“As young musicians get older and more successful, many lose the ability to understand and convey what’s it’s like to want something without having had it. If you’re looking for a unifying theory behind the proverbial “sophomore slump,” it’s often no more complicated than that: A successful first album is wired with want — with…
Joel Zimmermann, better known as deadmau5 is indisputably one of the biggest names in electronic music today. His signature mau5heads (essentially giant Mickey Mouse-inspired helmets customized with colorful paint jobs, strobe lights, and LCD screens) are so recognizable that they have made deadmau5 a household brand, used to sell not only records, but Puma sneakers,…
“I come from the core of the flag that bears the name ‘Battle Born,’” frontman Brandon Flowers sings of the Nevada state flag on the opener to the Killers’ first album in four years. “They call me the contender, I listen for the bell / My face flashing crimson from the fires of hell.” The…
As you settle into your homework routine this fall season, crack your window so everything smells like a mixture of leaves and freshly mulched grass, watch the leaves trickle down and cover the ground, and look for that perfect music to capture the emotion of the fall season, turn your attention to Radical Face’s, The…
The goal of most of today’s movies is to transport an audience elsewhere. Director John Hillcoat achieves this better than most in Lawless, starring Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, and Guy Pearce. Hillcoat strategically uses shots of Appalachian landscapes and rustic folk music to put the audience in 1920s Virginia. There’s something about the…
Although Austin-based singer-songwriter David Ramirez has released several recordings over the past few years, it’s clear from the first track that there is something uniquely intimate about Apologies. It’s recently become the trend for singer-songwriters to pare down their music, becoming more acoustic and writing lyrics that are more real and emotional. Ramirez takes this…
“While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I’m also extremely critical.” This is the first of a total of four sentences with which Eben Weiss, more commonly known as BikeSnobNYC, uses to describe himself on his blog with the same name. He then spends the next two sentences assuring the reader…
I heard Kendrick Lamar’s first single from his new album, “Swimming Pools (Drank),” shortly after seeing him perform in Chicago this summer. When I first heard it, I was concerned with what it meant in terms of the direction of his (technically speaking) second studio album, good kid, m.A.A.d city. The song is noticeably produced…
Indie veteran groups Spoon and Wolf Parade have been around for decades. Both have released albums to critical acclaim, both have headlined national (and even international) tours and both have reached the beloved land of Indie Stardom. Now, frontman of Spoon, Britt Daniel, and Co-leader of Wolf Parade, Dan Boeckner, join drummer Sam Brown in the forming of supergroup…
Just a few months ago in September, I wrote a piece for The Concordian Politics called “Charting a Course”. The gist of the piece was basically the idea that the United States needs to disabuse itself of the notion that it can unilaterally shape the affairs of the world to its liking. In the United Nations the…