Despite a love for fish and chips and a nostalgic fondness for my punk and goth phases, I don’t claim to know much more than a little about the way class systems work in the United Kingdom. What I do understand is that it’s something that pervades the culture there, maybe a bit like race [...]
Kraftwerk – Computer World
5 July 2012 by Leave a Comment
Over a century ago, authors like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne probed the unknown worlds of travel through time and space, respectively. The appeal of their stories was largely due to how real and credible they were in spite of how fantastic they seemed — they scared and exhilarated those who read them because all [...]
Chrome – Half Machine Lip Moves
2 April 2012 by Leave a Comment
What does your television do when you’re not watching? Chrome’s 1979 LP Half Machine Lip Moves is a record from a band that tries to harness the hidden waves of buzz and static that could be there when you’re not — because, well, you never know. The cover art is oblique and collage-y pointing directions [...]
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 [...]
This Mortal Coil – It’ll End…
2 January 2012 by Leave a Comment
I was a teenager, stoned and listening to Low in the back of a trust fund baby’s Mercedes. Everything slowed to a crawl, set in place by that band’s mournful hum. I was looking out the window over the darkened hills of Santa Monica when the words came at me, hovering in the air like [...]
Beach House – Devotion
17 October 2011 by Leave a Comment
I have to admit that for the first few months I had this album, I listened to it almost non-stop, front-to-back and held it as a cherished selection of my music library, and that only after years of having it did I realize how bizarre the album art was. Two people, posed in perfect symmetry, [...]
Cold Cave – Love Comes Close
27 June 2011 by Leave a Comment
If you’ve ever been to a dark, and perhaps questionable, club, you’ve no doubt seen this scene. Androgyny embodied, checking his/her eyeliner in the wings of an equally questionable restroom. The artwork in these restrooms is usually like an amplified version of the feel of the venue, as if it functions as the shit-stained, bleeding/beating [...]
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 [...]
Au Revoir Simone – Still Night…
4 January 2011 by 1 Comment
Every living second of the day someone feels an emotion strong enough to be shared via musical means. Every minute of that same day one of those people makes a crappy lovesick record – trite, hormonal, and vicariously embarrassing. Au Revoir Simone’s Still Night, Still Light treads that line very precisely. Using elements that seem dated [...]
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
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The Magnetic Fields - Holiday
Bloodhound Gang – Hooray for…