Guest post by Chris Kareska The album cover for Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti 5 or House Arrest, depicts a warped, mirrored image of a lush mansion covered in the (haunted) graffiti: “HOUSE ARREST”. The liner notes provide the following information: All songs written, performed and recorded by Ariel Pink at 1245 Norton Ave. Los Angeles, [...]
The Magnetic Fields – Holiday
16 January 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Norman Rockwell aesthetic is one that gets exploited constantly — by 90s punk revivalists seeking campy irony, tragically sincere housewives seeking Christmas decorations, and virtually everyone in between. The Magnetic Fields places themselves firmly within that strange crowd with 1994′s Holiday, in which lead songwriter Stephen Merritt and company establish a sound that would [...]
Spacemen 3 – The Perfect…
25 April 2011 by Leave a Comment
If the tides of time leave only one thing that Spacemen 3 are known for, it will be their famously self-reflexive motto: “Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.” And even if the core message of the statement is a bit nihilistic or romanticized, it’s still one of the most beautifully articulated statements [...]
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
2 December 2010 by Leave a Comment
Before Dr. Dre was pushing Dr. Pepper and hawking headphones at Best Buy, before Ice Cube was making movies for tweens, N.W.A. were the most unabashedly angry, violent, sexist, and hedonistic artists on the planet. Their contemporaries Ice T and Public Enemy were proving rap’s legitimacy to the world by making social commentary and provoking [...]
Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
19 November 2010 by 2 Comments
What can be said about Bob Dylan? He’s an artist of incalculable influence. To absorb his music is to understand one of the last remaining strains of 1960s Americana that isn’t tarnished with the muddy waters of faded memory and commercial nostalgia. That said (and I know this is a contestable point) Blonde On Blonde [...]
Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun
6 November 2010 by Leave a Comment
The public loves Queens of the Stone Age; they write simple, straightforward songs with lean guitar hooks; they’re rebels, but not out of control; they’re rockstars, but extremely unpretentious. But what makes them a true critic’s band is their mastery of tone and energy: an unteachable skill to start a song at a certain level [...]
Spiritualized – Ladies and…
22 September 2010 by 1 Comment
I think I’m in love – probably just hungry. That line, which is this site’s namesake, is taken from the third track on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. It signifies the confusion and self-deprecating humor of songwriter Jason Pierce, who doesn’t seem to have the capability to distinguish between simple feelings [...]
Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
My Target Demographic
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