Lists

Ten Unlikely Musicians Whose Best Songs Are Slow Jams

By Dan Weiss Tue., Mar. 12 2013 at 3:30 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, Lists

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James Murphy: Open Your Heart To Him
Over time, rock and roll lost touch with its "Love Me Tender" and "Peggy Sue" beginnings and became kind of a closet Quiet Storm listener sometime around the time Ozzy Osbourne entered the collective consciousness. Except even hair metal was dominated by lighter-wavers. Basically, no one can resist ballads, no matter how hard they try, and here are ten acts few would've predicted made their best work when succumbing to the call of the slow jam.

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Arguing On The Internet

Those "Influential" Albums Being Discussed on Facebook? They're Garbage

By Dan Weiss Wed., Jan. 30 2013 at 1:46 PM
Categories: Arguing On The Internet, Dan Weiss

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The Chameleons: more influential than Ray Charles and James Brown combined
Influentialalbums.com is a "quiz" one of your Facebook friends might've posted, boasting "Very few people own 70 or more. How many have you got?" and listing 100 albums ranging from the duh (Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds) to the hmmm (Gerry Rafferty? Felt??) to the genuinely bizarre (well, see below). The most obvious thing that stands out is the list doesn't claim to be only "rock" albums, but other genres are represented with just one thing apiece. The staggering amount of white people makes a Rolling Stone list look like a Complex list. No one knows where this thing comes from, although selections like Super Furry Animals are a dead giveaway that the "quiz"/list/viralbait is probably of British origin. Still, it's a pretty astonishingly bloodless compendium (hint: the jazz album ain't Miles, Monk or Coltrane). So here's a futile attempt to corral the most bizarre inclusions and exclusions. Hopefully chanting "For Emma, Forever Ago" three times at a mirror will banish this thing from whence it came.

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Pazz & Jop

Defend Your Ballot: Dan Weiss, Pazz and Jop 2012 Contributor

By Sound of the City Wed., Jan. 30 2013 at 3:15 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, Kendrick Lamar, Matisyahu, Pazz & Jop, Robyn

Pazz and Jop
You can't really know where you're headed unless you know where you've been. For that reason, we're taking a look back at Pazz & Jop 2012 to drill down into the ballots of contributors and voters who participated. Maybe amongst the rubble we'll find clues about what lies ahead for music lovers in 2013. Here, music writer Dan Weiss defends his ballot.

See Also:
- Pazz and Jop 2012: Top Albums


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Dan Weiss

The Best Albums Pitchfork Hated This Year

By Dan Weiss Tue., Dec. 18 2012 at 9:00 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss

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Sorry Lana.No BNM for you.
Since Purity Ring, Death Grips and Tame Impala didn't exactly take off this year like Arcade Fire or Animal Collective, Pitchfork's cultural influence might be cooling off, which is bittersweet since their writer stable is probably better now than it ever was (some of us don't miss those novelty reviews), and their point-of-view has gotten less indie-elitist and more friendly to female artists, pop and r&b in particular in 2012. But the overarching editorial tastes still tend toward a certain narrative that so many artists do not follow, the whole "victory lap" adage, people ascending until their career crashes and burns, before a triumphant comeback. This sort of sensationalized trajectory really doesn't happen with most artists, who sometimes make good albums and sometimes make disappointing ones. And many artists who've stagnated or are on their way "down" still make more essential music than whoever du jour is on the rise. So here's a bunch of good records that Pitchfork missed the forest for the trees on. (Full disclosure: I've written there in the past. We didn't agree a lot. Also a few fellow Sound of the City people write there too, don't judge them based on my haterade.)

See Also:
- The Ten Best Metal Albums
- Charles Mingus' Secret Eggnog Recipe Will Knock You on Your Ass
- 30 Facts About Ke$ha Gleaned From Her New Book My Crazy Beautiful Life


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Hurricane Aftermath

New Amsterdam Records Badly Hit By Sandy

By Dan Weiss Tue., Nov. 6 2012 at 3:15 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, Hurricane Aftermath

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Photo Courtesy http://davidandrako.tumblr.com/

Following the news of the unfortunate sizable damage to Norton Records, another label based in Red Hook, New Amsterdam Records, has had its headquarters devastated in the storm, including 70% of the label's CD inventory, which the artists themselves actually owned (the label held them as storage but 80% of their album revenue goes directly to the artists). All financial records and backups were destroyed, along with countless pieces of musical equipment from amps to vintage synthesizers.

