another part was that somewhere along the road (I'd argue it was not long after they started letting Luscious Jackson join them on the road), they started to seem essentially, irrevocably outdated, like those middle-aged dads clinging to their Converse All Stars. I think the band knew this. This was the era that Mike Mills started wearing those Rhinestone-studded Nudie Suits, for goodness sake. The last ten years have seen a clutch of R.E.M. records, each one promising that the band was releasing, at last, a relevant "rock" record. But relevant? That was Murmur, or Reckoning, hell even Green. Want to hear a rock band? Dig into their 1984 live set recently released as a bonus to Reckoning.

So, when the band announced that they'd decided to call it quits after three decades, it was something of a relief. It was the "now we can remember grandpa laughing, not with tubes coming out his nose" kind of thing. In that spirit -- to remember the best years, and cull the best of the worst -- we've cobbled together a playlist tribute to R.E.M., It's the End of the World As We Know It: An R.E.M. Retrospective. It goes out to you, Jason.

Fat Possum Records' New Class

20110920-fat-possum-560x225.jpg Oxford, Miss.'s Fat Possum Records was founded in 1992 with an initial mission to discover and endorse local blues musicians like R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Mississippi Fred McDowell. It was an honorable ambition, but one that certainly didn't have the label rolling in dough. Since the mid-'00s, however, Fat Possum has experienced a resurgence of sorts, gradually branching out beyond its Southern roots to embrace artists like The Black Keys, Andrew Bird and Heartless Bastards. Most recently, the label has stretched its limbs even further, cultivating talent from lo-fi indie rockers to soulful singer-songwriters. Their current roster boasts musicians like Wavves, Yuck, Smith Westerns, A.A. Bondy, Lissie and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Hear these artists and discover more of Fat Possum's newest class with our sampler playlist: Fat Possum Records' New Class.


The War on Drugs, Slave Ambient

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Slave Ambient sounds a lot like The War on Drugs' 2008 debut, Wagonwheel Blues: bouncy roots-rock buttressed by a Krautrock-inspired sense of rhythmic repetition. The Long Ryders playing the Neu! songbook, in other words. It's a decent enough listen. The only problem is that the record lacks the killer anthems that made its predecessor so fun -- then again, that just might be the point. This time around, primary singer and songwriter Adam Granduciel sounds more introspective and reflective; not only that, his vocals are often rendered indecipherable by the echo-soaked din challenging them. [Justin Farrar]

Hear It Now!


cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg20110913-concept-albums-560x225.jpg With the arrival of Alice Cooper's new record, Welcome 2 My Nightmare -- a concept-album sequel to his 1975 classic Welcome to My Nightmare -- we got to thinking. It seemed like the whole idea of the concept album, a major facet of the rock era, with entries from damn near everybody -- The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper's), The Beach Boys, The Kinks, Floyd, Yes, Genesis, The Who -- had died a horrible, somewhat goofy, death. In my addled mind, I somehow got the idea that besides pretty much anything by Mastodon or R. Kelly (who both sang a cellphone conversation or hid in a closet), the concept album had gone the way of the dinosaur since Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking came out in 1984. Boy, was I wrong.

Not only are there tons of concept albums still coming out, they're emerging from genres as far afield as progressive metal and hip-hop. Even better, the results are still often slightly crappy, a time-honored tradition of this '70s, uh, tradition. Let's face it, making a record with a unifying theme is not easy, and there are gonna be holes. Often musicians just get points for trying (in my book anyway). And I have to admit, I often like the crappy concept albums better than the "successful" ones. Below, you'll find a cross-section of some of the concept albums that came out in the past decade. As you can see, the art form is far from dying, and is just as suspect as ever.

Alice Cooper
Welcome 2 My Nightmare
While there's no escaping the fact that the most hardcore drug referenced on this sequel to the 1975 album is, uh, caffeine (track 2), at least former members of the Alice Cooper Band are playing the music. And even though there are both Auto-Tune vocals and rapping, there are moments when the group's '70s ferocity is recaptured, sort of. Their proclivities for cabaret music and Broadway dramatics are also touched on. To be fair, that rapping ("Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever") is done as a joke, and Cooper's trademark sly humor is everywhere here. [Mike McGuirk]


senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20110913-loser-baby-560x225.jpg Beck's self-deprecating "Loser" was arguably the anthem of 1994. But he wasn't the only one hatin' on himself. A lot of people seemed pretty down by the time the mid-'90s started rolling in, and no doubt the death of Kurt Cobain in April of '94 only made things dimmer. By then, alternative rock may have been losing some of its cool factor. It had become a mainstream force, after all (rather than the "alternative"), so maybe that had something to do with everyone's moody resignation.

You couldn't switch on MTV without watching Soundgarden's faces melting, or VH1 without seeing a bespectacled Lisa Loeb coyly begging you to stay. And a lot of other folks were pretty bummed out, too. Blind Melon only liked the rain. Radiohead were creeps. Stone Temple Pilots were feeling the big empty. Green Day were basket cases. Jeff Buckley was giving a "Last Goodbye." Weezer were coming undone. Bush were yelping something about glycerine. Even Tom Petty made it pretty damn clear you have no idea how it feels to be him. So this playlist goes out to all the misfits, mopers, loners and Debbie Downers of 1994 — or any year, really. After all, you wouldn't be a true high school student if you didn't feel like a loser at some point.

Click here to listen to the playlist: Senior Year, 1994: I'm a Loser, Baby.


20110913-nirvana-SM-560x225.jpg You already know the story: two decades ago, Seattle, Sub Pop and grunge became regular topics of conversation among music geeks, rock writers and those most fickle consumers of all, teenagers. It can be argued Nirvana were not the first to do whatever it is "grunge" did. They weren't the first to bring alternative music to pop radio. They weren't even the first to have a naked baby on their album cover. But firsts don't really mean a damn in the scheme of things (nor do charts, necessarily: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" never even cracked the top five of Billboard's Hot 100), and Nirvana are rightly credited as the straw that finally broke the 1980s' sleek and well-coiffed back, ultimately reinventing pop radio in 1991.

When Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl (plus former drummer Chad Channing, whose work on "Polly" made the final Nevermind cut) and producer Butch Vig bridged two extremes of outsider music — self-deprecating indie rock and embittered punk rock — they didn't expect or even intend to kick Michael Jackson off his throne and revolutionize pop music. But soon their mugs were all over MTV, and even the most remote 13-year-old kid suffering through raging hormones and a growing distrust of authority knew something pretty cool was happening.

Beyond its indelible place in pop culture history, though, Nevermind is simply an incredible album. Try, try listening to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Breed" without feeling your body boil in a rush of anarchic adrenaline, or "In Bloom" and "Territorial Pissings" without uncontrollably flailing your hair and unironically wondering whatever happened to moshpits, or "Come As You Are" and "Lithium" without cranking your mouth into a sinister sneer, or "Something in the Way" without sensing Cobain's uncomfortably numbed pain.

