- Is Apple Eating Itself?
- Published: Oct 25, 2009
Apple's electronic gizmos are well-built gadgets, granted, but the company's product announcements now attract the kind of feeding frenzy most Hollywood studios and record labels can only dream of. But, while others may gaze enviously on, celebrity status comes at a price.
- Yo La Tengo's Unpopular Populism
- Published: Oct 13, 2009
On the evidence of Yo La Tengo's most recent release, Popular Songs, these perennial indie darlings are in danger of slipping into meandering meaninglessness.
- A Timeless Classic You've Never Heard Of
- Published: Oct 05, 2009
Forget the Beatles' remastered cash cows, and check out this reissue of Harmonia & Eno's obscure mid-seventies krautrock/electronic/ambient masterpiece Tracks and Traces instead.
- The Most Serene Republic's State of Distress
- Published: Sep 22, 2009
The Most Serene Republic's third album ...And the Ever Expanding Universe is manic, breathless, ever-changing, generally unclassifiable and suffers from a severe, hopefully not chronic, case of A.D.D.
- SFBC Bike-In Movies
- Published: Sep 12, 2009
In our age of 3D movie megaplexes and surround-sound high-definition nuclear-powered plasma screens at home, are we in danger of forgetting the simple joys of seeing a movie beneath a blanket of stars?
- The Amazing Vivian Girls Time Machine
- Published: Sep 08, 2009
Each time I hear the Vivian Girls I'm hurled back to a very specific time and place: I'm in my tiny dorm room during my first year at university, listening to a scratchy copy of Lush's debut EP Scar on 12-inch vinyl.
- Wavves of White Noise
- Published: Sep 02, 2009
Here's an incontrovertible theory for you to agree with: anyone who doesn't like loud music is OLD and BORING.
- Kronos Quartet on Grass
- Published: Aug 18, 2009
I love experiencing art in weird places. Unconventional settings challenge our entrenched ideas and opinions, and are normally lots more fun too.
- Bowling for San Francisco
- Published: Aug 11, 2009
Like most adult immigrants to the United States, my early impressions of this great nation were formed via a steady diet of exported films and TV shows where bowling looms very large indeed.
- When Service Is Just Another Word for Screw
- Published: Jul 29, 2009
Can anyone explain gig ticket charges to me? What are those "convenience costs" and "building fees?" Are more expensive tickets heavier or made from swan's tears and gold leaf?
- Blonde Redhead: Business as Unusual
- Published: Jul 14, 2009
Just think: a rare chance to see a bunch of musicians from out of town play music for the sake of playing music. What is the world coming to?
- SF Music Venues Against ABC
- Published: Jul 06, 2009
It turns out that the dispute between the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) and several of San Francisco's finest music venues makes almost no sense to anyone outside the administrative body that started it.
- Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band
- Published: Jun 17, 2009
One of the Ten Commandments of Rock states that certain albums from each era will become "great." Albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Dark Side of the Moon, OK Computer. All three have been re-recorded with a new reggae flair by a group called the Easy Star All-Stars.
- No More Tears
- Published: Feb 23, 2009
Every now and then, a piece of music will become indelibly linked to a specific time or place in our lives. The song that was playing when you first met. The tape your parents played in the car when you were a kid.
- Loch Lomond: Trumpets for Paper Children
- Published: Feb 05, 2009
When an act describes itself as a "chamber folk ensemble," the choice of words screams "band geek" almost as loudly as naming your Portland, Oregon band after Scotland's largest lake says "geography dork."
- New Year, Old Records
- Published: Jan 31, 2009
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die is impressively eclectic, taking in genres such as classical, folk, and blues next to the standard rock/pop mix.
- Special Delivery from Glasvegas
- Published: Jan 08, 2009
There's no mistaking that Glasvegas hail from Glasgow, Scotland, and not the gambling oasis that gave them the other half of their name.
