Sep 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Fall 2008 - Jenny Lewis

"I still question it, because   I feel like anyone can make great music,” replies Gregg Gillis when asked about his status as the current king of mash-up remixes, the leading face in the most faceless of musical movements. Only a few days after the online-only release of Feed the Animals, his much-anticipated followup to 2006’s breakthrough Night Ripper, Gillis is in a grateful mood. After all, just over two years ago, he was working a day job, thrilled to be performing for crowds of 30 in his native Pittsburgh. More

Sep 01, 2008 By J. Pace Fall 2008 - Jenny Lewis

For all you Yanks, let’s get one thing out of the way: The song “Knickerbocker” and its lyric “knickerbocker glory” have nothing to do with basketball. It’s the U.K. equivalent of an ice cream sundae. It’s also the sonic confection opening Fujiya & Miyagi’s third full-length, Lightbulbs. More

Sep 01, 2008 By Mike Hilleary Fall 2008 - Jenny Lewis

Between the two of them, Frances’ Paul Hogan and Brian Betancourt are in the midst of counting just how many instruments were involved in the making of the Brooklyn-based band’s full-length debut, All the While. They are talking themselves through the numbers like two students working out some difficult mathematics problem, and just as the bandmates are about to settle on a final estimate, Hogan remembers to bring up their song, “Decoy.” More

Sep 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Fall 2008 - Jenny Lewis

"I wish we were the fucking Strokes,” says Bradford Cox defiantly, offering a preemptive strike against those who might take offense at the more approachable tones of Deerhunter’s third full-length release, Microcastle. More

Jul 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Fall 2008 - Jenny Lewis

"I started when I was 2 1/2 years old, and when I was younger I was always very exuberant and I always showed interest in being the center of attention. So, my mother decided that she wanted to put me in acting because I was so interested in it.” – Jenny Lewis, Teen Set, 1991 More

Jun 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Summer 2008 - The Protest Issue

Ten years. It’s not much more than a blip on the timeline of recorded history, but it’s a lifetime for the typical musical act. In the ten years since Portishead last had a new release, the music industry—if not the world—has changed several times over. More

Jun 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Summer 2008 - The Protest Issue

Like similarly inartful musical identifiers “pop” and “rock,”  “soul” is a term that elicits an intuitive response but that, in reality, has been denuded of any real meaning for modern listeners. Was it really created by Ray Charles in the early 1950s when he translated the energy of gospel music into a secular context? If James Brown is the “Godfather of Soul,” are his songs the template? What about Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, possibly the two most definitive artists in the genre? Do they belong categorized beside Jamie Lidell and Amy Winehouse? What is the essence of soul music? My Morning Jacket asks some of these questions on their fifth studio album, Evil Urges.
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Jun 01, 2008 By Matt Fink Summer 2008 - The Protest Issue

Given that the prospect of describing music is an inherently abstract process—entrusting words or images to capture the infinite permutations of rhythms, tones, and textures—it only makes sense that some artists who work in the sound medium would perceive these qualities differently than the rest of us. In technical terms, such folks are said to have “narrow band synesthesia,” a phenomenon where certain sounds or instruments consistently evoke a particular visual essence, and ideas for songs might only be intelligible as collages of color. In this case, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth is a shadowy landscape of grays and dark blues, graceful and brooding, an album created by someone who saw it all in her head. More

Jun 01, 2008 By Frank Valish Summer 2008 - The Protest Issue

For the better part of the last three decades, Michael Stipe has passionately melded his rock and roll with his activism. From R.E.M.’s early days as Athens, GA indie-rockers through their big ’90s hits and the subtler explorations of their later work, Stipe and company have always had their hands in politics, whether teaming with Rock the Vote in the early ’90s, playing the Vote for Change tour in 2004, or supporting causes from hunger relief to women’s rights and Greenpeace. More