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September 26, 2006
Shorties
The New York Sun profiles singer-songwriter Regina Spektor.
Lemonheads' Evan Dando talks to the Independent.
Dando is now at pains to point out that reforming the band isn't about nostalgia. "The idea is to go where we haven't been before," he declares. "I never feel we got all that far with our music anyway so there's a lot more that can be done. The songwriting was fine but I always thought we could do better in the studio. I don't care what people think about it, or how many copies it sells. I just want to keep on doing it for its own sake. As long as I can pay my rent, I'm happy."
The Montreal Gazette interviews James McNew of Yo La Tengo.
Gazette: I’ll move on to the next question, then. I wanted to ask you about the Murdering the Classics collection from that annual request show you do. How many requests have you gotten on the show that stumped you, if any?
JM: Oh, quite a few. The WFMU listenership, they come correct. They know what they’re talking about. So lots of times we’re stumped. We do have a contingency rule, in that if we can’t honour the exact request, we will pick another song by that artist, or possibly another song by that name. But most times we’ll just flail through it.
The Onion A.V. Club lists "18 '70s and '80s XXX Movies With Memorably Kooky Trailers."
Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis puts her iPod on shuffle for the Onion A.V. Club and discusses the resulting playlist.
The Fiery Furnaces, "Bright Blue Tie"
JL: I love this record [Gallowsbird's Bark]. It's so great. I don't know if Eleanor Friedberger wrote more songs on this first record, or if she stopped writing for the more recent records. I'm not sure exactly how that worked out between them, but I just think she's so great. She's got such a great voice. I'm a huge fan of hers.
Education Nation / Higher Education Blog lists the "top ten web tools for students."
Minnesota Public Radio has Swedish singer-songwriter Tobias Froberg in the studio for a performance and interview.
Drowned in Sound asks its readers to post their six favorite albums of the past six years.
Zoilus reviews the Mountain Goats' Toronto performance (though "reviews" is far to weak a term for this piece).
The Hartford Courant reviews the band's recent Northampton tour stop.
Three new episodes of the Bat Segundo literary podcast have been released, including one each devoted to authors Pamela Ribon, Daniel Handler, and Julia Glass.
Daytrotter continues its string of amazing in-studio performances with a show by Doveman's Thomas Bartlett. More Doveman goodness can be found at La Blogotheque.
Singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia talks to Drowned in Sound.
“I could talk to you about what all the songs are about, but who really WANTS me to do that, y’know what I mean?” she says, fighting her corner, looking in every way uncomfortable with having to explain her chosen art. “You do your thing, and then you have to explain it? It seems wrong. It’s not really that important to me if people know exactly what a song’s about, it doesn’t matter at all. I actually appreciate people having different ideas about the songs.”
Singer-songwrier Stephin Merritt talks to Billboard.com about the new Gothic Archies album, The Tragic Treasury: Songs From A Series of Unfortunate Events (out October 10th).
"This project, the Gothic Archies, revolves around this sense that the world is terrifying and ridiculous. Instead of taking the straight-ahead rock approach, it's my bubble-gum gothic band."
The Dish interviews Tilly and the Wall vocalist Kianna.
Your debut album, Wild Like Children, was released in June 2004 on Conor Oberst’s label Team Love. How did you feel after that was put out?
It was incredible. We only put out the EP before that which we burned off by hand, and did all the cover work by hand. It was so tedious. We didn’t get a record deal, no one was interested. Then when our friend (Oberst) who was starting up a record label wanted to put it out, we were like ‘Yes please!’. It’s just nice that slowly we get recognition. Putting an album out is just so amazing, you can play a show in somewhere like Ireland and you’ll never have been there before but everyone will have heard your records. The internet has definitely helped, we really like the way you can put out your music for free. And we’re all about sharing.
About.com has a handy resource page for Banned Books Week.
Joanna Newsom talks to Billboard.com about her new album, Ys (out November 14th).
"The things I wanted to write about, the ideas I was interested in, demanded longer songs," Newsom tells Billboard.com. "The particular form and structure these longer songs took demanded a denser musical texture, i.e. an orchestra. The things I wanted to be able to do with that orchestra demanded the presence of an 'outsider' to help with arrangement, because I didn't feel capable of creating the sounds I wanted to create, with my own limited orchestration abilities, hence Van Dyke Parks' participation."
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune covers two recent cease and desist operations aimed at music websites, including the Beachles mashups, and OLGA (Online Guitar Archive).
At Popmatters, Dave Heaton reviews the My Morning Jacket live album, Okonokos.
Okonokos‘s structure is perfect for a live album—when the songs trip off into another world, they soon rock brightly back to life, often within the same song. The songs are stretched out, but without losing any of their impact. In fact, the impact of every hook, note, and solo is only accentuated. The band hammers each note exactly right, with absolute toughness but also sensitivity, so it isn’t bombastic but still kicks hard.
NPR will stream the Thursday Philadelphia performance by Sufjan Stevens and My Brightest Diamond.
In the Boston Review, author Laila Lalami reviews two novels by Sayed Kashua.
In his new novel, Let It Be Morning, Kashua again creates characters with hyphenated identities who are trying to find their place on the periphery of their societies, characters who use language to signal belonging or exclusion.
Business Week's readers choose their 12 favorite bloggers.
IGN lists the top 50 Marvel and DC comics covers of 2006.
At NPR's Song of the Day, Kathryn Yu shares Office's "Q&A" from the band's self-titled album.
The group's crisply enjoyable rock could be the music playing in an endless loop between every intern's ears -- the clandestine indie-pop melodies that power corporate America's foot soldiers.
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