The Flaming Lips, Embryonic

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Never ones to hide their freak flag, the Flaming Lips flail it, whip it and sometimes drown under it on their first double disc. An exercise in knob-twiddling, guitar-noodling and vocal-manipulating, Embryonic blurs the line between genius and insanity ever more. Guitars and electronics squeal and flirt amid beatnik musings, mathematician chatter and animal squawks (from Karen O), as heavy bass lines dominate. There is filler, but also a good many gems: "Convinced of the Hex," "Worm Mountain" (with MGMT), "Silver Trembling Hands," "Watching the Planets." —Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


The Breeders, Last Splash

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day For a platinum-selling record, Last Splash is pretty strange and uncompromising. It's punk rock, it's loud indie rock, and it's pure-pop bubblegum slop. "Cannonball" is a staple of alt radio these days, but it wasn't long ago that hearing the song was a revelation. Throw in "Divine Hammer" and "Drivin' on 9," and you've got a great album. —Jon Pruett

Hear It Now!


AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day J Mascis' mumbles in the face of chaos influenced a nation of indie noise poppers. "In a Jar" and "Little Fury Things" encapsulate the world of 1980s college rock, joining in with perfect heaps of apathy loosely threaded with melody and deconstructed guitar solos. This LP broke powerful ground for many trends that would follow, including the lo-fi twitches that Lou Barlow later trucked off to Sebadoh. —Mechele Flannery

Hear It Now!


20110830-diary-mixtape-560x225.jpg In case you were wondering, yes, I was one of those people who would spend months perfecting a mixtape, design a collage of artwork for it, and then shyly hand over the cassette tape to some crush I mooned over in hopes that she would get my special "message." Don't front like you didn't do that, too.

Sometimes, though, I would simply create a mix that described my thoughts and feelings on life in general. It was akin to writing in a journal, though easier than confronting my thoughts nakedly transcribed on a piece of paper — the music allowed me to hide behind the sounds of others who could voice things that I could not or would not say. I worked on these 90-minute mixes — 45 to 50 minutes for each cassette side — by recording songs from a turntable, erasing and retaping them, and hoping the tape wouldn't break. (Yep, I used to make tape loops, too.) When I finished them, I not only gave the tapes to would-be lovers, but friends, too, just to let them know what was going on in my head.

The era of the cassette tape is long gone (though it's making a tentative comeback in indie circles; earlier this month, I copped new tapes by both MF Doom & Ghostface Killah, and Death Grips). So now I program songs in iTunes and Rhapsody, trying out different combinations, and hearing which fit together sonically and thematically. It's a less physical act than cuing up and manipulating a cassette tape, but the goals are the same.

As I said before, I often spend months on a tape. Due to time constraints, I knocked this one out in a few hours, so it's not my ideal mix. But its range of artists, from The Emotions to The Throne to Zomby to The Cure to Little Dragon, will give you a brief peek into where I am right at this moment.

Click here to listen to my playlist: Friday Mixtape: Mixtape Diary


Green Day, Dookie

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Signing with a major label may have come as a let-down to Green Day's doting underground fanbase. But those screaming "Sellout!" were quickly drowned out by Dookie's unprecedented success, largely due to major exposure on MTV and radio. The recognition was every bit earned, though, and the album spawned such hits as "Longview," "Welcome to Paradise," "Basket Case" and "When I Come Around." At a time when grunge was ruling the roost, Green Day's playful pop-punk provided a hookier, droller outlet for any kid who's ever felt a tinge of boredom, disillusionment or lack of motivation. —Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


Q&A: OK GO

Live from San Francisco's Outside Lands festival, here's our interview with Damian Kulash from OK Go, wherein he discusses his band's famous viral videos, and decides whether performing for President Obama or performing with the Muppets was more exciting. Enjoy.

Q&A: Little Dragon



Live from San Francisco's Outside Lands festival, here's our interview with the extremely Swedish
indie-rock group Little Dragon, wherein they discuss beefing up their live shows and the slightly embarrassing cover of their new album, Ritual Union. Enjoy.

LIttle Dragon - Ritual Union Little Dragon have evolved from quiet students of soulful downtempo to the cool kids of electro-pop with third album Ritual Union. The Swedish band gets its edge from singer Yukimi Nagano, who makes everything sound invitingly exotic -- when she coyly demands, "Please turn," you better believe you will. Wacky clanks, sliding notes and reverberating bass round out the dreamy Casio-pop experience, which seamlessly flows from playful, mid-tempo lounge-funk ("Little Man," "Summertearz") to sleek, upbeat club fare ("Shuffle a Dream," "Nightlight"). — Stephanie Benson



On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Junip give it up for Jan Johansson's Jazz in Sweden.

Play Without You

Junip
Without You

Jan Johansson
Jazz in
Sweden

Pixies, Doolittle

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
pixies_doolittle.jpg The Pixies' finest combines Black Francis' maniacal glee with pop structure and loads of deranged melodies. One of the great guitar albums of all time -- from the catharsis of "Tame" through the perfection of "Here Comes Your Man," the album never falters. Without it, rock in the '90s would have been drastically different. —Jon Pruett

Hear It Now!


Indie Roundup

20110823-indie-RU-560x225.jpg What's new in indie? Oh, just your usual hodgepodge of eclectic sounds from eclectic artists. Veteran indie dudes (Stephin M. and Stephen M.), Brazilian booty-shakers, Philly rockers, Canadian all-stars, Swedish popsters and more take over our August edition of the Indie Roundup, featuring notable new releases and singles.

Be sure to check out my Indie Roundup, August 2011 playlist.


1. Arcade Fire
The Suburbs Deluxe
The Suburbs is an intimate portrayal of not just sameness and shopping malls, but also the nostalgia and jadedness that comes with it. It opens with a deceptively jovial beat ... then gets morbidly epic. As they "drive through the sprawl," guitars, strings and synths gather and tumble, then sway like an empty swing in the wind before dissipating into laser bleeps and ABBA beats. Win Butler then makes his final admission: "If I could have it back/ All the time that we wasted/ I'd only waste it again." This deluxe edition includes "Culture War" and the David Byrne assist "Speaking in Tongues." — Stephanie Benson



On the Record is a video series where rock stars gush about their favorite records -- in exactly 45 seconds. Click above to watch Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah give it up for Neil Young's Tonight's the Night.

Play Hysterical

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Hysterical

Neil Young
Tonight's The Night

20110816-airplanes-560x225.jpg Ah, to partake in the miracle of flight. We all love to bitch about it, don't we? Louis C.K.'s bit on the absurdity of our whining really sums it up best: "'Ugh. But I had to pay for a sandwich….' You're flying! You're sitting in a chair in the sky! You're like a Greek myth right now! . . . New York to California in six hours! It used to take 30 years to do that, and a bunch of you would die on the way there!" This is all so true, but when you start thinking about your life being in the hands of unidentified pilots as you float up some tens of thousands of feet, you're bound to get a little edgy.