- Best and Worst Music of 2008
- Published: Dec 31, 2008
As the good ship 2008 nears the end of its voyage, it's time to look back at the year's musical peaks and troughs.
- Bill Drummond: 17
- Published: Dec 15, 2008
The founding principle of The17 is the idea that all recorded music is dead, destroyed by the ease and carelessness with which we now access and consume it. The17 is an attempt to wipe the slate clean and return to a musical Year Zero.
- The Late, Late Shows
- Published: Dec 11, 2008
In San Francisco, music venues seem happy when shows drag on well past bedtime, regardless of whether it's a weekend or a school night.
- David Holmes: The Holy Pictures
- Published: Nov 30, 2008
Inspired by the death of his mother in 1996, this is an album firmly rooted in the past, but one that thankfully doesn't wallow in it. A lifetime's worth of diverse influences are combined to create something fresh and (oh yes) full of surprising new directions.
- Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies
- Published: Nov 04, 2008
While the rest of us have been busy wondering who is going to become the next president of the United States, three musicians have decided instead to look back at the previous occupants of this country's highest office.
- Awake, My Soul / Help Me To Sing
- Published: Oct 15, 2008
Devotional music has a pretty bad rep among nonbelieving sections of the listening public. It's easy to understand why if you have ever endured one of those interminable ads for mail-order-only collections of bland Christian rock on TV.
- 31Knots: Worried Well
- Published: Aug 11, 2008
Worried Well is a peculiar beast in the best possible sense, a great leap into the upper atmosphere that strains at the seams with new ideas and unexpected changes of direction.
- Record Keeping
- Published: Jul 19, 2008
I love my record collection, and I'm pretty sure it loves me. Sure, we've had our occasional ups and downs over the years, particularly after I've said something thoughtless and stupid like "you've got to slim down a bit."
- Americana
- Published: Jul 04, 2008
So much of listening to music is about context. The same tune can sound completely different depending on where, when, and how you hear it. Equally, there is some music for which such petty considerations fade, music so ubiquitous it's virtually timeless and placeless.
- The Accidental: There Were Wolves
- Published: Jun 09, 2008
The Accidental's debut album There Were Wolves is notably lacking in the volume department. Where others might shout and scream, it speaks in understated acoustic whispers. But listen carefully and you will discover a quiet delight, full of hushed beauty, playful surprises, wide-eyed optimism, and dark menace. In the end, its muted tones amplify rather than muffle its impact.
- Music + Advertising = Wrong
- Published: May 18, 2008
The advertising industry worked out long ago that just the right piece of oh-so-cool music can lend their 30-second sales pitches some much-needed hipster cachet. But, more recently, this particular street has become a two-way thoroughfare. Young musicians are leaping at the chance to soundtrack major commercials, thinking that nationwide exposure can only be a good thing. There's just one problem with this theory: these musicians are dirty little whores for suckling the teats of the evil corporate beast.
- The Blank Tapes: Daydreams
- Published: Apr 28, 2008
Sometime new acts blow onto the music scene like an unforecast hurricane, taking the world by storm in a single Force 12 blast of hype and excitement. But not always.
- Caribou: "She's the One"
- Published: Apr 08, 2008
We've all heard them, those sad, delusional types who mutter darkly about how there's "no good music around these days." Unless you quickly stop them talking by deftly changing the subject or smacking them around the head with a handy length of two-by-four, they'll probably also offer a few observations on the superior quality of music from some dusty era in the past, and even trot out a few clichés like "it's all just noise," or "go tidy your room."
- Headlights: Some Racing, Some Stopping
- Published: Mar 31, 2008
Michael Stipe once said that REM's Fables of the Reconstruction sounded like "two oranges being nailed together." As well as being a great quote, it was also a joke (one missed by the journalist he was speaking to at the time, unfortunately). However, it made an important point: that trying to describe music in words is an essentially futile task.
