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(02/07/08 5:00am)
Here are some words I'm not going to use in the following article: day-glo, nerd, neon, hallucinatory, spastic, spazz, demented, frenzy, wacky, ebullient, man-child, shenanigans, awesome. Since his anonymously jolly visage graced Street last January, Dan Deacon has become an experimental dance pop superhero - and an alt-weekly adjective jockey's greatest weakness. Here's the formula to meet your deadline: 1. Mention Dan's hair loss and weight problem. 2. State that words can't describe a live Dan Deacon show. 3. Describe a live Dan Deacon show. 4. Look up "bonkers" in a thesaurus and go nuts.
(09/27/07 4:00am)
As an angst-addled adolescent, my favorite Nirvana song was "Oh, Me" from the MTV Unplugged record. When I eventually replaced cassette with CD, I discovered in the liner notes that "Oh, Me" and two other tracks were in fact Meat Puppets covers. They were all on Meat Puppets II, so I called some record stores and found a copy.
(02/22/07 5:00am)
When they took the stage at Johnny Brenda's last Friday - their first ever sold-out show - the five men of Dr. Dog were appropriately West Philly in appearance. Plaid flannel shirts: 60%. Fur-lined hunter's caps: 40%. Beards: 80%. Sideburns: 100%.
(01/25/07 5:00am)
There's a lot of messed up stuff in the world. But there's Big Gulps and shit, so just chill the fuck out."
(11/30/06 5:00am)
Mp3 blogs will become your life. As you read these words, thousands of self-anointed music experts in thick plastic glasses and headphones are furiously posting, downloading, and analyzing fresh tracks from The Knife and Of Montreal, alongside deep cuts from dusty LPs of their parents' generation. Since 2003, mp3 blogs, which post free tracks to download alongside criticism and news, have guided a steadily growing audience through the dense wilderness of aural culture.
(11/16/06 5:00am)
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead have had an extreme career arc. Their 2002 major label debut Source Tags & Codes was an era-defining work of anthemic indie rock - one of those precious high school records I could blast for weeks on end in my '89 Mazda 323, driving from one South Jersey diner to another, getting home late at night and highly caffeinated, reading LiveJournals until 4 a.m. and drifting off to sleep with synesthetic visions of guitar riffs crashing in my head.
(10/05/06 4:00am)
Beck is a man known for wearing many hats at once. He has built his career upon shapeshifting, evading classification, seamlessly blending the unlikely with the illogical. So in this spirit of contradiction, it almost makes sense that his new album, The Information, is simultaneously very good and very underwhelming.
(09/28/06 4:00am)
Smile... It Confuses People is the kind of record that really makes you wonder. Whatever happened to the idyllic, innocent rebellion of our parents' generation? How can I duplicate Sandi Thom's flouncy, whimsical fashion sense? Who thought it was a good idea to name an album after a Hot Topic novelty pin? Oh, and how did this blantantly unimaginitive piece of candy-coated schlock manage to achieve such huge chart success in the U.K.?
Well, there's a simple answer for that last one: skillful engineering of Internet hype. Last winter, Thom webcasted a concert every day for three weeks from the basement of her London flat. With the help of some serious behind-the-scenes marketing dough, she managed to attract hundreds of thousands of viewers while still looking poor, propelling herself to irrational heights of fame, cred and coverage in the charmed mainstream media. This viral snowball effect reached its peak in June, when her single "I Wish I was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)" overtook Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" to become the number one single in Great Britain.
With her sassy blend of generic folk-pop, whiny nostalgia ("I was born too late to a world that doesn't care/Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair") and transparent opportunism, Sandi Thom is sure to continue producing bland and irrelevant albums for many years to come.