This is when Rhapsody becomes crucial. Once I hear those soothing words -- "you are now clear to use approved electronic devices" -- the headphones quite literally fly on. What helps me relax are songs and sounds with a rich, narcotic flow -- Radiohead, Four Tet, Portishead, the xx and M83, to name a few go-to artists. Anything to help lull me into a peaceful stupor (if only that kid would just stop kicking my seat already). This mixtape is lengthy enough for a cross-country flight, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

Click here for the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Music for Airplanes.




You Tweeted your questions. We put them in a box. Evanescence answered them. Watch Amy Lee chat about her new album and the band's new direction, as evinced by their current single, "What You Want."





You Tweeted your questions. We put them in a box. Owl City answered them. Watch Adam Young discuss French accents, insomnia, high-fiving seals, and the methods and madness behind his new album, All Things Bright and Beautiful.

Play All Things Bright and Beautiful
With his symphonic, whimsical synthscape and earnestly enunciated vocals, Owl City earned quite a few comparisons to The Postal Service on Ocean Eyes. But forget Ben Gibbard: This time around, Adam Young appears to fancy himself a kind of emo Walt Whitman. Taking "Fireflies" as a touchstone, he immerses himself in nature -- as inspiration, as setting and especially as metaphor. Some of the imagery is painted with a pretty thick brush (see: the whole opening track) and Young's word-chewing can be grating. But if nature-lovers with penchants for sonic drama are your bag, Young's your human(ist). [Rachel Devitt]




Outside Lands 2011: Photos

Gone Phishing at Outside Lands. Pics by Stephanie Benson.

Rhapsody trekked out to the fourth annual Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco's picturesque Golden Gate Park to catch acts including Phish, OK Go, The Roots, Foster the People, Beirut, The Black Keys, John Fogerty and more. Check out photo highlights from the three-day extravaganza.

Radiohead, The Best Of

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Arguing over the true "best" of Radiohead could leave a music geek giddy for days. Here, the band's former label, EMI, gives it a go with songs released by the prolific Brits from 1993's Pablo Honey to 2003's Hail to the Thief. Unshaken by some critics' one-hit wonder branding after the single "Creep," Radiohead suffused subsequent songs with avant-garde rock, ambient soundscapes and electro loops to match the fragile beauty of Thom Yorke's falsetto. In so doing, their albums came to function as complete works rather than a home for a few hits, a concept this scattered collection obscures. —Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Mike Skinner's The Streets liven up the Garage/2-step world, and dance music in general, with these London-based tales of cannabis-addled youth out to score food, girls and Playstation points. The club-kid commentary is a welcome relief from the genre's standard diva trills and MC braggadocio. —Jon Pruett

Hear It Now!


AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Although not quite as incendiary as their debut, Rage Against the Machine's third effort, Battle of Los Angeles, has enough vitriol in its deep grooves to earn high marks. Songs such as "Testify" and "Guerilla Radio" are bracing, impassioned rallies delivered with an insatiable desire to affect change. Battle is certainly a highlight in the band's career. —Linda Ryan

Hear It Now!


Lykke Li, Wounded Rhymes

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Swedish pop often sounds like it comes from an alternate universe where the girl group (wall of) sound never died out, and, thus, Lykke Li sounds sort of like '60s pop refracted back across the space-time continuum. Wounded Rhymes is at once familiar and alienating, sweet and seedy, like the album version of creepy baby doll art or aural deja vu. The watery landscape and flat-voiced siren's call of "I Follow Rivers," crazy/cute/confessional lyrics like "Sadness is my boyfriend," the dark, dirty slink of "Get Some": It's all deliciously uncomfortable. You can't not listen. —Rachel Devitt

Hear It Now!


custom_header_lollapalooza_560x60.png20110802-lolla-deadmua5-560x225.jpg Bow down to Deadmau5, oh ye water-logged masses. Pics by Garrett Kamps.

The final day of Lollapalooza's 20th-anniversary fest began so beautifully. The sun shone, the birds chirped (probably -- it was hard to hear them over the ovaries-rattling bass from Perry's Stage, which reverberated through the entire park today), the crowd skipped happily from show to show, and the perpetually friendly Lolla staffers smiled and thanked people as they crossed the gates. Did I mention that early-afternoon shining sun? Focus on it. Bask in it. Because after that? It rained. A lot. And then it rained again. A lot. And then there was mud. So, so much mud. The proceedings ended in drenched streets and unrecognizably filthy festies and shoe-swallowing, phone-destroying craters of mud. And that, too, was beautiful.

Rain at a festival, while not exactly ideal, is the great equalizer. Yes, it was unfortunate that Arctic Monkeys' set (among others) got delayed by the first storm. But the people I was huddled with under the Estancia lounge tent were laughing, bonding, making new friends -- and watching the dripping diehards at Cage the Elephant catch Matt Schultz's increasingly slippery body as he (and his mic) stage-dove again and again. And when the first downpour stopped and all 90,000 of us came together again, those of us who weren't drenched quickly got painted with mud. What beautiful people? Everyone was beautiful, everyone was ugly -- and everyone looked like they were paying homage to the classic images of joyfully muddy hippies at Lolla progenitor Woodstock. And when the second deluge began minutes before the headliner sets, it seemed almost fitting, as if Deadmau5 at one end and Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters at the other had called the rains down for their legions of ravers and rockers to play in. The crowd, many covered in trash bags donated by the ground crew, collectively said "screw it" and bolted for the field, helping each other up when they fell, and using the mud as a dance partner that could spin and slip them around.

Lollapalooza, Day Two

custom_header_lollapalooza_560x60.png ceelo-560x225.jpg Just sing, man: CeeLo does his Rock God thing. Pics by Garrett Kamps

The ironic charm of music festivals, as everyone knows, is that they're actually a pretty crappy place to hear music. The festgoer paradox at an event as massive as Lollapalooza (which completely sold out beforehand for the first time this year) is this: should you fight your way to the front of the stage and stake out a spot early enough to actually see your favorite band, which means you aren't going anywhere, including to other stages where other bands are playing, until the show's over? Or should you try to "see" as many acts as you can from the back of the lawn, behind a tree, next to a bunch of drunk people who are talking louder than the band is playing? Ultimately, the best decision is to just focus on creating an experience.

So what was the experience of Lolla like on Saturday? Well, day two began with rain: buckets of mud-producing, sludge-inducing rain that quickly coated the extremities of festgoers. The day ended with heat: the sun came out with a vengeance, the temperatures rose, the humidity was oppressive. And somewhere in the middle, everyone got drunk. Really, really drunk. Yesterday's beautiful people? Gone -- or at least so covered in mud that they were unrecognizable as such. The festival grounds, which were expanded to make for a sprawling 115 acres in 2010? Still navigable, thanks to the crisscrossing network of paths and streets that make up Chicago's Grant Park, but it still requires an inner pep talk every time one is faced with the task of navigating through tens of thousands of sweaty bodies. The port-a-potty situation? Grim. What else was a girl and 90,000 or so of her closest friends to do but give in and just enjoy the ride, with all its highs and lows, twists and turns, uppers and downers?

Afghan Whigs, Congregation

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Cincinnati's Afghan Whigs are crucial to the birth of '90s alternative rock. The first band signed to Sub Pop Records without roots in the Pacific Northwest, they rocked blustery disenchantment as intensely as any of their Seattle brethren. There's an effortless precision in vocalist Greg Dulli's libidinous groans and howls of slacker frustration; his lyrics are full of stifling dissatisfaction and boozy philosophy ("drink it, smoke it, stick it in"). It's all held together by roughed-up rock heightened by lead guitarist Rick McCollum's slick and sleazy riffage. —Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


Scritti Politti, Cupid & Psyche 85

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Green's Gallic allusion of choice -- the name of his pubbery, in fact -- is "jouissance," but although he's playful and verbal enough to make it his own, he falls short in the climax department. I'd suggest a less gushy conceit: esprit. The high-relief production and birdlike tunes and spry little keyb arrangements and hippety-hoppety beat and archly ethereal falsetto add up to a music of amazing lightness and wit that's saved from any hint of triviality by wordplay whose delight in its own turns is hard to resist. Usually I suspect lyricists who refuse to be clear of never having figured out what they mean, but here the puns are so clever and incessant that they become an end in themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Green knows what he wants to say. (Grade: A-) —Robert Christgau

Hear It Now!


cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20110802-subpop-560x225.jpg The rise of Sub Pop Records is a tale of Cinderella stature: Prince Charming came in the form of a rogue Aberdeen poet, and the rest, as they say, is history. But that was only the beginning of the story. From longhaired grunge to squeaky-clean indie folk to a world-music imprint and now hip-hop, the Seattle label has proven time and again to be one of the most reliable tastemakers in the biz. For over two decades, they've helped define whatever "indie music" is, or soon will be.

Sub Pop's formative years are often synonymous with the advent of grunge, but this isn't a totally accurate perception. Sure, they kick-started the careers of Nirvana and Soundgarden, but they also gave artists like Sebadoh, Sunny Day Real Estate, Codeine and Julie Doiron a platform on which to evolve — and to ultimately influence.

Below, we spotlight 15 key albums from Sub Pop's salad days. (Stay tuned for a Cheat Sheet of Sub Pop's post-2000 catalog.) For more from the label's early years, check out our comprehensive playlist of Sub Pop stars: Sub Pop Records, The Early Years ('88-'99).


Nirvana
Bleach
Nirvana's heaviest album, with its prominent Melvins influence, delivers the band's perfect prescription — a head-nodding riff, Kurt Cobain's freaked-out loner verses followed by mirror-punching just before the chorus — just as powerfully as it did in 1989. Their next record would go global, but Bleach pile drives harder. The crisp remastering of this deluxe version dares you not to turn tracks like "Scoff," "Swap Meet" and "School" all the way up. An entire live set from the early days is included, and the sound on these cuts is fantastic. — Mike McGuirk


senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20110802-woodstock-1999-560x225-02.jpg Some high school memories aren't so good.

Woodstock '99 was supposed to be a grand kiss-off to the 20th century, a golden opportunity for America's suburban youth to usher in a new era with four straight days of sweaty (and often naked) partying alongisde the biggest names in hip-hop and modern rock: Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Roots, Creed, Ice Cube, Limp Bizkit, Godsmack, Chemical Brothers, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Fatboy Slim, DMX, Bush and a whole lot more.

Sadly, what the festival ultimately turned out to be was one of the darkest and most violent moments in the history of American pop music. Taking place at the former Griffiss Air Force Base, a fortress-like Superfund site located in Rome, N.Y., the festival just so happened to coincide with a pernicious heat wave then hovering over the state's central region. Yet 100-degree temperatures fail to explain fully the brutality and violence that erupted between Thursday, July 22nd and Sunday the 25th. At one point, MTV used the phrase "Apocalypse Woodstock" to describe the rash of looting, arrests, mass dehydration, vandalism and arson. There were even multiple reports of rape and assault going down in the ultra-violent mosh pits. So yeah, we're talking seriously dark vibes.

Justifiably, a ton of blame made the rounds in the aftermath. Many pointed fingers at the bands, particularly the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who unleashed the Jimi Hendrix classic "Fire" while their fans set just about everything around them ablaze) and Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, whose onstage persona has always been about bad-boy aggression and inciting mayhem. Far more onlookers, however, criticized promoters for poor planning and a disregard for providing the necessary medical and security support. Regardless of culpability, Woodstock '99 is an event the kids who were there will most surely never forget.

To hear all the music that was in the eye of the storm during that fateful weekend, check out my Senior Year, 1999: Naked Bonfire Dances at Woodstock playlist.


Cheat Sheet: Latin Alt Divas

cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20110802-latin-alt-ladies-560x225.jpg Latin alternative music, like anything lurking under that ambiguous "alt" umbrella, is a hodgepodge hive of sounds, ranging from gritty rock to twee pop, from experimental electronic music to quirky hip-hop. But one aspect of the sound is easy to pin down: initially a kind of boys' club (or at least a club in which admittedly very talented boys got most of the attention), the world of Latin alt has recently been invaded by captivating, critically acclaimed, incredibly talented female artists. In fact, there are so many fresh new female faces in this world that we're focusing here primarily on women working in the cantautor (aka singer-songwriter) tradition, and saving the hard-rocking outfits, punk bands and emcees for another time. But even within that concentration, a wealth of sonic diversity exists, from Juana Molina's ambient electro-pop to Rita Indiana's techno-merengue, from Pistolera's folklorico rock to indie-pop darling Ximena Sariñana, whose masterful self-titled sophomore album dropped this week.

Check out selections from all these records, and more, with our Cheat Sheet: Latin Alt Divas playlist.


Ximena Sariñana
Mediocre (2008)
Yes, Sariñana has  got a fantastic new album out — a rich, complicated, well-rounded effort that showcases her newfound musical maturity. But as soon as you're done falling in love with that one, go back to where it all began. The child of a screenwriter and a famous director, the Mexico City-based artist has intertwined the film and music worlds over the course of her short but impressive career, whether she's singing telenovela theme songs or creating the kind of cinematically crafted indie pop found on this debut. While not as complex as the stuff to come, Mediocre's title belies its content. Sariñana hooks the listener in with a peppier pop aesthetic, even as she maintains a cool, slightly detached hipness.
 

Feist, The Reminder

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Sounding like a cross between Mazzy Star and Juliana Hatfield, the third gorgeous release from Canada's Leslie Feist is a must for lovers of perfectly balanced, gently poppy torch songs. Newcomers should start with "The Limit to Your Love," a beautifully performed tune showcasing her diaphanous vocals and deft songwriting. Savvy music supervisors will place this alongside scenes of yearning in romantic dramas for years to come. —Nate Baker

Hear It Now!


