Week in Review: Shut It Down

Scenes from MtyMx. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​In the week LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy told our own Michael Musto to "eat it" and Musto sensibly retaliated by telling him to "suck it" right back, we spent a good chunk of the week unpacking the twin out-of-state enterprises that were SXSW and MtyMx. Thus you can catch reports and photos of our own Village Voice SXSW party, ten headlines you'll never read now that the thing is mercifully over, a bunch of portraits of famous people who wandered into Austin, guerilla reporting from the badgeless scenes at the Texas festival, and a post-mortem of that time the Death Set vomited on some poor audience member. As for MtyMx, we had scenes and videos from the festival as it happened, photos from Monterrey, and one long report on the thing and its potential aftermath.

In turn, SXSW inspired the band Fucked Up to pen something pretty inspired about the economics of the situation, to which we chipped in our own broader, closer-to-home analysis. The festival also inspired New York Times critic John Pareles to kick glo-fi's ass up and down the street, which led our own Brandon Soderberg to ride to the embattled genre's defense. And, maybe apropos of not that much, MtyMx heroes Das Racist unveiled their new mixtape cover this week! Think Dear You.

Back in the real world, we talked to author Dave Tompkins about his new book, How To Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop, to Brooklyn's Slow Six about their mournful local anthem, "The Night You Left New York," and to The Library Is on Fire, whose awesomely '90s-revival anthem "Vanessa's Theatre of Peace" has been getting some serious burn at SOTC this week.

Maura Johnson's savvy chart-related observation of the week? That circa-2007 rock-radio staples are now passing for instant nostalgia on those always enigmatic Billboard charts. Huh.

Plus American Idol coverage from Tom Breihan and Sharyn Jackson, behind the #freescooter hashtag, the new semi-autobiographical film from the Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Jeff Mangum at LPR in May, the great Prince extortion scam, Duff McKagan's book deal, new music from the Gaslight Anthem, Asher Roth, Drake, and the Hold Steady, and lots more, below. We're back on Monday.