Employing the same Buckeye ingenuity that keeps the Goodyear blimp afloat, Robert Pollard can polish a turd with Budweiser until it shines with 24-carat radiance, transmuting a tossed-off, six-pack idea into a classic rock artifact or at the very least a beguiling no-fi curio. As captain of the drunken boat that is Guided By Voices, Pollard built a cottage industry by churning out cheap, miniature melodic masterpieces with all the fidelity of a ham radio broadcast. He does it with volume — by which I mean quantity not loudness. As such, the discography remains daunting if only for its […]
REGINA SPEKTOR: Small Bill$
From Remember Us To Life, out now on Sire/Warner Bros. Records. “The ‘Small Bill$’ video takes place in a magical world of bears, nesting dolls and mermaids,” explains Spektor. “We had fun green screen filming and exploring hand drawn animation, hair and make up transformations. Steven Mertens (who happens to be an art friend all the way back from college days at SUNY Purchase, and played bass in the Moldy Peaches along with my husband Jack Dishel) directed it in LA. Hope you have fun watching it!” The new LP marks Spektor’s first outing since 2012’s What We Saw From The Cheap Seats, which debuted […]
WORTH REPEATING: A Conspiracy Of Dunces
Illustration by Javier Jaén. Trump: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg, via Getty Images via New York Times NEW YORK TIMES: Context matters here: The ’90s was the decade of Oliver Stone’s “J.F.K.,” “The X-Files” and late-night Roswell documentaries — the decade in which conspiracism, safely removed from the exigencies of the Cold War and domestic upheaval, became a form of kitschy entertainment. It was an antipolitics well suited to a cultural era that favored irony and disillusionment and put quotation marks around words like “believe.” Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, “Slacker,” one of Generation X’s founding documents, has a very funny scene in which […]
INCOMING: Party Like It’s 1995
EDO? You had to be there — now you can, again! Come early for Jaffna and/or Renaissance Bitch, featuring our dear old friend The Terror Dentist. Deets HERE.
FRESH AIR: As a young musician coming up in the early 1970s, Bruce Springsteen played in the bars of Asbury Park, N.J., a hardscrabble urban beach town full of colorful characters. The town fired his imagination and inspired him musically, but still he found himself longing for more. Springsteen tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that he knew that if he was ever going to make his mark on the larger world, it would be through his words. “I looked at myself and I just said, ‘Well, you know, I can sing but I’m not the greatest singer in the […]
PIXIES: Um Chagga Lagga
Directed by Black Francis. From the new album Head Carrier. PREVIOUSLY: How To Grow Up To Be A Debaser: An Intensely Personal Q&A With The Pixies’ Black Francis
FEAR & LOATHING IN PENNSYLTUCKY: A Savage Journey Into The Heart Of The American Nightmare
WASHINGTON POST: In a living room in western Pennsylvania, the Republican National Convention was on TV, and Melanie Austin was getting impatient. “Who’s that guy?” she said, watching some billionaire talk about prosperity and tolerance. “Prosperity and tolerance? Forget that sh–.” She lit a cigarette. Her boyfriend, Kevin Lisovich, was next to her on the couch, drifting to sleep, a pillow over his head. On the ottoman was her cellphone, her notes on the speakers so far — “LOCK HER UP!!” she had written — and the anti-anxiety pills she kept in a silver vial on her keychain. She was […]
BOOKS: The Last American Ghandi Still Standing
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post originally published on October 4th, 2016. ESQUIRE: Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) is a Civil Rights icon and a Mt. Rushmore-worthy American hero. Time and again at the dawn of the 1960s, Lewis marched fearlessly into the maws of the Jim Crow South, through angry racist mobs and truncheon-wielding state troopers, armed with nothing more than the courage of the righteous and the unconditional love in his heart, and shed his own blood to shame this country into living up to its founding promise that “all men were created equal.” This remains a work in progress. At […]
JOHN OLIVER: Law And Order Begins At Home
After the thousands of police killings since 2005, only 77 resulted in officers being charged with murder or manslaughter, and only 26 officers have been convicted in a court of law.
WORTH REPEATING: Can’t Happen Here?
NEW YORK TIMES: Mr. Ullrich offers a fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance, chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform a country — and, in Hitler’s case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the world. Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a “Munich rabble-rouser” — regarded by many as a self-obsessed “clown” with a strangely “scattershot, impulsive style” — into “the lord and master of the German Reich.” • Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist […]
Win Tix To See James Blake @ The Electric Factory
Prismatic Brit electro-soul cipher manboy James Blake is blowing our frickin’ minds. What’s that you say? You never heard of James Blake? Let’s ask Wikipedia: James Blake Litherland (born 26 September 1988),[1] known as James Blake, is a British singer, songwriter, musician and producer from London. He first received recognition in 2010 for a trio of dubstep-influenced EPs, and the following year his self-titled debut album was released in the United Kingdom[2] to critical praise. His second studio album Overgrown was released in 2013 and was awarded the Mercury Prize.[3] His third studio album The Colour in Anything was […]
ARTSY: Being David Lynch
Playing Lynch: Official trailer to Psychogenic Fugue from Squarespace on Vimeo. Psychogenic Fugue is the full length Director’s Cut film from the project “Playing Lynch”, a collaborative meditation on the work of David Lynch. Hosted by Squarespace, and directed by Sandro, this film features seven re-creations of some of Lynch’s most iconic characters, as performed by John Malkovich, and featuring the music of David Lynch, as performed by artists like The Flaming Lips and Angelo Badalamenti. The film was lovingly created for the benefit of the David Lynch Foundation. RELATED: “It’s Like You’ve Gone Through a Black Hole:” Five Artists […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Donald Trump has refused to release his income tax returns. This has left unanswered questions about his business practices and possible conflicts of interest between what’s best for his international businesses and what’s best for our country. My guest, Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold, has found an alternate window into some of Trump’s finances. Since January, Fahrenthold has been looking into Trump’s charitable giving. His reporting has raised questions about ways in which the Trump Foundation may have violated the law. He’s found that Trump hasn’t always followed through on donations he’s committed to, and some charitable […]