Friday Mixtape: Piano Jamz

20110726-piano-jams-560x225.jpg When I tell people I work in the music biz, the first question they ask is the obvious one: "What types of music do you like?" I find this akin to asking a chef their favorite food, or a pedophile their favorite Haley Joel Osment movie. I didn't gravitate toward this field because I wanted to lobby for the cultural merits of early-'80s straight-edge or West Coast cool jazz (though I would, happily, for both). I landed here because I find it endlessly fascinating that so many different types of folks choose to express themselves so differently using music, and that they do it over and over again, and have been for literally millennia. I love the mess of it all, not to mention the fact that it thrives in spite of -- at least in the last 100 or so years -- a massive capitalist machine whose inner workings are as calculating and mechanical as an auto mill's (and this is coming from someone who's part of that machine). It's pretty amazing when you think about it. I mean, like -- take that, painting.

Anyway, I'm rambling. The point I'm trying to make is that I listen to a lot of different sh*t. For my Friday Mixtape, I chose to slice that mélange according to a single criteria: piano. The tracks featured here all feature piano. They span decades and genres, styles and themes. And someone else, using the exact same criteria, would choose a completely different set of them. Mine is special to me for no coherent reason I can discern. Perhaps it'll be special to you too, and if not, well, there's plenty of other good sh*t out there.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: Friday Mixtape: Piano Jamz

senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20110726-seattle-flannel-560x225.png Click here to listen to the entire playlist: mix_play_18x14.gifSenior Year, 1991/'92: Seattle Wishes & Flannel Dreams.

Oh, to be in Seattle in the early '90s. It was the dream of many disaffected youth who watched MTV transform from a place where C+C Music Factory could safely "go hmmmm" to a mainstream hub for the Great American Grunge Conquest. Oversized flannel replaced Hammer pants as the national uniform, and Kurt Cobain was suddenly (and unwittingly) an icon, a hero, a spokesperson for Generation X.

If you attended high school during these years, you may have witnessed girls shopping in the men's department, boys growing out their hair (and not washing it), and spontaneous mosh pits erupting during school assemblies. You may have religiously watched Cameron Crowe's Singles upon its 1992 release, and wore out the soundtrack on your new CD player. You may have even been inspired to pick up a guitar, some drumsticks or a bass to expel your own stories of teenage torment.

Nirvana, Unplugged in New York

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
nirvana-unplugged.jpg Released a few months after Kurt Cobain's death in 1994, this record served as a sort of kick in the teeth to anyone who might have doubted Nirvana's strength as musicians. Stripped-down covers of well-chosen songs are aligned with desolate takes on their own material -- the result is stunning. —Jon Pruett

Hear It Now!


Lollapalooza 2011

custom_header_lollapalooza_560x60.png 20110722-lolla1-560x225.jpg As a heatwave descends upon the country, Team Rhapsody is ironing its Jantzen bathing suit in anticipation of the twentieth installment of Lollapalooza, August 5-7 in Chicago's Grant Park. If you can't make it, fear not: We shall be in attendance, interviewing artists, snapping photos, and reporting on the various shenanigans (looking at you, Ween). To help get everyone jazzed, we've compiled a taste of the 2011 lineup here, including headliners Eminem, Foo Fighters, Coldplay and Muse, along with acts spinning booty-shaking sets at Perry's, like Girl Talk and Kid Cudi.

Click here to listen to the entire playlist: mix_play_18x14.gifLollapalooza 2011

20110719-tuneyards-560x225.jpg The much-lauded second album by tUnE-yArDs (aka Oakland-based indie-rocker Merrill Garbus) has been, well, much-lauded for many reasons, not least of which is the finely tuned and widely varied sonic palette into which she dips. The creatively styled W H O K I L L has been heralded for digging into hip-hop, funk, R&B, free jazz, soul and much more — as our own Stephanie Benson put it, treating each style like "a treasure she eagerly excavated from a junkyard." But as the brilliant Sarah Bardeen, our former world music editor, pointed out, what often gets left out of the discussion of Garbus' crate-digging, style-raiding, experimentally hodgepodge approach is the global scope of that pastiche, which dabbles in European, Asian and a whole lot of African sounds. Garbus herself appears to be an avid world music fan, name-checking influences that range from Kenyan to Bulgarian. So we went ahead and took a stab at excavating the more global sources mined on W H O K I L L. Dig in! (and listen to the music discussed here on our Source Material playlist!)


The Smiths, The Queen is Dead

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day This is widely viewed as The Smiths' greatest hour; while this claim may not hold up on a song-by-song basis, the whole album pulses with a special vitality. The Morrissey/Marr team is once again capable of anything but rock cliches -- "Bigmouth Strikes Again" starts like The Stones and ends like a West End comedy, while "I Know It's Over" plays out like the saddest Angry Young Man movie of the 1960s. "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" is a ringing teen anthem that remains intimate, as past heartache is looked upon with wisdom and humor: It's one of the band's most covered songs. —Nick Dedina

Hear It Now!


Indie Roundup, July 2011

20110712-indie-RU-560x225.jpg Discover fresh sounds from a diverse lineup of indie artists. In our latest roundup of new releases, we cover chillwave champions, dreamy folkies, quirky sirens and even a mysterious masked man. Read all about them and play away.

Washed Out
Within and Without
Washed Out's full-length debut opens with a wash of synths that ebb and flow like an ocean dependent on electricity. This leisurely rhythm is the basis for main man Ernest Greene's chillwave aesthetic, which draws from '80s ambient music with its layers of soft beats and drones that echo nature at peace. Greene's stoic murmurs merely act as a parallel force, floating along like a fish swimming with the current. "Amor Fati" is the liveliest track of the bunch, and possibly the best, but the whole mix, produced by Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter), is as smooth and steady as the sea. —Stephanie Benson

Björk, Post

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Maybe it's just nostalgia for (or, um, flashbacks to) that intoxicating mid-'90s cocktail of electronic dance music and alt-pop, but something about "Hyperballad" brings on gooseflesh, a barely contained sob to the throat, and the desire to spin and spin and spin on a dance floor (or mountaintop). Actually, Björk's entire fourth(ish) album is an incredible combination of weird and poignant and rip-your-guts out gorgeous and... accessible (well, more or less)—the kind of collection she just doesn't put out anymore. And then there's "It's Oh So Quiet," quite possibly the weirdest Björk song ever. —Rachel Devitt

Hear It Now!


Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Her rich alto has always delivered a visceral gut shot, but with Middle Cyclone Neko Case continues to emerge as a songwriter who truly knows how to wield the commanding instrument. When she sings "My love has never lived indoors/ I had to drag it home by force," on "Vengeance Is Sleeping," it's a nod to this record's salty themes (Mother Nature, a killer whale, and prison girls cameo). As she stomps through the elaborately produced country-inflected rock, the smattering of threats ("I will punch you in your face") disenfranchised come-ons and desperate rage is intoxicating. —Nate Cavalieri

Hear It Now!


banner_HTC_white.jpg 20110705-radar-cualdron-no-logo-560x225.jpg Welcome to the final installment of Rhapsody Radar, our month-long tribute to 24 up-and-coming artists who thrill us. Below you'll find our last six honorees: a couple melancholy but inspiring country upstarts, some muscular boogie-rock enthusiasts, a little experimental hip-hop, and a killer Canadian metal band with song titles like "Chained Up in Chains." Let's start with those guys, actually — read (and hear) below.

