Whatever happened to emo bands? There was always something reasonably endearing about the best of them – whiny, sure, but so earnest and prone to literate ramblings that they seemed the perfect antidote for an indie scene that seemed to value ironic detachment much more than the nerdy kid’s lovelorn poetry, hastily scrawled onto tear-soaked notebook paper. Was it annoying after a while? It sure was, but you gotta admire these kids’ willingness to put aside rock-minded things like pride, […]
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Spin Cycle: Random Axe’s “Random Axe” // Curren$y’s “Weekend at Burnie’s”
The old criticism of hip-hop music as pop’s most base, one-note form of expression must be extinct by now, right? Since the advent of the style, it’s slowly crept to mainstream status, virtually defining the mainstream for long stretches of the nineties and the oughts, and even the most hard-nosed “but it’s not real music!” types simply MUST have been exposed to some of the best the genre has to offer. Culturally, we’ve just breezed through a decade characterized by […]
Spin Cycle: The Ark’s “Arkeology: The Complete Singles Collection”
There are a lot of reasons that pop music is delightful, chief among them the ephemeral pleasures of instant gratification; Swedish glam-rock act The Ark peddle this sort of feeling like crack, writing direct, hook-heavy, sugar-rush power pop that sticks in the craw and stays. Splitting up after more or less ruling their homeland for the past decade, The Ark have bestowed upon fans and neophytes alike [amazon-product text=”Arkeology: Complete Singles Collection” tracking_id=”popblerdcom-20″ type=”text”]B004WLUJ6I[/amazon-product], a career-spanning platter of The Ark’s […]
Spin Cycle: Big Sean’s “Finally Famous”
Seven years after The College Dropout, the specter of Kanye West’s opus looms large over the rap landscape. He’s put out better albums in the intervening years – arguably, his stunning sophomore set Late Registration – but Dropout was the game-changer. Never has Kanye’s notorious inward focus been quite as breezy and flippant, nor his boasts as tempered with something like genuine humility; and if Late Registration is a big-budget, melodramatic epic, Dropout was the winning indie comedy from a […]
Spin Cycle: Bad Meets Evil’s “Hell: The Sequel”
There’s something poetic about seeing musical legend come to fruition, like the moment we actually finally heard Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, or perhaps when The Band That Used To Be Guns N’ Roses dropped Chinese Democracy… okay, perhaps seeing musical legend come to fruition is occasionally underwhelming. After all, a wait that long serves no other purpose than to whet the appetite. Fortunately, while estranged ex-BFFs Eminem and Royce Da 5’9″ were famously rhyme partners before infighting necessitated their breakup, the duo, […]
Spin Cycle: Tech N9ne’s “All 6’s & 7’s”
A longtime, often-vaunted member of rap’s left-of-center underground, Tech N9ne has managed to forge a career out of being off the radar, of inspiring intense fan devotion (the Techn9cians even get their own affectionate name that sounds an awful lot cooler than Gleek or Juggalo), and of being gleefully, unapologetically off the wall. Those who can actually find a record store in their town may recognize Tech more from his album covers than his actual recorded output – his wild-eyed […]
Spin Cycle: Bon Iver’s “Bon Iver, Bon Iver”
Reams and reams of paragraphs, enough (and steeped in enough mythology) to ink dozens of dead sea scrolls, have been devoted to Bon Iver’s 2007 debut, For Emma, Forever Ago, and not without reason; indie lovers and avid Pitchfork readers seem to flock to rootsy acoustic-slinging troubadours with gusto, special hipster points granted for being lo-fi. It doesn’t get much more lo-fi than a heart-broke woodsman holing up for the winter in a Wisconsin cabin and writing and recording his […]
The Viewfinder: Kanye West Releases Controversial “Monster” Video
Months after leaked versions have started to surface on Youtube, camp Kanye has officially made public his “Monster” music video. Already besieged by controversy – this video is littered with dead white women, always a sore spot for mainstream America – this spot arrives with a brand-new disclaimer, and the knowledge that you can Google a bevy of articles and petitions pleading for its demise. The clip’s divisiveness can be discussed in the comments, of course; but quality is king, […]
Spin Cycle: Flogging Molly’s “Edge of Darkness”
A viable and particularly galvanizing rock subgenre, the Celtic-punk upswing clearly derives from the Pogues, and has almost crossed over into the legitimate mainstream; these days, Boston’s Dropkick Murphys are the clear figureheads for the fusion of energetic punk and traditional Irish drinking songs. Forced to name-drop a second-most-visible representative of this oddly specific style, I’m sure citing Flogging Molly would win you some Family Feud points; after all, their 2002 record Drunken Lullabies might be the closest thing this […]
Spin Cycle: My Morning Jacket’s “Circuital”
I suppose it’s kind of difficult for My Morning Jacket fans to be truly pleased by one of their records at this point; six albums in, MMJ have cycled through country-rock, reverb-soaked psychedelia, discordant white-dude reggae, galloping metal, and squealing funk so quickly that really nailing down which My Morning Jacket you like can be tasking in and of itself. We only need for frontman Jim James to start spitting his oft-dippy, abstract lyrics over tight, polished grooves – the […]
Pass the Popcorn: Todd Phillips’ “The Hangover Part 2”
Let’s get this out of the way: yes, The Hangover Part 2 is more of the same. The title implies (correctly) that it can be viewed as merely an extension of the earlier film, as opposed to a brand-new one, and it hits every beat in its (already-worn) formula succinctly. If you didn’t much care for The Hangover, that sentence should function as a perfectly serviceable review for you, and anything else I have to say is merely window-dressing. Not […]