LISTEN CLOSELY, WORLD (because I guested on a podcast)
My friend and journalist Chris Bosman kindly asked me to join him, along with Billboard‘s Maria Sherman, on the Aim To Misbehave podcast this past week to chat about love, anti-love, and break-up songs. Check it out here! (Note: there’s no doubt I sounded like an asshole, so apologies all around.)
Concert Review: DOOMTREE at Gramercy Theater
Last night, bombastic hip-hop collective DOOMTREE took over the Gramercy Theater. I was lucky enough to be there for the Village Voice, and filed a live report with their music blog Sound of the City. Check it out here!
…credit the high-energy dedication of Doomtree’s members for keeping that worry at bay. They never tired, but only got stronger throughout the performance. Had they not been so interactive with the audience, this may not have worked — but the joy of five emcees on stage who are bouncing around like crazy people is that it makes bouncing around like a crazy person the sane thing to do.
Interview: Tennis’s Alaina Moore on the New Album, Working With Her Husband, and the Backlash to the Band
I spoke with Alaina Moore, the vocalist of the much-buzzed about band Tennis for New York Magazine’s entertainment blog, Vulture. Somebody told me that I look like a less-scared version of her husband (above), which might explain why we had such a candid conversation.
It’s weird to hear somebody else romanticize your own life experience. We never really looked at it that way. Coming from the complete reality of it — with all of the mistakes and hardships and not pretty things about it — it was very weird to have distilled into this mythical thing. And then our seemingly mythical origin story started to annoy people, and the weird thing is we’d be like, “Well, it’s annoying to us too!”
Read it all here!
Interview: Sharon Van Etten on her new album “Tramp”
From New York Magazine‘s entertainment blog, Vulture.
I think I’m allowing myself to show more than one emotion now, where usually my stream of conscious was always sad.
Slideshow Production: 2012 Golden Globes Red Carpet Looks
Recently, I started working as an online editorial intern for New York Magazine. One of my first big projects was to produce slideshow galleries of various happenings during the 2012 Golden Globes for Vulture, their fantastic pop-culture and entertainment blog. Check it out right here!
It’s Golden Globes night and Vulture is closely studying the red carpet and bringing you photos of all the looks and styles of people who, let’s face it, are just more beautiful than the rest of us. (If you are actually more beautiful than most of the Globe attendees, we apologize for the presumption. Congratulations, lookers!) We’ll be constantly updating this gallery throughout the night as more photos come in, and be sure to check out The Fug Girls’ live red carpet blog for their blunt but fair (and hilarious) commentary on all of these outfits. And don’t forget to stay on Vulture when the last gown has cleared the runway, as we’ll be live blogging the ceremony here and tweeting our commentary.
Album Review: Sigur Ros, ‘INNI’
From Prefixmag:
When you first hear Sigur Ros, it feels like a band that must be heard live. Led by the eccentric/slightly crazy/David Bowie-esque frontman Jonsi, the group explores new territories in the most honest and genuine way. Not only are the lyrics comprised of haunting Icelandic chants, but the music itself isn’t what one might call “traditional,” as it’s a blend of guitar, xylophones, piccolos and pianos. Sigur Ros relies completely on atmospheric feeling in its songwriting, with much of the emphasis placed on grand, ambient buildups that eventually explode into what can only be called a sound-gasm. With INNI, a double LP live album (plus a DVD shot by Vincent Morisset), the band has again captured its weird cocktail blend of a sound live on a record — and it’s a damn good record.
Album Review: James Blake, ‘Enough Thunder’
From Prefixmag:
On his latest, Enough Thunder, this happens… sometimes. The six-song EP has a short tracklist but at times feels like an eternity. Sounds are dragged on and on and we’re just not quite sure what Blake is trying to do. On “Fall Creek Boys Choir,” the single released a couple months back that features the vocals of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Blake creates a blissful, pulsing track full of Vernon’s dramatically haunting falsetto; yet after awhile, the song just levels out. We’re building towards something, and something, and something – but it’s never paid off. Rather than hold our attention, the repetition becomes boring. The same goes for the opening track, “Once We All Agree.” It’s only four and a half minutes long, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. And within that lies the biggest problem with the EP. The emptiness that felt so purposeful on his debut LP now feels elongated and forced.
Album Review: Deer Tick, ‘Divine Providence’
From Prefixmag:
With the group’s latest venture, Divine Providence, it’s as if the band members are giving one collective middle finger to anybody who has tried to define their sound over their career. From the album’s launch point, a coke-fueled anthem called “The Bump,” McCauley’s growl sets the tone: “We’re full grown men / but we act like kids,” he proclaims over Replacements-esque guitars and drum stomps. Deer Tick doesn’t care what anybody wants it to be. Deer Tick just wants to have fun and play music as loud it possible can.
Tom Morello at Occupy Wall Street: ‘Take It Easy, but Take It’
From Rolling Stone:
Tom Morello paused for a moment as he tuned his guitar in front of the Occupy Wall Street masses this morning at New York’s Liberty Plaza. “This is crazy out here,” he said, smiling. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist went on to perform a four-song set for hundreds of onlookers, including a poignant, protester-fueled rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”
Published on Rolling Stone:
Then it was Kweli’s turn – and he delivered. He had one major message: It’s time for us to focus. In his first rhyme, a freshly written piece called “Distraction,” he criticized our current culture’s priorities: “Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion,” he rapped. “Everything else is a distraction.” But once he finished, at the request of the crowd, he popped right back up – this time, with a poignant rendition of Blackstar’s “Thieves in the Night.” By the end of the a cappella cut the protestors had joined in, repeating the refrain together: “Hidin’ like thieves in the night from life / Illusions of oasis makin’ you look twice.”
