Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year?

Whoa boy, what a week, right? Beyonce! Justin Timberlake! Fall Out Boy! Destiny's Child! My Bloody Valentine! Over the last few days our ears have been blessed with new releases and reunions from some buzzworthy artists who couldn't keep loyal and patient fans waiting much longer. From full-albums to music videos and concert appearances, 2013 Music already feels epic, and the year has barely begun.

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A clown's-eye view of the Bamboozle. Look, asphalt!

• The week in out-and-aboutness: The overstimulation of The Bamboozle; the thrust-and-parry relationship between the two members of The Kills; the inadvertently timely New York debut of Steve Reich's "WTC 9/11"; the splendor of Kylie Minogue; the loungey side of the Fiery Furnaces; the Astoria tipping point epitomized by The Roots; and the sweet harmony of Bruno Mars and Janelle Monáe.

• The late Poly Styrene was just one of the women from the post-punk generation to get back to making music in recent years.

• A look at why fewer urban-radio hits are crossing over to the pop charts.

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A pseudoscientist wants to know: Is pop music proof that we're all too in love with ourselves? (Spoiler: Not really!)

Venue closures: Don Hill's; Paul Shaffer's House.

Ad-Rock's 10 best remixes.

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The week that was in music:

"Weird Al" Yankovic made Lady Gaga blink.

Beyoncé overloaded everyone's eardrums.

Fleetwood Mac is in rock critics' comfort zone.

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Five days! Many items! A look at the last week at Sound of the City is below.

We weighed Salem and fake Salem and the Internet and the slippery notion of "truth" online

We chatted with Mike Watt about being on crutches, taking naps, and "the Neutral Milk guy."

We counted down Kool Keith's many aliases.

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"In reality, there is no greatest of all time," wrote Prodigy, wisely from prison. This sort of wisdom resonates in a week during which Phil Collins says "That's All" (sort of) to his epic career, and the Dropkick Murphys make a confusing Billboard Top Ten debut with an album called Going Out of Style. And Conor Oberst doesn't get as drunk before his shows as he used to. "Of all time" is a long time, we know. But we still know all the words to "Bowl of Oranges," and so nothing can stop us from trying.

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Last week we spent a lot of time searching for solid ground in a world where Arcade Fire win Grammys and Odd Future take over Fallon. This week Tyler got his shoe back, Thom danced, and we all moved on.

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'Twas a week of profound excitement undercut by crushing disappointment, all swirling around the same event: LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden. It was announced. People got excited. A Wednesday-morning presale line wrapped around the Lower East Side. But a lot people got shut out. Then came today's actual Ticketmaster sale, from which seemingly everybody got shut out. Now nobody's happy except for, you guessed it, the good people at Stubhub. This is sure to end well.

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Photo via Fred W. McDarrah, there from the start.

Yes, it was Dylan Week here at SOTC, a veritable orgy of Greenwich Village-scouring videos (with installments covering Cafe Wha?, Jones Street, the Gaslight, and Washington Square Hotel, or just enjoy the whole thing in one shot here), along with various essays, interviews, and so forth. Critic/author David Yaffe considered Dylan's full history here in town, and why it never got better than 1961. Rob Trucks chatted with violinist Scarlet Rivera, famously plucked right off the street by Dylan himself and scooted right into the studio to play on Desire. We asked various artists (No Age, Gang of Four, No Age, Deer Tick, DJ Rekha, etc.) to name their favorite Dylan song; "Visions of Joanna" came up quite a bit. We scoured the Voice archives for a few classic clips, including a glowing Blonde on Blonde review and a report from a wild Mods vs. Rockers brawl at a show early in his gone-electric days. Even our "Are You Smarter Than a Rock Critic?" feature played along, challenging allegedly knowledgeable scribes to name as many '60s Dylan albums as possible. (Bob Dylan in Jail is the wrong answer.) And finally, spare a moment also for rock/comedy/folk triple-threat Todd Snider's fantastic all-lower-case essay on what he'll say/do if he ever meets Bob Dylan, i.e. he has no idea, yet.

We also discussed other things.

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So we put out Pazz & Jop this week. We're pretty happy with it. As are Kanye West and Cee Lo Green, hopefully. Lots of essays and lists and numbers to absorb there, so spend some time if you haven't yet, and if you have, please enjoy our bonus post-mortem analysis: some context for Kanye's record-breaking victory, some charts showing what the poll would've looked like without him, and some bonus lists measuring Enthusiasm, Hipness, Metalism, and Kvltosis, the last of which I still don't understand, but that only makes it cooler.

We also did other stuff, honest.

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