See Also:
- Norton Records Warehouse Takes Massive Hit from Sandy
- Jersey Native Nicole Atkins: "Every Place That We Grew Up Going To Is Just Ripped Apart Or Gone."
- Brooklyn's South Sound Studio Completely Destroyed By Sandy

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Tags:

New Amsterdam, Red Hook, Sandy
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Live

Live: Against Me! Buck The Norms, Duet With Joan Jett At Terminal 5

By Dan Weiss Mon., Jun. 11 2012 at 8:30 AM
Categories: Against Me, Dan Weiss, Live, The Cult, The Icarus Line

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Joe Papeo via The House List
Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!
Against Me! w/The Cult, The Icarus Line
Terminal 5
Friday, June 8

Better than: Being stuck in pre-tunnel traffic on a Megabus that was supposed to have left Philly at 3:30? (R.I.P. Chinatown buses.) Sorry, sorry. Better than... um, any other rawk band working right now?

The critical indifference toward and commercial failure of Against Me!'s 2010 album White Crosses was straight-up cognitive dissonance to say the least, happening as it did while fellow punks-turned-Springsteenians the Gaslight Anthem and the Hold Steady ate up plaudits and increasingly huge audiences all around. If it took lead singer Tommy Gabel's brave and inspiring decision to become a woman, Laura Jane Grace, for this band to receive the Green Day-level notice they deserve, then so be it.

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Interviews

Q&A: That Dog.'s Anna Waronker On Her Band's Reunion Shows, Josie And The Pussycats And Sweet Valley High

By Dan Weiss Fri., May 25 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, Interviews, that dog.

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That Dog. are proof that the '90s were a very different time, one when an alt-pop band with three women, one guy, extraordinarily catchy songs ("Never Say Never" and "Long Island" were every bit the equal of "Buddy Holly" and "Say It Ain't So"), and a cool gimmick (full-time violinist Petra Haden) could have full major-label backing and still fall between the cracks. They released three albums before parting ways in 1997, including the great Totally Crushed Out! and the absolute classic Retreat from the Sun. After various projects and solo ventures in the 2000s, they've finally reunited for a handful of shows (and, one hopes, a second shot at improving rock radio playlists). Frontwoman Anna Waronker spoke to Sound of the City about the future of the band, the influence of her biz-legend dad Lenny Waronker, and why she prefers After School Specials to Sweet Valley High.

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Outtakes

Paying Tribute To Archers Of Loaf: "Even If I Had Two Other Hands, I Couldn't Count My Favorite Archers Songs On Them"

By Dan Weiss Wed., Aug. 3 2011 at 2:00 PM
Categories: Archers Of Loaf, Band of Horses, Dan Weiss, Les Savy Fav, Outtakes, The Hold Steady

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In this week's Voice, we looked at the history of Archers Of Loaf, the storied North Carolina indie outfit that recently got back together for a run of shows and reissues. Below, some quotes from Archers frontman Eric Bachmann that couldn't fit into the Voice's print edition; members of Band of Horses, Les Savy Fav and the Hold Steady help restore the white trash heroes' proper place in indie rock's annals, too.

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Interviews

Q&A: EMA's Erika M. Anderson On How To Shock People Using Stolen Classic-Rock Lyrics And Firing A Gun At Age 14

By Dan Weiss Wed., Jul. 20 2011 at 11:00 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, EMA, Interviews

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William Rahilly
With her excellent debut Past Life Martyred Saints, former Gown Erika M. Anderson (a.k.a. EMA) has been causing quite a stir for dense sonics and harshly comic narratives that haven't been this critically acclaimed since the heyday of certain Seattlites. Or, if you let her tell it, Lou Reed. In advance of her two New York City shows, we asked her about weapons and breakfast.

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Interviews

Q&A: The Feelies' Glenn Mercer On Overloading Preamps, Constant Writing, And The Status Of Time For A Witness

By Dan Weiss Fri., May 13 2011 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Dan Weiss, Featured, Interviews, The Feelies

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Glenn Mercer, singer/guitarist/co-founder of New Jersey's modestly legendary Feelies, is a warm, soft-spoken guy who hasn't altered much of anything about his music in, oh, twenty years. Sound of the City recently chatted with him about his band's new and old material--Here Before, the Feelies' recent album, is the group's first since 1991--his band's critical stature, and how the vinyl resurgence has affected him.

The Feelies reunited in 2008. What happened with the band in the three years leading up to [2011's] Here Before?

Well, we played shows, mostly on the East Coast, and started writing songs around that time. And we realized after about a year and a half, that we get together so infrequently that for us to really make another album, we had to put our live shows on the back burner. And it was about a year since making the decision to make an album the top priority. So it was about a year of writing all the songs, rehearsing, mixing, recording. It was a slow process, since we're really kind of spread out: Bill's in Florida, Brenda's in Pennsylvania.


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