Jun 19, 2014
Music
Se Delan
They say all the good band names have already been taken, which accounts for why so many post-millennial acts have resorted to daft monikers such as Freelance Whales, Com Truise, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., and We Were Promised Jetpacks.
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Jun 18, 2014
Music
Web Exclusive
That Andrew Bird has chosen to record an album entirely of Handsome Family covers will surprise very few. The Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist may not fit the profile of a natural iconoclast, but he’s hardly known for playing things by the book. For the most part, he does whatever he feels like, whenever he feels like it.
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Jun 17, 2014
Music
Web Exclusive
Before Turn Blue I thought I’d be fine never hearing another Black Keys album again. When I was first introduced to their blues-infused indie rock nearly a decade ago, I couldn’t get enough of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney crunching through raunchy riffs with a dusty, vintage swagger.
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Jun 12, 2014
Music
Hundred Waters
Hundred Waters’ new album is one of those that functions best under specific circumstances: in particular, late at night, with headphones on. Listening alone is probably best, too.
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Jun 11, 2014
Music
Web Exclusive
After a couple long years of quietude, Craft Spells (the songwriting vehicle of dream pop scholar Justin Vallesteros) reemerge with Nausea. The album shares a name with a Sartre novel about existential angst.
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Jun 10, 2014
Music
The Fresh & Onlys
Up to this point, just about every new release from The Fresh & Onlys has offered us the singularly bittersweet pleasure of greeting new, unexpected sonic gestures while melancholically waving goodbye to certain tics we’ve grown fond of. It was a peculiarly rewarding give-and-take, with each successive album and EP betraying glimmers of The Onlys’ prior recorded lives, yet bravely looking onward.
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Jun 09, 2014
Music
Issue #50 - June/July 2014 - Future Islands
For the last couple of years, Oxford-via-London quartet Glass Animals has wooed listeners with a steady stream of singles and remixes. “Psylla” and “Black Mambo” exhibited a sound somewhere between the dark, enveloping trip-hop of Massive Attack and weirdo groove-makers Alt-J.
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Jun 06, 2014
Music
First Aid Kit
It’s a fun game to ask someone unfamiliar with First Aid Kit where the band hails from. Tennessee is a common guess, as is Georgia, and the fact that the Söderberg sisters are from Sweden always raises eyebrows.
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