Wolf Parade: Expo 86
Mark Gluth06.29.10
5 years ago Wolf Parade released Apologies to the Queen Mary to wide acclaim and instant classic status. It was an album that was as good as the hype and, more importantly, resonates as well to this day. They’ve since released a second album, and co-front men Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug have also had careers with their own side projects. Today their third album, Expo 86, emerges to a vastly changed musical landscape. Is a world full of ever changing micro genres and scenes within scenes ready to care again about something as old fashioned as Indie Rock?
Film: Trash Humpers
Mark Gluth06.24.10
A sexual, incantatory, violent nightmare. Four devils wander through a largely deserted rural landscape and its interiors destroying objects, tap…
Burn This Book: an interview with author Blake Butler
Laura Carter06.21.10
Could have put this one up weeks ago, ‘cept ye editor here couldn’t figure out how to blurb it. How to reckon a few lines on a book so poetic, yet lush with traditional narrative (if your idea of tradition spans from Samuel Beckett to Cormac McCarthy to Ben Marcus, taking a Lovecraft/Lynchian detour through a world familiar, close, suburban and simultaneously apocalyptically hellish… same difference?), as if all the tragedies you hear on the news distantly, the floods, the fires, the quakes were taking place on your own trimmed yard, or erupting from your esophagus and/or mind. So took weeks off to ponder it, and being summertime, our heads got swollen like a certain political character toward the end of said book to be blurbed, Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas. And finally Fanzine said wait, Laura Carter nails it here in her equally challenging and poetic intro; so fuck our blurb. Read her words and Butler’s in this interview. Butler, from Atlanta, is also the editor of HTMLGiant, author of the novella Ever and his next novel There Is No Year will be out on Harper Perrenial next year. -CM
Showtime’s Encore
Adam Underhill06.19.10
Now that the NBA Finals are finished, with the Lakers taking their fourth title of the decade, it’s already time to look ahead to next year. What makes a team great this season creates an outline for the other 29 teams looking to capture the same magic, or just make the playoffs. Adam Underhill recaps what the Lakers did right in the Finals and spells out what the league’s other superstar players need to do to step up and do the same. Does what makes great players in the ’70s and ’80s still apply? Is it possible for another dynasty? Of course. Is it probable? Well, that’s another story for the likes of Lebron James, poised to become the league’s next heir to the crown.
Bret Easton Ellis in Atlanta tonight Fri. 6/18/10
Casey McKinney06.18.10
from Matt’s Listing: The famed author of American Psycho will be reading from his forthcoming book Imperial Bedrooms. Many cheer this…
Music: Ariel Pink – Before Today:
The Fanzine06.11.10
There’s a point on Before Today, the new album by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti (the 1:45 minute mark of ‘Beverly Kills’ to be exact),…
How Do You Say ‘Three and Done’ in Afrikaans?: The Quadrennial and Funtastic Fanzine World Cup Preview
Pete Hausler06.11.10
In this highly anticipated preview of the highly anticipated quadrennial event, Pete Hausler breaks down the group stages before the inevitable drunken, adrenaline-overdose frenzy that inevitably acompanies such matches. Here, in the safety of the Internet, you won’t need those Stab Vests in team-colors you can get at Protektorvest to get our insight and predictions. So grab a couple cold pints and read on. [Edit: Protektorvest isn’t selling those team-colored Stab Vests anymore, so you’ll have to shell out some more cash ($240) for an all-black kevlar one.]
The Life You Save May Be Bill’s: An Interview with Tom Bissell
Matthew Simmons06.06.10
A phenomenally talented writer with a strong sense of logic and history, Tom Bissell has often explored war and its moral complexities in his writing, including as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last few years he has also become the veteran of "eight- or nine-hundred digital wars." As he confessed in a recent excerpt from his book Extra Lives in the UK Observer, Bissell spent three years high on cocaine and playing video games while his formerly prolific writing ground to a halt. Videogames have recently become not only his obsession but his subject. Along with his recent book he has become The New Republic‘s resident video game critic, a first for the magazine. Following the firestorm surrounding Roger Ebert’s comments about why video games are not art, Bissell and Simmons hazard the opposite opinion and discuss the conflict between interactivity and narrative, as well as their possibilities.
Wigleaf’s Top 50 Stories: Josh Cohen’s Identical City
Ben Bush06.05.10
Joshua Cohen’s short story for Fanzine "Identical City" was selected by Brian Evenson for Wigleaf’s annual list of the Top 50 Very…
Return of the Perm
Ben Bush05.31.10
Has every hairstyle been exhausted? The iterations of the Mohawk? The social signifier of the Jennifer Anniston dyed/bleached and layered cut? The…