Cauldron: The Metalheads Bringing Catchiness Back

"We are youuuuung … and hungry!" Jason Decay proclaimed in the first song on Cauldron's 2009 debut album, and this metal trio has spent the two years since proving their case. They're a throwback to the pre-thrash early '80s — a time when metal bands were allowed to be super-fast, catchy, heavy and hilarious, all at once. Sometimes they even sound like Def Leppard crossed with Metallica, if both had quit after their own debut LPs: speed metal before the rock 'n' roll got purged from its system. Their album covers, too, are absurdly over-the-top in ways rarely seen since 1983 — girls on fire and in chains, both of which happen to be favorite song-title themes. Their Flying V-brandishing guitarist calls himself Ian Chains.

20110705-bon-iver-560x225.jpg During its first week out, Justin Vernon's sophomore album under the name Bon Iver couldn't quite knock Adele's 21 off the top of the Rhapsody charts, but it did overpower albums by pop queens Katy Perry, Rihanna and even Lady Gaga. That says a hell of a lot for a humble Cheesehead who just a few years ago was holed up in a cabin in the dead of Wisconsin winter, lovesick and depressed as he crafted Bon Iver's celebrated 2008 debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. It also says a lot for an album that unabashedly takes cues from schmaltzy '80s soft rock and earnest singer-songwriter fare. There's certainly no glitz or glam about Bon Iver, but it's nonetheless a minor pop sensation capable of riling up people who normally wouldn't care about just another indie dude. (Though contrarians have been quick to accuse Vernon of being a bearded hipster hack, a shameless Bruce Hornsby/Peter Cetera/Phil Collins revivalist, or — gasp! — just plain boring.)

banner_HTC_white.jpg 20110628-radar-com-truise.jpg Welcome to another edition of Rhap Radar, our month-long survey of 24 up-and-coming artists that excite us. For a peek at what you've missed so far, here's a playlist of our first dozen honorees. And now we move on to a new batch, featuring a slow-burning blog-rap upstart, an Afro-Latin innovator (and politician!), Radiohead-esque indie rockers, a nostalgia-drenched electro-funker, and two women named Natalia (one a Latin-pop diva, the other a will.i.am-abetted pop star in training). Read on and listen in below.

Com Truise: The Synthesizer-Wielding Retro-Futurist

Danger Mouse, Rome

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day The word "prolific" doesn't do Danger Mouse justice. For Rome, the Grammy-winning producer gathered a cast of superstars to capture the mystique of the spaghetti Western: It's a natural progression, as hints of the dusty and desolate sound have popped up in his previous work with Beck, Sparklehorse & David Lynch, and Broken Bells. With help from composer Daniele Luppi, Rome features musicians who played on the original Ennio Morricone scores (how's that for authenticity?), and grants blockbuster starring roles to Jack White (the suave rebel) and Norah Jones (the soulful seductress). —Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


Cheat Sheet: Hipster Dance Club

cheat_sheet_top_header_560x62.jpg 20110621-hipster-dance-560x.jpg
We're not attempting to define the elusive hipster here, but we're guessing this dance party may just be rocking a consignment shop's worth of skinny jeans, neon headbands, Ray-Bans, Converse and off-the-shoulder T's … but we don't judge. From New York (LCD Soundsystem) to L.A. (Foster the People) to Paris (Daft Punk), London (Hot Chip) and Melbourne (Cut Copy), hipsters are ruling the dancefloor, and probably having more fun than you are (but without ever actually showing it). Here, we compile some key soundtracks to optimize your hipness. So bust a move, get ironic and keep the PBR flowing (can we fit any more stereotypes in here?), because it's a hipster dance party!

For eight straight hours of too-cool-for-school booty-shaking, go straight to our Hipster Dance Club playlist.


LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver
LCD's James Murphy may win the award for the '00s' biggest hipster, but this album proves, most improbably, that he's a hipster with a heart of gold. Irony and disaffection course through these mostly dance songs' frayed, bulbous and lumpy productions — yet there's undeniable warmth here, and the beats are constructed with mucho TLC. It's all anchored by "All My Friends," a natural high as fluent in Steve Reich's cerebral looping technique as it is the language of a sweaty Brooklyn dancefloor. — Garrett Kamps

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
hedwig_and_the_angry_inch.jpg If you're already a fan, chances are the novelty of Hedwig -- a transsexual rock star from East Germany who ended up with an "angry inch" and a mean string of broken hearts after a botched sex-change operation -- has worn off. (If you've yet to see it, my God! Get thee to a Netflix queue, posthaste!) But even if, like us, you've seen the movie more times than you've seen your mother, the soundtrack still stands the test of time: rock-star cynicism meets high camp, glam metaphors and gut-twisting pathos to the tune of tremendous, blistering rock. A true classic. —Rachel Devitt

Hear It Now!


Thao & Mirah, Thao & Mirah

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day The power of one woman with a mic and a guitar is a force to be reckoned with. Now double that. Thao Nguyen (of The Get Down Stay Down) and singer-songwriter Mirah do just that on their debut, adding tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus as producer for a trifecta of Bay Area female fierceness. The quirkier spots point to Garbus, like the clickety-clackety punch of opener "Eleven"; her eccentric touches balance beautifully with Thao's subtle grit and Mirah's softer inclinations. Whether they try on waltzing folk, sun-kissed acoustic, loopy pop or big-band jazz, it all fits like a glove. — Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


The Best of 2011 (So Far)

summer-best-of-2011-so-far-560x225.jpg One aspect of summer that never fails to surprise is that the year is now nearly half over: we are closer to 2011's year-end critics-poll season than we are to 2010's. You've started drafting your own Top 10 list already, right? No? You haven't? Don't panic: here, Rhapsody's genre editors each pick their five favorite records of the year so far. How many will survive until November? Which ones will be replaced by Lil Wayne, by Beyoncé, by the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark? Time will tell, but for now, here are our picks for the year's best, half a year early.

Spoon, Transference

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Spoon had a pretty incredible '00s (seriously, four great albums). So for their first release in a new decade, and also their first self-produced effort, Transference is just what the title promises—a transferring of all that the band has learned and defined into a sound that is as familiar as it is fresh. Slight piano bumps, soft hi-hat hits, lo-fi guitar, the occasional echo, and the rare fuzz effect ebb and flow with the same patience and ease as Britt Daniel's coos. This is Spoon as you know and love them: minimalist, smart, catchy, always playing it cool. — Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


Indie Roundup, June 2011

20110607-indie-RU-560x225.jpg It's time for another look into the past month of new indie releases. We've got the vets (Death Cab, My Morning Jacket, Thurston Moore, Arctic Monkeys), along with some buzz-y newcomers (Cults, Givers, Foster the People) and exclusive live sets from indie mainstays Deerhunter and Kurt Vile. For more info on each release, read on and play away.

