NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO BY M. EMANUEL The Breakdown hates to say it told you so, but in the spirit of the oft-outspoken Mr. Kanye West, we’re going to boast a bit. Go ahead and raise your champagne flutes, because we called it. West’s third release, Graduation, in stores today, is all that we said it would be — a Breakdown-certified instant classic that will hopefully infuse some much-needed jolt of reality and innovation into the stale monotony of the current rap game. Gone are the skits and many of the blatant attempts at humor that messed with the […]
HEAR YE: Animal Collective Strawberry Jam
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO * PET SOUNDZ: Animal Collective Waves The Freak Flag BY JONATHAN VALANIA Back in college — which was longer ago than I care to admit, so let’s just say some time after the Earth cooled but before the Internet — I lived in an old Victorian house that the college owned and subdivided into separate apartments. It was a gathering house for all the freaks and geeks who didn’t quite blend in with the frat-boy-cheerleader-chug-a-lug-date-rape ethos of the main campus. Across the hall my neighbors had set up a de facto commune of 24/7 hacky-sack […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
PLEASE DON’T FEED: Panda Bear, First Unitarian Church, June 25th BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER The great advantage of our shiny white iPod-abetted Information Age, where the far-flung chaos of recorded music has been organized and arranged into the orderly feng sui of alphabetized and easily-accessed mp3s, is that innovative music-makers like Panda Bear can connect the dots and create unexpected and stunning constellations of sound that cross the once un-breach-able barriers or time, space and genre. I can think of no better explanation, barring something being in the water, for the way that Panda Bear’s Person Pitch combines […]
REHAB: Open Letter To Amy Winehouse
DEAR AMY Amazing performance at the Mercury Prize show this past week, girl. You looked great — junky-skinny, but beautiful in your way, and hey, NOT covered in blood and scratches for a change. And yo, it was nice to see you in something other than those nizzasty jeans and ballet slippers. Your voice had me sobbing (or maybe it’s that song), and you looked genuinely happy to be doing something positive after the rough few weeks you’ve had. Congratulations. You proved it’s possible to be a functioning addict. Now go to rehab, and think about how much more amazing […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
YOU’RE LIVING ALL OVER ME: Dinosaur Jr., Trocadero, Last Night [SLIDESHOW] BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Perhaps the first sign you are ‘getting on’ is the startling realization that, despite your heretofore vehement protestations to the contrary, you are quite simply not immune to nostalgia. While the nostalgia of preceding generations may have been sepia-toned, Rockwellian tableaus or the Brylcreem’d cheeseburgers in paradise of American Graffiti, these days nostalgia looks like a long-haired dude in a ski cap and a droopy metal tee worn semi-ironically, a la Seattle 1991. Such is the vibe of Dinosaur Jr.’s comeback album and […]
FINAL CURTAIN: Pavarotti Dead At 71
SO SET ‘EM UP, JOE: “Sinatra & Pavarotti” By Al Hirschfield NEW YORK TIMES: Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era, died early this morning at his home in Modena, in northern Italy. He was 71. “The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life,” said an e-mail statement that his manager sent to The Associated Press. MORE
DR. DOG BLIND MELON: No Rain
Little Miss Sunshine owes The Bee Girl a little cred and maybe some bank, and this song is much better than you remember. In fact, it’s quite splendid, really.
THE EARLY WORD: Onward Hessian Soldiers
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HEAR YE: Beck “Timebomb”
NEW SINGLE * NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO
HEAR YE: Kanye West Graduation
NOW PLAYING: ON PHAWKER RADIO RELATED: Clash Of The Civilizations
EXPLAINER: How To Use Phawker Radio
The beauty of this modern world is that you no longer have to be just a newspaper or just a TV channel or just a radio station. You can be all three! For the audio part of our hat trick, we will now pull a radio station out of our asses! Don’t worry, we washed it off. It’s located UPPER LEFT. Yeah, there…where it says PHAWKER RADIO. Just click on the icon that looks like a little antenna with the radio waves beaming out of it (innit that just cutest thing?)…go on, we’ll wait…YOU DID IT! We are so proud […]
HEAR YE: M.I.A.’s Kala
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO * SARA SHERR’S INSTA-REVIEW
HEAR YE: Common Finding Forever
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO * M. EMANUEL ON THE COMMON MAN