« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
February 26, 2008
Shorties
Members of Beach House talk to the Baltimore Sun about their album, Devotion (out today).
The Boston Globe profiles Via Audio.
The members of Via Audio met while attending Berklee College of Music in 2003. The quartet played gigs around town at Great Scott, the Paradise Lounge, All Asia Cafe, and tomorrow night it returns to headline the Middle East Upstairs. Singer-guitarist Jessica Martins, guitarist Tom Deis, bassist David Lizmi, and drummer Danny Molad worked to perfect their sound: melodic pop-rock with pristine boy-girl harmonies and the occasional foray into metal guitars and burlesque rhythms.
Popmatters interviews Tift Merritt about her new album, Another Country (out today).
The A.V. Club interviews Bon Iver's Justin Vernon.
The Sasquatch Festival has announced its 2008 lineup.
The A.V. Club lists 15 "proudly profane" sports movies.
Bookforum profiles Edith Grossman, the notable Spanish translator.
Grossman, seventy-one, the foremost English translator of Spanish-language literature, has reimagined the Latin American canon for readers of English, who perhaps, like she, have ventured to Latin America only via the page. She has escorted high-caliber writers to glory with her acclaimed translations. Some of those authors are alive, with names like Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Álvaro Mutis. Others, like Miguel de Cervantes, are long deceased. Any writer writing in Spanish today wants Grossman as their translator. And in an American publishing industry eager to conceal from book buyers the fact that a translated book is in fact a translation, she is also one of the few translators who get cover credit.
Catbird Records is releasing a self-titled EP by Seattle's Kaz Nomura, aka PWRFL Power.
theBookseller.com has announced its shortlist for the oddest book title of the year.
Tegan and Sara talk to the Guardian about their album, The Con.
They view the album more like a book than a record. "It was recorded linearly and it has a beginning and a middle and an end," Sara says. The title was Tegan's idea. "I think that the reason for it has evolved," she says. "It just started to feel like everything's a bit of a con. For me, during this record, I was projecting this really happy extroverted image, but inside I was sad. And Sara was writing a lot about anxiety and marriage and death and commitment, and then you do all these stereotypical things, you buy a house and in the end it's ..."
Publishers Weekly interviews Chip Kidd about his new novel, The Learners.
PW: Which is tougher, writing a novel or designing a jacket for it?
CK: Writing is much, much harder. So much ground has been covered, for one thing. What spurred me on with [my first novel] The Cheese Monkeys was that I thought I was covering ground that hadn’t been explored before. In the case of The Learners, nobody had written a novel about the Stanley Milgram obedience experiments in the early ’60s—there had been a play and a TV movie, but they altered the facts. I wanted the book to be completely about them and what it might have been like to participate in them. So with both books there was a very clear brief: what’s the problem I have to solve? You have to set these narrative problems out to solve, whereas when you’re designing a cover, that work has already been done for you. Do a cover for this book. OK, I’ll read the manuscript and that will inform what I have to do. In this case, writing, I have to come up with the manuscript. So that’s much harder for me; I don’t find that this long form writing comes very naturally.
The Boston Globe profiles Tim Westergeren, the founder of Pandora.
“Our goal is to be everywhere,” he said,“and we can be because we’re easy to use and it’s personalized. That’s hard to get in one place. Pandora is full of music that you haven’t heard before. It’s like people have found the musical fountain of youth.”
At Publishers Weekly, Emily Grosvenor shares her love for book signings.
Perhaps the worst part of my signed book compulsion is that I always embarrass myself when I meet the author. I try to think of something witty to say, but when it's my turn, all I can do is genuflect before the masters or just stand there stammering. Truly nothing ever comes of these meetings in the way of a personal connection—except for one flirty exchange I had with Jonathan Safran Foer at Politics and Prose in D.C.
JSF: “Wow, I really like your sweater.”
Me, in a tight green sweater: “Gee, thanks. I really love your books!”
Gawker lists authors' donations to US presidential campaigns.
Drowned in Sound examines the discography of Manic Street Preachers.
also at Largehearted Boy:
2007 online music lists
Daily Downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
