FANZINE

First Aid Kit: The Lion’s Roar

01.23.12

First Aid Kit’s sophomore LP, The Lion’s Roar, is music for what ails you. Hailing from Stockholm, sisters Johanna and Klara Soderberg deliver some of the most compelling Americana this side of––well, shit––Wichita.

Los Campesinos! Hello Sadness

11.14.11

Faux-Welsh rockers Los Campesinos! release their third album, Hello Sadness, and Christina Lee gives her read of a geography peppered with the gouges and striations and lacunae of their maturing consciousness. And if you want to read more, try their quarterly fanzine(!) Heat Rash.

Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me from Continuum’s 33 1/3 Series

06.13.11

In this excerpt from the latest in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, Nick Attfield reaches for the truth of Dinosaur Jr.’s 1987 album You’re Living All Over Me only to learn how lyrical ambiguity can put a live rabbit in a man’s mouth. Attfield is usually found at Oxford specializing in the cultural and political contexts of 19th and 20th century German and Austrian music. You can also read the opening chapter of Attfield’s book on the 33 1/3 blog.

DIY Guitar Amps—Would Vincent Approve?

03.23.11

DIY Guitar Amps—Would VG Approve?

Like Vincent Gallo, I have few friends. I sometimes wonder why Vincent Gallo and I aren’t…

As We Here: Destroyer, Kaputt (double-LP vinyl issue)

03.04.11

Jeff T. Johnson reviews the double LP release of Destroyer’s Kaputt. More than a recount of Dan Bejar’s usual brilliance & heavy thoughts on a record of smoother than usual vibes – with this special edition, we look inside the songster’s ellipses: "If most lyric sheets disappoint because they banalize the vocals, Kaputt’s sheet is a fair representation—or recollection—of what goes on on the album," Johnson riffs alongside/through Bejar.

Music: Dumbo Gets Mad: ‘Elephants At The Door’ LP

03.03.11

Dumbo Gets Mad is like…like…The Clientele meets Clinic…and I know, comparisons are cheap. But I found out about them because they were…

Everyday Magic: On Julianna Barwick and The Magic Place

02.11.11

At a club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Brian Howe chats over burritos with Julianna Barwick, a singer with a voice of angelic proportions, who can do it all it seems harmonically with one throat, one diaphragm and a loopstation (no band, at least no plans for one yet she says). Having already titillated critics with a pair of albums, her latest, The Magic Place, out February 22 on Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty label, is also reviewed here to high marks.

Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, an excerpt from the 33 1/3 series

10.19.10

It’s hard to summarise the surreal variety of Van Dyke Parks’ career.  He worked as a child actor in a film starring Grace Kelly, arranged the song "Bare Necessities" for Disney’s Jungle Book and perhaps most famously co-wrote and arranged The Beach Boys’ long-shelved, ambitious concept album SMiLE. Along the way, he has collaborated with innumerable musicians, including The Byrds, Frank Black, Joanna Newsom, Laurie Anderson and Bob Dylan. He has also appeared in an episode of Twin Peaks and Robert Altman’s film version of Popeye. His own albums have often tackled unusual, quintessentially American themes, such as Brer Rabbit and Japanese-U.S. relations. It seems likely that wittingly or unwittingly you have encountered Parks somewhere. Richard Henderson delved into his Parks’ first solo album Song Cycle for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series.

Music: Swans: My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To The Sky

09.30.10

Swans said they’d never play old Swans again. So, then, what’s to say about My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To The Sky? besides it’s fucking…

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps): Animal Collective’s Oddsac, John Zorn’s Astronome, and Candian Hipster Comic Opus Ivory Tower

09.28.10

These three DVD releases have their origins with the work of musicians but each one mutates into something hard to define. Christian Williams explains about the canoeing undead, how to masturbate with a pepper mill and Gandhi’s approach to the art of chess.