Yuppies took a very long time to make their first album — the band formed in 2007 and has released a handful of singles and a split EP over the past few years, but their self-titled, full-length debut has just appeared on Parquet Courts' label Dull Tools. It's a terrifically unsettling record, flowing from quiet, spacious passages (with main vocalist Jack Begley muttering or chanting lyrics that sound like every phrase is in a separate… more »
New ones from The Men, Jenny Scheinman and more this week. Let's get to it. The Men, Open Your Heart: Here it is. People, if you only download one record today, make sure this is it. Big, loud, roaring rock & roll that ricochets between scuzzy garage, roughed-up punk and lovely, laid-back country with equal aplomb. Needless to say, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Here's eMusic's Austin L. Ray with more: The album is divided roughly into three categories: rockers… more »
James Joyce wrote that his weapons as an artist would be "silence, exile and cunning." Silence isn't generally useful for musicians, and cunning comes with the territory for anyone who wants to play the pop-music game of one-upmanship. In 2004, though, a lot of the best indie records latched onto exile as a weapon, or as a metaphor, or even as their central subject. The international political landscape had collapsed into a mess of lies,… more »
"Hands on heads!" That's what the teacher at my primary school would yell when our class got out of hand. The rallying cry was supposed to make us focus in on a single activity, to stop us from fooling around and hitting each other and, hopefully, shut us up for a second. It worked. Kind of. Thirty pairs of small hands would clasp to 30 overexcited heads and we'd hold in our giggles until it… more »
