It's almost too much to take: A famous band breaks up after three decades, and you have to choose just one of their songs to riff on when it comes time to write the headline or a lede. Alas, 31 years of recordings didn't lead to much variety in the initial round of obituaries for [...]
You'll have read by now that college-rock/alt-rock/legacy-rock legends R.E.M. have, after 31 years, called it quits. Now that I think about it, I'm sort of surprised that I only saw the band once, in 1998 at the Tibetan Freedom Concert at RFK, where Michael Stipe was wearing a wrap skirt, and where the band played [...]
After $65 million and countless injuries to cast and crew, it looks like we're going to keep waiting. If you hadn't bought that pair of $300 tickets, you could have bought yourself an iPad.
WaPo Style leads off with a preview of tonight's Birchmere show by Joe Boyd and Robyn Hitchcock. Boyd, the New Jersey-born English [...]
HO HO WHO: R.E.M., with its annual fan-club-only single. This year's features a standard—a cover of Darlene Love's "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"—and some stocking stuffers—an instrumental mix of three songs from the trio's upcoming full-length.
THE WALL OF SOUND: Nevermind that it has nary a thing to do with Christmas, if the dub mix "IHT [...]
How do you catch Craig Finn, Damian Kulash, and T. Bone Burnett all in the same day without getting overpowered by the B.O. of thousands of sweaty music-fest attendees? You put on your sport coat, grab your laptop, and head to The Future of Music Coalition's annual summit in D.C., of course. At least, that's [...]
So, you like Daniel Johnston's music. And maybe you've glanced over the Waller, Texas-based outsider artist's drawings—surreal folk-art interpretations of Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost, along with other, harder-to-define images—and liked those, too. So how's about getting lost in a three-dimensional labyrinth where his drawings spring to life and gyrate to his greatest hits?
Last [...]
A weekly roundup of unreleased songs, new singles, and assorted musical detritus as it trickles out to the Web.
Camera Obscura: "My Maudlin Career"
The other Scottish indie-pop band paddles down a river of reverb with a lone buzzing guitar hook to guide it. But like similar minded Glasgow-based peers Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura is [...]
Below: this year's top-sellers at Melody Records. Glad to see Gnarls on there; chagrined to see Coldplay; not surprised to see either; curious whether any other stores were able to move the Hancock album like this.
Madonna, Hard Candy
Coldplay, Viva la Vida
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
Portishead, Third
Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson
Amy Winehouse, [...]