- The Heavenly States: Delayer
- Published: Mar 06, 2008
It's so easy for us to over think our reactions to new music. The first time we hear a track or album, only one question should really matter: Is it any good? But, more realistically, the question we ask is "do I like it?" And, before we know it, our pet peeves and personal prejudices are getting involved, and we're well on the way to over thinking things.
- British Sea Power: Do You Like Rock Music?
- Published: Feb 28, 2008
Listening to British Sea Power's new album Do You Like Rock Music? is a frustrating experience. Not because it's rubbish (it's actually very good, and the band's best yet) but because it gives the impression it would sound even better live.
- American Music Club: The Golden Age
- Published: Feb 19, 2008
If everything was right with the world, then the new American Music Club album would be an absolute stinker.
- Black Kids, Cool Kids: What's in a name?
- Published: Jan 17, 2008
Record sales rise and fall, entire genres of music come and go, even interminable Las Vegas concert runs occasionally come to an end. But one constant remains in the strange world that is the music industry -- bands with rubbish names.
- Los Campesinos! cause a twee bit of trouble
- Published: Nov 16, 2007
Being a music fan used to be much simpler when I was younger. Back then, I saw the world in delicately nuanced shades of Black or White. But with age comes a sort of wisdom, which in turn just seems to make life much more complicated. Take, for example, Cardiff-based indie kids Los Campesinos! who are due to land in San Francisco for the first time on November 28, 2007. Seven members strong, they burst onstage with a youthful, infectious energy that is hard not to love. But they also carry with them the unmistakeable whiff of twee, which troubles me.
- Covered Up
- Published: Nov 06, 2007
When it comes to music, "authenticity" is a hugely overrated concept. Despite being widely considered an expression of praise, the idea carries with it a lot of baggage including: the notions that artists can only play types of music that match their background or upbringing; that commercial success negates artistic achievement; or that you aren't a proper artist unless you write your own songs.
- Tokyo Police Club: Meet the Geek Squad
- Published: Oct 16, 2007
Tokyo Police Club, who play San Francisco on October 25, 2007 are not only awesome live, they are also wonderfully breathless on stage, like a bunch of hopelessly gawky teenagers. Songs burst out like short rushes of adrenaline, as if to cover up the band's shy-eyed embarrassment.
- Adele's Cute Accent
- Published: Oct 09, 2007
What is it about a voice? I've long since lost count of the otherwise talented bands I've hated, or mediocre acts I've loved, based solely on their singers. And it's the one aspect of musical taste that seems least universal or easy to predict in others. How often have you recommended a CD to someone, only for it to be returned with a comment like "the music's fine, but I can't stand that goddamn yowling/yodelling/yelping"?
- Don't Look Back
- Published: Oct 02, 2007
A friend of mine once told me his theory that everyone's favorite album is one released in the same year they start college. It's a flawed proposition, not least because we don't necessarily hear albums for the first time in the same year they are released (nor does everyone go to college, obviously), but the guiding principle behind it is surprisingly accurate.
- St. Vincent: What Saint Ain't
- Published: Sep 10, 2007
Listening to Marry Me, the excellent debut album by St. Vincent, a thought suddenly struck me: it must be very tiring to be Björk.
This isn't to say that St. Vincent, the recording name of American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark, sounds anything like Björk. In fact, she doesn't at all. Not one bit. Yet, and this is the crucial point, almost everything I read about her somehow shoehorns in a mention of the elfin Icelander (you can Google their names together to see for yourself).
- Smog Goes Solo
- Published: Aug 28, 2007
What's the difference between a solo musician and a band?
The answer was easy back in the good old golden oldie days, when acts could be easily divided between those who went by the names of individuals (Elvis Presley) or adopted some collective title (The Beatles). But times change, and things get more complicated. Personally, I blame the Thompson Twins. As soon as people found out there were more than two of them, none of whom were called Thompson, all the rules went out of the window. Or perhaps it was Manfred Mann's fault. Whatever. The point is that these days more and more musical individuals are pretending to be groups, and the world is a more confusing place as a result.
