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(12/07/10 6:00am)
Sleeping In The Aviary have always had a hard time sitting still.
After forming right here in Madison, some seven years ago, the
then-foursome released two albums of hyper-active jangly punk songs
on Science of Sound records before riding over to Minnesota's Twin
Cities and picking up a fifth member. On their first dispatch from
the Land o' Lakes, Great Vacation, Sleeping In The Aviary
ditch their most screeching punk styles for a more flush album that
reins back their wild catharsis with dapper production and tidy pop
numbers.
(12/02/10 6:00am)
When I was a senior in high school, Girl Talk and Man Man played a
show together at Club 770 in Union South. The pairing seemed
natural at the time. Girl Talk was understood as a manic computer
whiz who let Neutral Milk Hotel count off the time signature for
Juelz Santana to flow over a Steely Dan riff in an avalanche of
three decades that lasted all of 20 seconds before he thought of
something different. It was like riding a roller coaster with a
blindfold on. It was a cacophonous orchestra that didn't sound all
that disparate from the full-throated, Tom Waits-on-amphetamines
garishness of Man Man.
(11/10/10 6:00am)
I remember the first person who introduced me to RJD2. The brass
call-and-response sample off ""Ghostwriter"" trumpeted through my
family room while Kobe Bryant threw a head-fake right, then dusted
an entire defense with a pretty lay-up along the left-hand
baseline.
(11/04/10 6:00am)
If nice guys finish last, then Archie Powell is one gracious loser.
On Skip Work, the debut LP from Archie Powell & The
Exports, the down-on-his-luck songwriter grinds many of the same
small town, every man stones of chest thumping blue collar life
while keeping a cheeky wit.
(11/03/10 6:00am)
When I was in high school, I saw the glam-rock revivalists The
Darkness in concert twice. They were the best. Lead singer and
guitarist Justin Hawkins wore flamboyant outfits, crowdsurfed while
soloing, hit really high falsetto notes and cursed a bunch in a
British accent. It was pure lightning in a bottle and I guzzled it
down whole.
(10/27/10 6:00am)
By now, not many of us remember when Madison Halloween meant
anything other than Freakfest. Before most of us showed up on
campus, a bunch of out-of-towners made a habit of getting totally
hammlisched and mucking up our storefronts at night, so city
officials decided to make everyone pay a bunch of money to shield
our eyes from floodlights and watch crappy bands play crappy music
to prevent us from acting belligerent—as if those two are mutually
exclusive.
(10/27/10 6:00am)
Bobby Wegner and Heather Sawyer have spent the last few years
releasing hot 7'' records like they owe it to the world. The Hussy
rolled up renegade anthems of youthful indulgence into
reverb-coated splinters of garage rock without pretense. But even
those candy-coated anarchist refrains sounded like they were
picking away at something bigger, and we see a better picture of
the Hussy's sculpture on their first full-length release,
Cement Tomb Mind Control.
(10/20/10 6:00am)
My way-tubular, totally eligible friend Anthony says when he hears
Victoria Legrand of Beach House sing he likes to pretend she's
singing to him. That's sort of what most pop music is for a lot of
people—it's either someone singing to you or for you. It's not
enough just to hear it, we need to squeeze ourselves in there
somewhere.
(10/14/10 6:00am)
(10/14/10 6:00am)
Pop quiz: What is a monopoly?
(10/14/10 6:00am)
I have a tendency to take things too seriously. I think that's a
prerequisite for being such a prick about something as fickle as
music. I devolve existential prerogatives out of mundane pop lyrics
and deconstruct melodies to be valued by their parts.
(10/13/10 6:00am)
The first basketball blog I ever followed was written by Gilbert
Arenas. He didn't talk about basketball very much, and most of what
I remember is when he would talk about video games. He officially
sponsored a professional ""Halo"" team named Final Boss that
competes in national tournaments all over the place, and he was
especially honored when selected to grace the cover of ""NBA Live
‘08.""
(10/06/10 6:00am)
You know what they say—""Mo' money, mo' problems."" I've had
considerably more experience with the opposite, though, and I can
personally attest that the logic still holds—""No money, mo'
problems."" Being wealthy certainly has its hang-ups (where on
EARTH will you even park that thing?!), but the same is
true for people who are forced into buying knockoff ramen noodles
and stealing kitchenware from local taverns.
(09/30/10 6:00am)
Three or four glasses of wine into the set, Matt Berninger
declared, ""This one's for the swing states.""
(09/26/10 6:00am)
Breathe Owl Breathe seem transfixed on an ideal of folk music that
they can't really control. Cold, dark, hostile—folk music can get
pretty tumultuous. But while Breathe Owl Breathe try to master this
learned approximation of folk tradition on Magic Central,
they gloss over the very warm, bright and friendly melodies that
make them so worthwhile.
(09/24/10 6:00am)
Believe this: I'm a pretty laid-back guy. Nothing really upsets the
Kyle Equilibrium too much, especially when I'm kickin' it with New
Jersey rock 'n' rollers Titus Andronicus.
(09/24/10 6:00am)
Believe this: I'm a pretty laid-back guy. Nothing really upsets the
Kyle Equilibrium too much, especially when I'm kickin' it with New
Jersey rock 'n' rollers Titus Andronicus.
(09/22/10 6:00am)
I've got a short attention span. Real short. So while I can
certainly appreciate long-winded mixtapes and extended double LPs,
I usually skip around or occupy myself elsewhere while Sonic Youth
keeps track of time in the background. Generally speaking, I prefer
music pocket-sized, often in the form of EPs or 7"" records.I guess
I'm not the only one, either. In the past calendar year, more and
more artists seem to be embracing the art of the extended play
record.
(09/16/10 6:00am)
I did a lot of things this summer, but mostly what I did was work.
For the last year and a half or so I've worked at a deli about a
block off campus, but most of our clientele is older people from
the local business park. I make sandwiches, I slice meats, and we
deli-men get to choose what music we listen to on the stereo.
(09/12/10 6:00am)
If you've kept your ear to the ground for the last year and a half
of pop music, a band named Surf City isn't likely to rouse much of
a blip on your Richter Scale. With reverbed vocals, slippery bass
and loads of glossy guitars, they play shoegazey pop with a casual
immediacy. But Surf City aren't near as self-absorbed or stoic as
their peers, and the result is a debut LP, Kudos, far more
dynamic and with fewer hang-ups than you'd expect.