A couple of weeks ago, this NYT week-in-review essay was being forwarded and tweeted and reblogged on Tumblr like a new hilarious venn diagram, usually absent any commentary on the poster’s part, but packaged with the implication that therein lay some final vindication for a deeply personal hatred of The Catcher in the Rye. At the very least, such hyperlinkage made plain that the trend descr
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Quick Word On "Get A Life, Holden Caufield"
Jay Reatard /// “There Is No Sun” /// Watch Me...
Jay Reatard /// “There Is No Sun” /// Watch Me FallThing about a disc’s worth of Jay Reatard singles is that—illegally stimulated or not—it’s an exhausting, bone-rattling kind of party. Thing about a Jay Reatard album is, you’re afraid of what’ll happen if he pauses to let you catch your breath. But holy shit has the man killed two birds with one stone here. Watch Me Fall lac
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Brüno (2009)
Is it funny? Is it successful as satire? These...
Brüno (2009)Is it funny? Is it successful as satire? These aren’t the same question at all, but you’d never know that from the way a critic as smart as the NYT’s A.O. Scott holds his nose while panning Brüno. The party line seems to be: in order for you to laugh at this, you’d have to find raging, kinky, in-your-face homosexuality to be inherently grotesque and weird. I mean, ho
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The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart /// “Ramona” ///...
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The Dodos /// “Acorn Factory” /// Time To Die Is...
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The Dodos /// "Acorn Factory" /// Time To DieIs the Dodos' third album the Blade Runner-inspired concept piece its title led me to feverishly imagine? Not quite. Neither is it as visceral or ragged as Visiter, slowing down to enjoy some mid-tempo detours and thickening the texture with an upstart vibraphone-tickler named Keaton Snyder. On first listen, it feels like a limp, lateral move, but...
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The Clean /// “In The Dreamlife U Need A Rubber...
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The Clean /// “In The Dreamlife U Need A Rubber Soul” /// Mister PopIf I had a band, we’d definitely be the kind that still wrote great songs thirty years after pioneering an iconic sound that also defined our tiny island nation. No seriously: what the hell is up with The Clean doing just that. They may have mellowed as the elder statesmen of kiwi pop, but they’ve still got a lesson or t
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Public Enemies (2009)
From Michael Mann comes a superlong crime...
Public Enemies (2009)From Michael Mann comes a superlong crime drama shot with pop operatic grace: what else is new, right? The choice to go digital isn’t, but it’s rarely panned out so well: fog moves in startling wrinkles across the forest at night; muzzle flashes illuminate distinctly a hundred times per second with each burst of machine gun fire. And while the fatalist arc of Dillinger
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Cormac McCarthy /// Outer Dark
After reading McCarthy’s...
Cormac McCarthy /// Outer DarkAfter reading McCarthy’s two latest novels (The Road, No Country For Old Men) and the middle-period masterpiece (Blood Meridian), the time seemed ripe for a foray into the early years. And what a relief it was—not the book, which is as heart-turningly black as the title suggests, but the fact that McCarthy’s obsessions with indelible sin and spectacular death
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David Bowie /// “Speed Of Life” /// Low
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Whatever Works (2009)
“Funny” isn’t synonymous...
Whatever Works (2009)“Funny” isn’t synonymous with “fresh,” and if Whatever Works seems as though it could have fallen, fully formed, out of the 1970s, that hardly seems a damning flaw. And while I certainly could have used the dollop of broad anti-Red State commentary when Woody Allen was off doing phony, faux-nihilist bullshit like Match Point, I’m happy to say “better late than
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benjaminapple:
I got Glass Candy’s Beat Box about a year ago,...
benjaminapple:I got Glass Candy’s Beat Box about a year ago, and it’s become a regular part of my listening diet. The best part of the album is on Beatific, when the singer asks the DJ to turn it up, he says “Sure,” and the track turns up. “That’s better! Alright.” Any time there’s an exchange with the DJ, I’m happy.Benjamin: we bought this album at about the same time, before we
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Rejections
I’m thinking I should compile some of the great rejections I get, as people seem to love this one:“Miles,Thanks for submitting “****** **” to us. I’m going to respectfully pass on this piece. This is a really creative piece but I’m afraid it’s not really for us. There’s a level of emotional depth that we like to see in the stories we publish and I’m just not seeing it in this pi
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Currently.
Currently.
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eyeslikeheadlights:
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Mew /// “Repeaterbeater” /// No More Stories…...
Mew /// “Repeaterbeater” /// No More Stories… EP“Go big or go home” is a de facto anthem for the anthemically damaged Mew, a stadium-sized Danish act whose No More Stories… EP is spangled with the usual proggy arpeggios, ionospheric falsetto and other weirdnesses. “Repeaterbeater” goes from vicious, Muse-like indie metal to angular and lasery space-pop in the space of forty-five se
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