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SXSW Thursday: Don't Go to the Bathroom
Photos by Trent MaxwellPro tip for this year's SXSW: don't go to the bathroom. Chance the Rapper's abruptly cancelled set on Tuesday night at Red 7 Patio, shut down by the Austin Fire Department due to...
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SXSW Thursday: Ava Luna, Perfume Genius, Future Islands
photos by Colin Kerrigan"I hope you brought tissues," at least five different people said to me when I told them I was on my way to see Perfume Genius at St. David's Sanctuary last night. Which,...
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SXSW Friday: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the Juan MacLean, Tomas Barfod
Photos by Trent MaxwellIf you need practice in the art of dancing with yourself, SXSW is a good place to bone up. If you steer clear of the big-box spectacle acts and high-profile showcases, attending...
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SXSW Friday: Damon Albarn, De La Soul, Young Thug
photos by Colin KerriganAt SXSW, there are often second—and third and fourth and ninth—chances to catch artists you might have missed earlier in the week. On Thursday, I wrote about skipping out on...
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SXSW Saturday: Julian Casablancas, Rick Ross, SZA
Photos by Trent MaxwellThe best thing about Fader Fort—hey, wait, come back—anyway, the best thing about Fader Fort is the opportunity to see a ton of stylistically incongruous bands in one day, given...
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Shake Appeal: The Spits, Gluebag, Peach Kelli Pop, Dinos Boys, Psychic Baos
Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This time, Evan Minsker shares reissues from the Spits and Gluebag, a demos/rarities collection from Peach Kelli Pop,...
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Based Don't Lie: Virtual Lil B Steps to Kevin Durant
Last weekend, the Kevin Durant-Lil B feud re-erupted last weekend with the release of “Fuck KD”, which flips a DJ Khaled melody into the catchiest song you’ll ever hear about why the second best...
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Music Criticism Is Not "Lifestyle Reporting": A Response
Yesterday, an interesting article with the headline “Music Criticism Has Degenerated Into Lifestyle Reporting” appeared on the Daily Beast. When I say “interesting” I mean inflammatory, frustrating,...
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Hell Awaits: Extreme and Underground Metal From Foreseen, Warpstone, Satan's...
Hell Awaits is a column by Kim Kelly and Andy O'Connor that shines a light on extreme and underground metal. This week, Andy rounds up new (and not-so-new) releases from French "occult dark metal" band...
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Invisible Hits: When Eno Met Television
Welcome to Invisible Hits, a column in which Tyler Wilcox scours the internet for the best (and strangest) bootlegs. Tyler also blogs at Doom & Gloom From the Tomb. This time, he digs up...
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Shake Appeal: Dead Ghosts, Human Eye, WAND, Bare Wires, Burnt Ones
Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This time, Evan Minsker shares a rarities comp from Dead Ghosts, the debut single from WAND, a greatest hits collection...
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The Race Is On: Merge Records at 25
photos by Caitlin E. CurranThe sky was still pitch-black on Saturday morning—6:45 a.m., 51 degrees—when a school bus rumbled into a nearly empty parking lot near the baseball fields at East Chapel Hill...
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Five Amazing Kate Bush Performances
For a certain sort of person, the most compelling reason to watch 2012’s London Olympics was the rumor that Kate Bush would perform at the closing ceremony. Given that Bush hadn’t toured for over three...
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On St. Vincent, EMA, and Being a Woman on the Internet
Kate Losse, a writer and former Facebook employee, recently published an essay about gender and “surveillance culture.”“The outrage over NSA surveillance,” she wrote, “has occurred and received massive...
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Galcher Lustwerk, Blowing Up the Workshop, and the Art of the Mixtape
The mixtape is having a renaissance: On any given day, I can do a coffee-break social media scroll and find half a dozen different co-signs to choose from. But in the last year, few have shined quite...
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Hell Awaits: Extreme and Underground Metal from Thou, Old Wainds, Krigsgrav,...
Hell Awaits is a column by Kim Kelly and Andy O'Connor that shines a light on extreme and underground metal. This week, Kim dives into a slew of new black metal releases from Old Wainds, Krigsgrav,...
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Matt and Tom Berninger on the National's Documentary Mistaken for Strangers
Over at The Dissolve today, David Ehrlich interviews National frontman Matt Berninger and his filmmaker brother Tom about their recently released documentary Mistaken for Strangers. (Read Jillian...
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Down Is Up 18: Riot Grrrls Prank GG Allin
Down Is Up discusses music that falls slightly under the radar of our usual coverage: demos and self-releases, as well as output from small or overlooked labels and communities. This time, Jenn Pelly...
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Shake Appeal: Sonic Chicken 4, Danko Jones, Audacity, Line Traps, Geyser
Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. This time, Evan Minsker shares the long-awaited new album from Sonic Chicken 4, a compilation of early recordings by...
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Is There Anything Left to Say About Kurt Cobain's Legacy?
Photo by Bruce PavittApril 8, 1994 was supposed to be just another day at the office for Charles R. Cross, the editor-in-chief of Seattle alt-weekly The Rocket. “I can still remember my finger pressing...
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