Music
Don't Let The Mirage Fool You
Oasis doesn’t release bad albums. Their work spans a range from good to great, and the band’s immense talent is almost always obvious in their tightly woven, upbeat pop-rock records.
Not The Change We Need
As a white Jewish boy from Boston, I’m an unlikely candidate to review West Coast rapper Murs’s latest release, Murs for President.
Tokyo Experience
Japanese indie rocker Shugo Tokumaru is a virtual unknown in the States. This, however, has not stopped him from creating album after album of endearing, upbeat indie pop-rock (for which he records almost every instrument by himself, at home on his laptop). He has even started to gain a following that includes the likes of Animal Collective and Jens Lekman. The release of Exit can only cause his fanbase to broaden.
The Best Defense Is A Good Offense
If San-X (one of the leading manufacturers of cute Japanese merchandise... think Hello Kitty, et al) sponsored a basketball team, their warm-up anthem would be “Basket Ball Get Your Groove Back” from Deerhoof’s new album, Offend Maggie.
The Defibrillator
Bubba Sparxxx Deliverance 2003 Bubba Sparxxx never gets much respect, and ditties like “Ms. New Booty” didn't help his cause.
Campus Cred: Don't Call Them Old Timers
Street: Would you say your life compares more to The Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane” or Mos Def’s “Sex, Love & Money?” Steve Waye: I’ll go with “Sex, Love & Money.” Because we’re sexy and people love us… and we’re money. Street: How much do drugs or alcohol influence your sounProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 Your shows? Eric Karlan: Alcohol plays an instrumental role in each of our shows because if the audience isn’t plastered, we don’t sound nearly as good. Steve: It’s like spinach for Popeye. Street: At what point in your career do you plan on going to rehab? Steve: I’ve been in and out many times. Ben Miller: On the wagon, off the wagon… Street: If Beethoven were alive what he would say about your music?
.and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Paper Stacks Cash Money
Adversity helps spark creative fires and Paper Trail, the sixth studio album from T.I., is ample evidence of this.
Sly as a Fox
Street: You've been touring for a while. What's your favorite kind of venue to play? Casey Wescott: There are some clubs that are very small, that are set up like sort of a dance.
The Other Side of the Curtain
Fullerton, Calif.'s Cold War Kids have always been eccentric. Their sophomore LP, however, takes bizarre to a whole new level.
Defibrillator
Captain Audio Luxury or Whether it is Better to be Loved than Feared 2000 For every Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal, there's another innovative group that remains so overlooked even Pitchfork won't give their work the recognition it deserves.
Give Me LIBERTY Or Give Me Death (CAB)
The 2008 version of MTV's 2004 "Vote or Die" campaign - the "Ultimate College Bowl" - was unveiled to the masses for the first time on TRL.
The Defibrillator
Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain 1984 Even accounting for that awkward period in which he was only "The Artist Formerly Known As," Prince has the most incredible staying power of any artist of his generation.
Scotland's For Me
Glasgow's post-rock powerhouse Mogwai loves you and is going to blow up your school. They had nothing to prove with this release - 2006's Mr. Beast showed that they were pretty great, even when on autopilot.
Science Experiments
In my ninth grade English class, we spent an entire week examining what ingredients made text "rich." Dense pages, meticulous diction, vivid description, a healthy sprinkling of rhetorical devices and unapologetically engaging arguments were the watchwords of the day.
Dim Lighting
Amidst the sometimes sweeping ambitions of the indie-dance scene, Fujiya & Miyagi seem content sticking with what they do best: creating extremely cool, understated electro-pop unabashedly influenced by a wide range of styles, from the Krautrock of Neu!
Goodbye Kitty
The other day, I was sitting in my freshman seminar on the origins of music. I listened in awe as my professor explained the incredible complexity of the human brain's ability to process sound, the sensitivity of the tiny hairs within our ears and the countless combinations of neuron connections that take place and cause us to perceive waves of compressed air as sound.
The Defibrillator
Neil Young On The Beach 1974 After the critical and commercial successes of After The Gold Rush and Harvest, Young released a tense series of albums now referred to as the "Ditch Trilogy." On The Beach was the first of these albums and Rolling Stone branded it "despairing." The album was rawer than anything Young had released in the '70s.
I Want Jew To Rock
The "smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet" is coming to one of the biggest venues on Penn's campus.
Oh, the places you'll go
First Unitarian Church 2125 Chestnut St., All ages In between songs this summer, a sweaty and shirtless Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver) kept asking the crowd if they were okay.
