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The Milk Carton Kids
Whenever year-end “Top Whatever” lists come around, I always brush up a bit on the music I’ve missed during the year. This winter break I’ve done a fair share of catching up. Who knew Boise had a new...
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Mainstream is Dead?
If you can’t find good, new music to listen to, you’re just not trying very fucking hard. This much is clear. Music is very much alive. So why are people still writing articles about its demise? Punk...
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Me For Real
…If I had even a shadow of self-knowledge, I could put it to good use now. Sartre, Nausea (1938) Existential crises seem like a pretty compulsory component of grad school, so forgive me if the...
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Less Rock, More Talk
The annual EMP Pop Conference begins next week in NYC. Stephen Colbert, embittered by the rejection of his paper, “Self Love in an Elevator: Apollonian Images of Hedonism, Eroticism, and the Mechanized...
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Hipster Karaoke
At last Friday’s installment of the Bishop’s weekly karaoke series, a couple dozen hipsters normally bound by complex conventions of taste and expression, myself included, relished a context in which...
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The Music of Miranda July’s Prose
As a lover of pop music and a nerdy musicologist, I’ve long been intrigued by the relationship between music and poetry. For proof, look no further than this cute-albeit-cliché metaphor-simile hybrid...
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“Punk Gives Way to Stagnancy”
Last semester I wrote over one hundred pages about music. Last May, struck by this sheer volume of thought, and curious about what sort of overarching themes I might glean from what I’d read &...
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Boethius 2012
Lately, I’ve felt pretty desensitized to music, in the same way I’ve felt desensitized to politics. Trying to engage with politics in an election year is draining. I want to be an informed, active...
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Pitching Forks
I picked up a copy of Efterklang’s 2012 release Piramida at Landlocked Records a few days ago. Me — and anyone who has been around me when I’ve played it — have been seriously digging it. This is the...
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4,000+ Miles of Music
I recently drove to Boise from Bloomington, and back. It’s much quicker to fly, but in Robert Pirsig’s words, “We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on ‘good’...
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Doubled Up
Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of doubled vocals in indie rock tracks. I first became especially aware of the double tracking recording technique in the music of songwriter-guitarist Elliott Smith,...
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Style: 1, Substance: 0
I really, really don’t like Bon Iver’s newest release, Bon Iver. It was a struggle for me to write that, because my copy of Bon Iver’s 2007 debut For Emma, Forever Ago is well-spun, and it remains a...
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Less Than You Think: Wilco in Indianapolis, 9/13
When I saw Wilco shred all over the stage at the Murat Theater in Indianapolis on Tuesday night, I realized that I don’t understand Wilco, and never really have. I remember when I bought my first Wilco...
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Women and Creative Control
I caught a sexist thought running through my head that I thought I’d share with you all. I’ve been on this late 80s/early 90s kick that I touched on in my last post. Over the last few days, I’ve gotten...
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Misery Let Me Down
A lost track by Elliott Smith, “Misery Let Me Down,” has been released! It comes from the archives of the student radio station of University of Maryland, College Park, WMUC-FM. The song was performed...
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