When women and girls listen to love songs written by and/or performed by men, we have to filter stuff out, switch pronouns and, often, navigate a sexist point of view. After a lifetime of listening to male-dominated pop music I'm used to making these kinds of adjustments in my head, but I still feel starved for love songs that I can actually identify with and dance to without a power struggle. This drives me to… more »
D.I.Y. and hi-fi have rarely gone hand in hand. From the muscular crackle of Black Flag to the basement anthems of Guided by Voices, the sound of indie rock has long been the proudly noisy product of four walls and a four-track recorder. As laptops have replaced boomboxes, the aesthetic has endured, with bands embracing digital fuzz as a signal of both outsider cool and a thin wallet. But with the late-2000s lo-fi boom that launched… more »
Since 2008, we've used our eMusic Selects program to spotlight our favorite unsigned bands, releasing their albums exclusively to eMusic members and giving you a first look at bands whose music and vision inspires us. We're proud to say that bands like Best Coast, High Places, Yellow Ostrich, Julianna Barwick and others are all graduates of our Selects program. We feel just as excited about the latest members of our Selects family, EULA. This band… more »
While Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino radiates all the sunny musical signposts of her native Los Angeles — specifically, surf guitar riffs and beach-buoyant harmonies — Wax Idols' Oakland transplant Hether Fortune sings, writes and generates a sound that references several decades of dark British alt-rock, albeit with a contemporary DIY spirit. Like other buzzy Bay Area bands, Fortune and her supporting players prove that punk and pop can still come together without going corporate. eMusic's Barry… 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 »
For this month's eMusic Selects, we decided to try something a bit different: we teamed up with the excellent blog Amplified to solicit their input on which bands they loved, and also to produce a final package a bit bigger than what we usually do. We're thrilled with the results. Not only did Dan and David at Amplified have great feedback when it came to band selection, they also produced a pair of terrific video… more »
