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April 15, 2007
Shorties
The Times Online offers a primer on how to join in the online music revolution.
The Boston Globe examines the burgeoning role of indie labels in country music.
The Northwest Indiana Times interviews Chris Funk of the Decemberists.
Q: And fate brought you to join ranks with The Decemberists?
CF: Yes. There were tons of bands in Portland and because I played pedal steel, our singer Colin Meloy, approached me to do some recording with them.
He had this weird musical vision to use pedal steel, accordion, stand up bass, and acoustic guitar. If you saw a photo of us at the time, we looked like this weird sort of "country tango" band, but we were actually trying to cater to the indie rock audience.
Their creations are sought after as people in the music business look harder for new ways to make money from concerts, T-shirts and posters — as album sales drop and less-lucrative downloading increases.
The Buffalo News examines the local growth in indie CD and show poster design.
The Indianapolis Star remembers author Kurt Vonnegut.
The Boston Globe visits William Faulkner's Oxford, Mississippi.
The Independent examines the influence of Bruce Springsteen on "the coolest bands in pop" today.
In practice, these bands' sensibilities may differ: there's nothing remotely ironic about The Arcade Fire's music - on the contrary, their sincerity is what enables them to evade accusations of bombast - while The Hold Steady seem all too aware of, yet utterly besotted by, the broader clichés of stadium rock. Nevertheless, both The Neon Bible and Boys and Girls in America work, both as stylistic homages and as artifacts in their own right. As such, they repudiate a great deal of conventional wisdom about the diminished state of contemporary popular music.
The New York Times profiles singer-songwriter Leslie Feist.
Feist’s third album of new material, “The Reminder” is due for release May 1. It’s the album that should transform her from the darling of the indie-rock circuit to a full-fledged star, and do it without compromises. “The Reminder” is a modestly scaled but quietly profound pop gem: sometimes intimate, sometimes exuberant, filled with love songs and hints of mystery.
The Columbus Dispatch examines the growing popularity of graphic novels.
Granta editor Ian Jack talks to NPR's Weekend Edition about the literary magazine's list of the best young American novelists.
The list:
Daniel Alarcon
Kevin Brockmeier
Judy Budnitz
Christopher Coake
Anthony Doerr
Jonathan Safran Foer
Nell Freudenberger
Olga Grushin
Dara Horn
Gabe Hudson
Uzodinma Iweala
Nicole Krauss
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Yiyun Li
Maile Meloy
ZZ Packer
Jess Row
Karen Russell
Akhil Sharma
Gary Shteyngart
John Wray
Dazed Digital features a video interview with the Casady sisters from CocoRosie.
NPR's Weekend Edition examines claims that the Grand Ole Opry discriminates against older musical artists.
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