For a convenient two-track sample of each album, check out our accompanying playlist: Indie Roundup, June 2011.

Cults
Cults
Couple/duo Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin started Cults as a way to test out the playful experiments conducted in their NYU digs. Single "Go Outside," a soul-pop confection laced with glockenspiel, brought on blog buzz; roughly a year later came this, their full-length debut. Cults is shamelessly retro, fluttering between the reverb flush of The Raveonettes and the bittersweet effervescence of '60s girl groups. Follin's coos are alternately pining and distant, as the rhythms rock flirtatiously and the guitars jangle in a reverb haze that occasionally dips its toes in the Cali surf. — Stephanie Benson


Firewater, The Ponzi Scheme

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Think of Chicago's Firewater as Gogol Bordello's slightly older, slightly less punk brother — the one who spent a lot more time getting sneaked into strip clubs by cool Uncle Tom (Waits) and sulking to Nirvana when he got home. The Gypsy aspects of their sound are really just that: aspects, nuances, details that enhance the slinky cabaret-rock structure on which they've built their career. The Ponzi Scheme waits a good long time to go Romani 'n' roll, but they start hauling out the big guns (read: horns) 'round about "El Borracho," which retraces the polka dots between Eastern Europe and the Texas-Mexico border. — Rachel Devitt

Hear It Now!


20110524-the-antlers-SM-560x225.jpg The Antlers' 2009 breakout album, Hospice, is so epic, so crushing, that listening to it feels like a bullet taking 50 minutes to sink into your chest. It's a gorgeous piece of work, a loose concept record that lingers long after frontman Peter Silberman's falsetto peters out. It was among the best indie albums of 2009 (amid tough competition, with Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion and Grizzly Bear's Veckatimist in the running), meaning its follow-up would be as anticipated as it was scrutinized. And here at Rhapsody, we think The Antlers did a pretty good job under the pressure.

While Silberman was the main force behind the group's previous outputs, 2011's Burst Apart is the band's first truly collaborative effort, with percussionist Michael Lerner and multi-instrumentalist Darby Cicci helping to flesh out his vision. Through that collaboration, the band took the weight off Hospice's shoulders, capturing its aftermath in a slow-burning dream state that's as narcotic as it is haunting. Silberman is more introspective here, examining the fine line between loneliness and independence, and bearing a striking resemblance to Jeff Buckley on tracks like "I Don't Want Love" and the anxiety-ridden rocker "Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out." His falsetto slithers like a charmed snake as guitars echo and keyboards meander into the ether like the spacey reveries of Mercury Rev. And even when Silberman's voice isn't present, like on "Tiptoe," his poignancy resonates as a lonely horn glides through a noir film's dark alley.

To listen to Burst Apart and its Source Material, check out this playlist: Source Material: The Antlers' Burst Apart.

Gang Gang Dance, Eye Contact

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day It's not that Eye Contact can't be broken down into its constituent parts. It's just that descriptors like worldbeat, crunk, fusion and dream pop fail to express its collective sound. Gang Gang Dance produce a perceptually challenging racket that's all about sonic reflection, refraction, decay and shadow play. The constants are crystallized synths, chopped grooves and Liz Bougatsos' ethereal chirp, yet they're incessantly dissolving, reforming, then dissolving again. At the midway point, a track emerges from the GGD's private noosphere titled "Mindkilla." That's exactly what Eye Contact is. — Justin Farrar

Hear It Now!


AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Does there really need to be another Rolling Stones tribute album? On the strength of Great Lake Swimmers' "Before They Make Me Run" and Everest's "Sweet Virginia," there obviously is still an untapped niche out there. This particular compilation is light on hits and heavy on album cuts, and, for the most part, succeeds in reinventing those steel wheels. The biggest pleasures come from the "neglected gems," which are scuffed up and fleshed out with twanging guitars and lamenting harmonicas. Other highlights include "Dear Doctor" (by Lee Harvey Osmond), a sublimely gritty version of "Wild Horses" (by Neal McCarthy) and "You Got the Silver" (by Barbara Kessler). — Linda Ryan

Hear It Now!


The Rapture, Echoes

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day The Rapture's debut sounds like peak-period Robert Smith howling over pulsating electro rhythms, with the occasional guitar ripping through it all with an unhinged art-punk fury. Chances are, you weren't born or didn't care when disco-punk first surfaced. In that case, this might just be groundbreaking stuff. — Jon Pruett

Hear It Now!


AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day Death Cab have done some great work on their major-label albums, but it was their swan song for indie Barsuk where the band best balanced indie rock heart-on-sleeve earnestness with unmistakably precise songcraft. "Transatlanticism" is one long epic crescendo, a song about oceans that doubles as a wave you never want to break. "Lightness" is gorgeous in its concision, and "A Lack of Color" may be one of the saddest songs ever, no joke. The only way to improve this album would be to sell it with a box of Kleenex. — Garrett Kamps

Hear It Now!


20110518-latin-alt-560x225.jpg You think "alternative" is a confusing, ambiguous, meaningless term? Try "Latin alternative." Does it mean a Latin band that plays, um, mainstream alt-rock? Or an artist that offers an alternative to Latin pop? And isn't every Latin band an alternative to the American rock mainstream? Yes? No? Maybe? Forget the semantics and just take a listen to the crème de la crème of albums that have come out under that heading in the last couple months. We've rounded up a Top 10 that includes American electro-poppers who sing in Spanish, Mexican garage rockers who sing in English, Argentinean psychedelica, Venezuelan dance punks and post-grunge rockers who pack soccer stadiums across the Latin American world. There's an alternative for everyone.


PJ Harvey, Let England Shake

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day There's something magnetically haunting in PJ Harvey's music; it's intangible but always there, like a heart beating under the floorboards. Her eighth album pumps restlessly with this eerie substance. "England you leave a taste, a bitter one," Harvey croaks with a girly innocence -- but she's not ungrateful, just observant in her poetic tales of wars and woes. Some of the most visceral moments are strikingly upbeat: the pint-clanking bounce of "The Words That Maketh Murder" or the reggae nod on "Written on the Forehead," where Harvey, both ominously and jubilantly, declares "let it burn." — Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


New Order, Power, Corruption & Lies

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Album of the Day The second in Rhino's 2008 reissues of New Order's '80s albums, this edition of New Order's landmark 1983 album catches the act at a transitional moment. Appended to the original eight-song set of guitar-based indie and DIY disco -- after singles "Blue Monday" and "The Beach," long included in CD reissues -- are electrofunk attempts "Confusion" and "Thieves Like Us"; "Murder," a shrieking post-punk mantra with proto-death metal vocals, suggest paths not taken (perhaps wisely). — Philip Sherburne

Hear It Now!


senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20110510-SY-1991-britpoppers-560x225.jpg London truly was swinging back in 1991. With a little help (read: hype) from music weeklies such as NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, new stars were being made at clubs such as Syndrome and Blow Up, while Camden-area pubs such as The Good Mixer overflowed with young Brit-pop stars nightly. It didn't take long before the music — and the legendary, drunken stories of those of those who made it — made its way to America. And although the release of Nirvana's Nevermind later that year would put a severe dent in Brit pop's popularity, its bright light never faded for the hardcore anglophiles.

