Animal Collective member Avey Tare (aka David Portner) is in town tonight promoting his swampy new album, Down There. Besides keeping the animal association rolling—his website is called Alligatorland and the creature is a motif in his music and visuals—Avey Tare explores themes in his solo work that run parallel to Animal Collective. In a recent interview, [...]
A Room Of One's Own: DCist reports that the planned Smithsonian American Latino Museum is closer to settling down on the National Mall. Tuesday, legislation was introduced in Congress that would permit the museum to move into the Arts and Industries Building, the second oldest Smithsonian museum downtown. Museum plans have been developing since the [...]
Sky Rockets in Flight: J. Freedom du Lac led yesterday's WaPo arts section with this, his oral history (!) of the locally penned Starland Vocal Band classic "Afternoon Delight." Money quote, from songwriter Bill Danoff: "When it came out, I was getting my car fixed, and the guy said: 'I heard your record. It’s [...]
1 Weird Old Tip: In yesterday's Washington Post Style section, media reporter Paul Farhi unpacks the Federal Trade Commission's beef with those pervasive "tiny belly" ads found on millions of websites worldwide. When web users click on the ads, they are taken to one of a cluster of bogus news sites delivering pseudo facts and [...]
Ariel Pink is 20 minutes late returning my phone call, and he feels bad about it. He's been back in the States less than a week since finishing a European tour, and he's swamped with phoners. He apologizes. "I need to treat my interviews more like job interviews," Pink says.
"Well, then," I say. "Are you [...]
By now your opinion of Animal Collective is set: Maybe you're a long-time fan, but felt the group's last record was less adventurous than usual. Perhaps you're a recent convert, drawn in by the id-filtered pop of Merriweather Post Pavilion. Or maybe you're allergic to buzz bands.
Whatever your take, Down There by collective member Avey Tare [...]
Morning, folks!
The mysterious purveyor of the Felice Brothers golden-ticket essay contest named a winner Friday. I’ll share the winning essay here later today, but here’s a taste of the author’s pathos at work:
I don't know how I missed out. But don't make me sit at home alone on Friday night, listening to Adventures of the [...]
Experimental filmmaker Danny Perez and Maryland-amphitheater enthusiasts Animal Collective make an inspired pairing. The band’s first collaboration with Perez came in 2004 with the video for “Who Could Win a Rabbit?” The clip’s elaborate costumes and splashes of color, coupled with its genuinely macabre sense of humor, hinted at what has become a consistent and [...]
It was not for nothing that Bluebrain ended up in our Best of D.C. issue: Inspired by the New York avant-garde composter composer Phil Kline, the participatory boombox performance the duo staged in Dupont Circle last year—a 40-minute work for several dozen cassettes—was arresting and perfectly chaotic; the debut album Bluebrain dropped in February, meanwhile, [...]
Hello! Pazz & Jop! The annual critics' poll organized by the Village Voice went online yesterday, and nothing about the main lists should surprise you: Animal Collective and Phoenix topped the albums list; Jay-Z (and Animal Collective and Phoenix) topped the single list. A number of City Paper staffers and contributers submitted Pazz & Jop ballots. [...]
