The Larson sisters met third Prince Rama co-founder Michael Collins while living in the world's large largest Hare Krishna community and attending high school in Alachua, Florida. The trio's self-described "Blink 182 rip-off band" evolved into something much more ambitiously eccentric once Taraka Larson moved to Boston in 2005 to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Prince Rama of Ayodhya (named after the seventh avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu and later… more »
From 1999-2011, Robert Toher led the atmospheric post-rock band Apse, but by 2010, he was growing frustrated with that group's direction and organization. He started working on a separate project, ERAAS, with Apse guitarist Austin Stawiarz – Toher is drawn to the word "eras," he says (it had also been the title of a limited-edition Apse album). Toher and Stawiarz holed up in an old house in Northampton, Massachusetts, and gradually refined their new sound:… more »
Not to pull an I-was-there or anything, but the first time I saw an Animal Collective show – eight years ago at a decrepit art space in Philadelphia – I thought the whole thing was an elaborate joke, an Andy Kaufman-esque piece of performance art for Pitchfork readers. Not because their music was laughable; because everything about their slapdash set seemed too strange. It was as if the very idea of "arty" indie rock was… more »
"Don't wanna be chasin' that rent money for the rest of my life," Dent May sings on Do Things' opening track, "Just need somebody to hold me at night." While the music takes a step toward a fuller, synth-and-beat heavy sound (the titular Magnificent Ukulele of his debut album is long gone), the lyrics hint at the lovelorn loverman persona May has cultivated in his previous output. Aside from the trials and travails of relationships,… more »
Walk into any barbershop and ask for the Gauntlet Hair, and there's a good chance they'll have no idea what you're talking about. That's because Andy R. and Craig Nice coined the term as teenagers — it comes from a private joke inspired by an old picture of the guitar legend Johnny Winter. (By the way, if your barber does accept the challenge, the duo insists that the outcome should look a lot like a… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
Indie-rock in the '00s was hardly the same animal as indie-rock two decades before, and much of the blame should probably go to Nirvana. In the '80s, labels like SST and Touch & Go were built on testosterone. But when grunge went multiplatinum in the '90s, rock bands brandishing palpable physicality suddenly qualified as mainstream again, and the bigger indies started adopting a more effete and introverted aesthetic. So if you skim down a list… more »
This was an eventful and turbulent year. One thing you can always count on, though, is a glut of amazing music, and 2009 was no exception. Everyone has their favorites from the year past — now is your chance to weigh in. Did you find yourself reaching, again and again, for the Raveonettes? Or did Animal Collective soundtrack your year? This is your opportunity to let us know your musical mainstays. Use the poll below… more »
The best dancers in the house when the Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar played Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing series in Manhattan this summer were a handsome couple, probably in their 60s, who whirled and dipped with the intuitive ease of longtime lovers immersed in their favorite music. I stood nearby and imagined them reveling in the sound of their Serbian homeland, lost in an ecstatic sea of nostalgia as they danced away the decades… more »
