By Max Fisher - The Daily Cardinal

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Singing praise for all the underdogs

By By Max Fisher | Mar. 10, 2013

By now it’s a time-tested cliche: “The record only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”

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What Kurt Cobain would have been

By By Max Fisher | Feb. 22, 2013

Wednesday marked the would-be 46th birthday of Kurt Cobain, the indie kid that drove punk rock from the sweaty underground to the heights of MTV without sacrificing a shred of dignity. In just over five short years, he was transformed from an outsider weirdo recording under the name Fecal Matter to the messiah for an unfulfilled generation–the posthumous ideal of a tortured artist, fated for perennial evaluation and reevaluation. What more can be said for the guy that hasn’t already been rendered banal by every entitled fan or controversial critic in the last two decades?

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The low-down on illegal downloads

By By Max Fisher | Feb. 14, 2013

I’ve done it before. And I’m willing to bet you’ve done it before, too. In fact, it should be obvious by now that the vast majority of young Internet users have, at the very least, some experience in illegally consuming digital media.

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Grouper’s 2008 masterpiece dragged back into reissue

By By Max Fisher | Feb. 6, 2013

Grouper is sound in black and white. Peering through a telescope, lost and alone at sea. Bleak, lonely curls of fog span the view. Or wind on some forlorn, forgotten hill. A weighty fish lumbering with concealed purpose below the murky depths of a cold, dark lake. Grouper is music to drown to.

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Ducktails isn't quacking with The Flower Lane

By By Max Fisher | Jan. 28, 2013

For the last couple years, “indie” artists scrambling to make it onto the floor mix at Urban Outfitters have been playing the “Reinterpret the Theme Song to ‘Welcome Back Kotter’” game. The late 2000s saw fearless weirdoes Ariel Pink, Daniel Lopatin, James Ferraro and Destroyer toying with pastiche, neutered sounds of the late ’70s and early ’80s. They blended the white-collar, scotch-buzzed saxrotica of Steely Dan and the late-night, cocaine-buzzed yacht rock of Fleetwood Mac with a perverse dosage of cheesy, new-wave synth and the musty scent of your dad’s stale cologne. Sounds that had been deader than dead for the last thirty years suddenly became fair game. Of all the artists that have leapt to the AOR crusade, Ducktails comes as one of the most surprising.

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Milo drops out of college with FIDLAR's self-titled debut

By By Max Fisher | Jan. 23, 2013

In 1982, the Descendants released a slew of 15 succinct hardcore punk vignettes collectively titled Milo Goes to College. The record was a chronicle of things that ticked the band off: authority, politicians, parents, this, that and who cares.

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Album Review: Foxygen falls short

By By Max Fisher | Jan. 22, 2013

Foxygen is the seven-year-old project of 22-year-olds Sam France (vocals) and Jonathan Rado (guitar/keys). Though the duo already has a back catalog eleven releases deep, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is Foxygen’s big budget debut LP on the JAGJAGUWAR label. Last year JAGJAGUWAR released Foxygen’s excellent Take the Kids off Broadway EP to widespread acclaim, earning the band their fair share of buzz and a slot on tour with Of Montreal. Where Take the Kids was a Lo-fi collage of ‘60s/’70s glam, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is a Hi-fi collage of ‘60s/’70s glam. The album is so in debt to its influences that it effectively transcends the label “throwback record,” instead becoming a collage of the band’s role models. The title, as long-winded as it is, says it all.