You saw them everywhere around school — they stood out with their long, fringy haircuts, stripey T's and oversized anoraks (heavily adorned with badges of bands such as the Charlatans, Lush and Suede), but if you really wanted to find Brit-pop lovers and pop kids, you went to the local mom-and-pop record shop. Here, anglophiles could happily engage in the Blur vs. Oasis debate — daily. They would tell you Jesus Jones were a bunch of sellouts, but those crusty-loving travelers, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, ruled! They loved Primal Scream and the Happy Mondays for embracing Madchester's rave culture while deriding fluffy pop rip-offs such as Soho and Candyflip.

The girls loved their unisex look, and "regular" guys wished they knew as much about music. Wear your union jack with pride, and welcome to high school, circa 1991.

Click here to listen to the complete playlist: Senior Year, 1991: Too Cool for School - The Britpoppers


20110503-upcoming-releases-560x225.jpg We must admit that Tuesday is our favorite day of the week here at Rhapsody: that's when new releases come out. Thankfully, the next three months of Tuesdays look absolutely glorious, full of fresh music from ukulele-brandishing rockers, electronic pioneers, strident country hit makers, unabashed pop divas, unrepentant metalheads, CCM luminaries, contenders for Best Rapper Alive honors, soul superstars and, of course, Lady Gaga. Here's the best of what's to come.


Lady Gaga, Born This Way (May 23) Quite possibly the most anticipated album of 2011, Gaga's second full-length bears a heavy load: there's the dreaded sophomore slump to avoid, and her massive celebrity to justify. Then there's the public's increasingly conflicted position on Gaga to contend with: do we find her hyper-theatricality annoying or endearing? Are the new singles ("Judas" and "Born This Way") brilliant meta-nuggets of pop culture or weak Madonna rip-offs? The whole world waits with bated breath to decide. — Rachel Devitt

Beyoncé, TBD (June) Then again, with just one girl-power-hungry, oh-Sasha-it's-fierce lead single packed with distinctive Diplo-and-Switch beats, Beyoncé made the world sit up and go, "Gaga who?" And when her fourth album drops sometime in early summer, you can bet your granny panties B's gonna knock all those lesser divas down like dominoes. — R.D.

Kanye West and Jay-Z, Watch the Throne (hopefully soon) Keep watching. This long-threatened mega-rapper summit will happen eventually, we swear: manic lead single "H.A.M." emerged way back in January, but it's been mostly radio silence since. Still, whenever these guys get around to it, Throne is sure to be a delightfully extravagant bacchanal of Best Rapper Alive narcissism. Hopefully Nicki Minaj drops by, too. — Rob Harvilla

senior_year-banner-560x60.jpg 20110503-freak-folk-CS-560x225.jpg Over the last few years, modern folk men have swept the indie landscape with as much reckless abandon as the pelts covering their faces. The bold and oftentimes bearded troubadours have once again made mandolins hip and banjos a trendy accessory. But it's not all about the hair or the gear. There's often something mystical in the folk artist, like he knows something we all don't and this lingering awareness drives a passion that is translated into electrifying music, even if there's little more than the strum of an acoustic guitar to carry it through. Today's folkies all share this trait, and while they are students of the rustic and raw revival scenes of '50s, '60s and '70s America and Britain, they are also revelers in the uninhibited world of indie rock.

Listen to the entire playlist: Cheat Sheet: Modern Men of Indie Folk


Oh Land, Oh Land

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Danish darling Nanna Oland Fabricius is like half fembot, half hippie chick. Programmed to write, sing and play nearly every instrument on her debut, the blonde bombshell utilizes sleek synths, glockenspiel and drum machines as shiny accessories to lure you into her electro-pop wonder world. In reality, Oh Land is quite poignant; Fabricius' crystal coos glide atop heavy beats that are sometimes trip-hop dark, sometimes disco giddy. In "Break the Chain" she opens up about a dance career ended by injury; elsewhere her flower-power side shines through with talk of moons, dreams and white knights. — Stephanie Benson

Hear It Now!


Primus, Sailing the Seas of Cheese

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
A quirky mix of funk, thrash and Zappa-inspired progressive rock, 1991's Sailing the Seas of Cheese made it okay for nerdy intellectual types to dig heavy metal. Stylistically, the record belongs to a larger movement in late-1980s and early-'90s alternative rock, one based in California that also included Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction and, of course, the mysterious Buckethead. The maddeningly catchy "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" was the big MTV hit, but the record contains plenty more goofy fun that will keep you and your friends entertained for hours on end. —Justin Farrar

Hear It Now!

Grandaddy, The Sophtware Slump

AOTD_banner560x60.jpg
Modesto, California’s finest released their strongest collection of songs on this 2000 full-length. Their detached, poignant love/hate songs dedicated to technology are wrapped in homespun acoustic guitars and rustic bleeps; great melodies drawing from everyone from the Flaming Lips to E.L.O make this record a wonderful, unique experience. —Rhapsody

Hear It Now!

Coachella Report: Day Two

coachella_custom_header_560x60.pngcoach_ac_560x225.jpg When it comes to adventures in music, you can do a lot worse than Coachella - a kaleidoscope of bands and fans spanning all manner of genres and scenes. Rhapsody sent its rock editor, Justin Farrar, out to the desert to get his take on the whole big mess. Dig his wrap-ups in this space over the next three days.

Saturday at Coachella: before digging into the jams, we need to address two of the festival's most potent demons: heat and traffic. The former is worse today, a blistering 98 degrees. Yowsa. The latter is, however, less intense. Yesterday, cars were backed-up to Jefferson Street, which isn't anywhere near the festival grounds, in all honesty. If I were a Coachella veteran, then I'd tell every newbie seeking my highly prized wisdom to utilize one of the many shuttle services. Or even better: rent a bicycle. Then again, there is one upside to driving, and that's getting to park in the outer lots. From there, the path to the grounds leads attendees through the all too colorful car-camping grounds.

For the anthropologist in all of us, these campsites -- the totality of which can rightly be called a modern day Bartertown for 24-hour party people -- contain a motley assortment of sub-cultural tribes that offer quality observation along the way: beefcakes with leathery pecs boozing and whooping at the scantily clad pop tarts passing by, indie kids dressed as neon Native Americans knocking back Jell-O shots, classic Deadheads just chillin', punks standing around looking bored and Burning Man types flying pirate flags while maintaining snazzy encampments laced in all manner of disco lighting. The car-camping grounds are also home to its own bundle of food stands and oddball activities, including a makeshift roller-derby rink, what looks like a space designed for bicycle jousting and a tiny stage for impromptu jam sessions.

Rhapsody's Album Guides

Monthly Archives

Categories

Portions of album content provided by All Music Guide © 2011 All Media Guide, LLC ® 1999-2011 Rhapsody International Inc.
Rhapsody is a trademark of Rhapsody International Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.