ALBUM OF THE YEAR ARCADE FIRE The Suburbs In a more accurate world, if you looked up anthemic in the dictionary, you would invariably find a picture of the Arcade Fire. Rousing, heartfelt, and everyone-can-sing-along have been, heretofore, the hallmarks of the Montreal band’s recorded output and on The Suburbs, they continue passionately pounding out sweeping, densely layered, stadium-shaking soundtracks for people who have long since made peace with the fact that sooner or later the world will break your heart. If nothing else, Arcade Fire proved that the profound sense of loss – of innocence, of control, of loved […]

We have a pair of tix to give away for Ariel Pink and Os Mutantes at the Troc on Friday. First reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the phrase “Bat Macumba” in the subject line wins. Please include a cellphone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed! ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: Os Mutantes: The year is high in the mid-’60s. The place: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a country chafing under a brutal dictatorship. The setting: a swingin’ ’60s nightclub au-go-go straight out of Austin Powers. Lights flash and the music throbs as the camera zooms in and out to the […]

Roger Waters’ THE WALL, Wells Fargo Center, Last Night by SCOTT COLAN BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER Thirty years after its release, The Wall still looms large on the cultural horizon, a forbidding totem marking the zenith of rock’s commercial and artistic ascendancy: never before (and probably never again) would a double album of such dark and potent ideas — the brutal profiteering of war, the magnetic allure of suicide, emotional fascism of celebrity — become a mega-selling pop music blockbuster. That it happened once still beggars belief, and yet the album has gone on to sell 11.5 million […]

ROCK SNOB ENCYCLOPEDIA: ERICKSON, ROKY: ’60s psych/garage-rock pioneer, demon-crazed ’70s solo artist, acid casualty, drug-war martyr, patron saint of alt-rock’s fringe dwellers. In 1968, Erickson, then singer for Texas’ psychedelic avatars the 13th Floor Elevators, was busted for possession of a small quantity of marijuana and offered a choice: 10 years in prison or a stretch at Rusk State Psychiatric Hospital. He opted for the padded cell. Already half-fried from Herculean doses of psychedelics, Erickson was subjected to a cruel regimen of “experimental” drugs and electro-shock therapy and was released three years later a diagnosed schizophrenic. Telegraphing the horror within, […]

Pink Floyd the Wall by NOT a FIRE exit Roger Waters’s performance of The Wall kicks off a three night stand at The Wells Fargo Center tonight, with repeat performances on Tuesday and Thursday. Tickets are available for all three nights. INQUIRER: One show at the [Spectrum], which is slated for destruction, sticks out in Waters’ mind. As a result, he says, the song “Comfortably Numb” “resides in the Spectrum.” “I was getting ready to do a gig there, and I had some stomach bug. Terrible, terrible stomach cramps. We had a doctor come into the hotel and say, ‘Well, […]

BY JONATHAN VALANIA Garage-punk savant, drone-rock wizard, acid-dazed psychonaut, human ouija board, holy fool of the Internet — Brother JT is a man of many hats. He’s been a puppet, a poet, a pirate, a pawn and king. He’s been up and down and over and out — and he still really likes the LSD thing. He’s come to tell us all that the emperor has no clothes, the sky is falling, God is great, we’re already dead, and yet despite all that life is beautiful. He’s also leading the protest movement against the war going on in this country […]