Vampire Weekend, 'Vampire Weekend ' (XL)
Ivy League tunesmiths justify the blogger love on world-surveying debut.
By Will Hermes 06.15.08 11:40 AM
At 1:32 a.m. last Valentine’s Day, a demo titled “Oxford Comma” by a band of Columbia University buds was posted on the blog Music for Robots. Good Weather for Airstrikes reposted the song, with two others, a month later, declaring Vampire Weekend “the best unsigned band in New York City.” In June, The New York Times weighed in with a smitten live review.
SHARE THIS:
Gnarls Barkley, 'The Odd Couple' (Downtown/Atlantic)
The dynamic duo of eccentric pop return with polished predictability.
By Will Hermes 03.25.08 6:13 PM
In 2006, two avantgarde hip-hoppers -- a producer known for DJ'ing in a mouse costume and a Dirty South MC who abandoned a legendary crew to make psychedelic soul and wear a pink feather boa -- released a little indie project. Suddenly, shit was crazy.
SHARE THIS:
PJ Harvey, 'White Chalk' (Island)
Rock's chameleonic queenie visits a deathly quiet place.
By Will Hermes 10.15.07 3:00 AM
In 1973 Michael Lesy published Wisconsin Death Trip, an intoxicating collection of images shot by Charles Van Schaick -- the town photographer of Black River Falls, Wisconsin -- around the turn of the last century. Framed by news items illuminating the pictures, the volume is a grim history of madness, murder, suicide, smallpox, poverty, and babies in coffins.
SHARE THIS:
Punk Reunion: New York
Members of Blondie, Ramones, Suicide, Television, and the Dictators remember the CBGB scene.
By Will Hermes 09.21.07 1:07 PM
Like a mushroom on a pile of shit, punk came up in one of New York City's foulest periods. Probably no other era could have produced it: Urban decay and lawlessness made Lower Manhattan a cheap place to live, and the desperate street vibe -- combined with the art community's down-forwhatever attitude -- made for take-no-prisoners music. Punk would spread around the world, mutating as it went.
SHARE THIS:
Wilco, 'Sky Blue Sky' (Nonesuch)
Post-rehab, Americana's dark diarist kicks back and shares.
By Will Hermes 06.27.07 3:00 AM
The pastorale LP is a rock'n'roll tradition. It's what happens when a band -- motivated by tinnitus, bankruptcy, drug-crazed meltdowns, or merely an aesthetic conversion -- strips things down to the gentle, the pretty, the chillin'-by-the-fishin'-hole-with-my-Martin-D50-acoustic-which-incidently-is-worth-ten-times-what-you-paid-for-your-car.
SHARE THIS:
Palomar, 'All Things, Forests' (Misra)
Sad ladies build a Brooklyn tenement wall of sound.
By Will Hermes 04.01.07 3:00 AM
Like the Bangles with a death wish, this indie-rock girl gang (and a token guy) begin their fourth CD with Shangri-Las harmonies on a song about being buried. And though they aren't afraid anymore of sounding bigger than four kids in a rented room, singer Rachel Warren still comes off as disenchanted.
SHARE THIS:
