Pulp at Radio City, with Jeffrey Lewis, 4.11.12
Jeffrey Lewis was the man, opening the evening at 8pm sharp with his bad ass, stickered acoustic guitar and face hidden from the stage lights under a baseball cap. I’m glad the powers-that-be at Radio City were cool with screening his comic book stills, since his final song, “Creeping Brain”, just wouldn’t be the same
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SXSW 2012: $10 Diary Dreams (Thursday and Friday)
I went to SXSW with the same amount of money I always have: none. Thanks to some fancy footwork and swell generosity, I was able to make the trip there happen (thanks Madeline and Dmitri!). Thereafter, I was given a brief word of wisdom: when the sun is out, all is free; when the sun is down, everything costs.
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The Futuristic Psychedelia and Research Methods of Kasabian
This week, I had a chance to chat with Kasabian’s always-guitarist, sometimes-vocalist, songwriter Sergio Pizzorno. The chatty, upbeat Brit made for one of the easiest interviews I ever got, connecting all of the dots between my less connected stream of questions (we had to make the best of just a couple of minutes)…
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Christine Owman: Now Hear This
The term “multi-instrumentalist” doesn’t really begin to describe the unconventional, über-talented Swedish singer/songwriter Christine Owman accurately. Owman is a one-woman show-stopper who takes on not merely a few, but almost twelve, instruments on her most recent album, Throwing Knives.
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Sentimentalist Magazine Calls Out Top Twelve Releases of 2011
Why do the year-end lists always seem to come in tidy sums of ten, twenty-five, fifty, or a hundred? I would have gone and given you a baker’s dozen but I stopped myself at twelve, for fear of being overbearing. You know how overarching these lists can be.
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Battle to the Top 5 Albums of 2011, Sentimentalist Mag Style
2010 was so much better,” I said throughout 2011, despite posting Salem’s “King Night” on New Years Eve to slam the door on that horrible chapter. I started dead-set on only doing a top five for a year where I barely spun anything released more than twice, but then I looked through my downloads and saw a lot of heavy-hitters…
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Monogold: Now Hear This
Brooklyn’s Monogold brought their lush, ambient sound onto the scene in 2008 with their debut EP, We Animals, followed by a CMJ showcase, heralded as “one to see” by many. This led to immediate attention from the likes of Spin, who included their song “Feel Animal” among their year’s top ten. Not too shabby for a band just starting out.
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What Would WIM Do? Aussie Rockers Dare to Dream
WIM took New York City by storm at CMJ 2011, tearing into local venues like a blizzard of glam-folk glitter and virtuoso pop force and defying any notion of simple genre categorization. The Sydney-based band, whose debut release is out on esteemed Aussie label Modular Recordings just this week…
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Mandy Coon, Billy Reid, Antonio Azzuolo, Daryl K and Preen at NY Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012
James Murphy was one of the first working Mandy Coon’s crowd as they were seated, appearing as a proud, nervous dad-to-be while the rest of us were zenning out to his intro music, which sounded like an undulating, futuristic heartbeat, building to its apex just as the show started.
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The Kooks: The Future Sounds Like Sunshine
It’s been a few years since Luke Pritchard had taken up temporary residence in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for a break after the Kooks’ heavy touring in support of their debut album Inside In/Inside Out and I’d bump into him at local spots like Trash Bar. He’s now settled back in the UK, but earlier this summer, the Kooks returned to the States to play a few club venue shows and to shoot a new video in Los Angeles. I meet up with Luke in a penthouse at NYC’s Chelsea Hotel…
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