I Hope I Age Like Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder kept Bridgestone rocking past midnight last night.
Stevie Wonder kept Bridgestone rocking past midnight last night.

When my mom found out Stevie Wonder was coming to Nashville, she wanted me to go so badly that she helped me pay for the tickets.  Not that I wouldn’t have tried to go anyways.  Stevie is 64 years old, so who knows how long he’ll be touring?  And word was that he would be playing his seminal 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life in full.

From the moment I found my seat at Bridgestone Arena I knew the show was going to be an extravagant production.  On the stage sat two drum kits, two percussion arrays, seats for a ten-piece string ensemble and six-piece brass section, risers for a horde of backing vocalists, several keyboards and guitars waiting to be played, and of course Stevie’s setup front and center: his signature Hohner Clavinet and a Yamaha electric grand piano.

What’s Grunge?

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There’s been a lot of talk about grunge since Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. According to mass media and popular modernized sentiment, the grunge scene put Seattle on the map and revitalized rock music. Bands like Nirvana, those based in the Northwest and perpetuating this innovative sound, are said to have unleashed a new form of culture – grunge – that still carries remnants today.

Top 6 Deep House Tracks

“Deep house” is kind of a catchall term for laid-back, slower-paced house music using live-sounding instruments. The genre is a contrast to electronic dance music characterized by manipulation, distortion, and “bass”, and features jazz solos, string loops, tropical drums, alongside other sounds plausibly produced by physical objects. This list is about some of the memorable instruments that pop up in deep house tracks, and also serves as a countdown of my personal favorite tracks related to the genre.

6) Omar-S — “The Shit Baby” (2013)
Omar S
Omar S

Instrument Featured: Piano

In the middle of Omar S’ modest 2013 album Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself comes the unexpectedly fun piano jam-out “The Shit Baby”. For the uninitiated deep house fan this track is a great place to start: it starts with hi-hat/hand-clap triplets and a standard background bass kick, before someone hops on the keys for an impromptu crowd-pleaser.

RIYL: “Plastic Dreams”, pre-programmed keyboard beats + mad keys playin’ skills

6 Artists Poised to Take the Bonnaroo Crown in 2015

Every year, tens of thousands of music fanatics the world over gather on “the farm” in Manchester, Tennessee for Bonnaroo. Also, it has become tradition to see which sets have left the greatest mark on the festival-goers. Showmanship, the timing of the show, and the size of the artist’s existing fanbase serve as key factors in determining which artists leave Tennessee with the most positive response. In 2014, most of the news and opinions arose from Elton John’s closing set, Kanye’s polarizing rants, and Ukranian group DakhaBrakha’s outlandish stylings. Let’s take a look at which artists are poised to leave their mark on this year’s fest.

Sicko Mobb / Super Saiyan Vol. 2

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This is rap gone Technicolor, if you’re not a fan of Autotune (maybe you’re Jay-Z) you may want to look the other way. Chicago bop duo Lil Trav and Lil Ceno have another stack of elastic high-energy tracks that paint rap in a melodic bloom of colorful effects anchored by bouncy beats.

Coming off some infectious tracks, (“Remy Rick”, “Fiesta”, “Young Heavy”, and  “Round N Round”) Sicko Mobb carry on in the latest progression of Autotuned rap-singing melodic rap. Their weird, catchy sound is reminiscent of the hazed out hedonism anthems of Future and pretty boy ego trips of Soulja Boy, though while Future has been chasing around demons and inverting the melody of Autotune to soundtrack his own self-torturing abandonment, Sicko Mobb are flourishing in the elasticity of rap-singing.

Should You Torrent That?

Since the dawn of the digital age, the music industry has succumb to a new form of shoplifting – online piracy. While pirating music is not a new concept along with the Internet, downloading music without paying for it is occurring at a much greater magnitude than the pre-internet days. As an Economics major, I wonder how much this phenomenon affects the music industry. So I ask the question: Should you really be torrenting?

Quarterly Report: WRVU Picks 2015’s Best Songs So Far

It’s hard to believe it, but 2015 is already a fourth of the way done. It was not a light musical quarter by any means: in the past month we’ve seen high-profile releases from Sufjan Stevens, Kendrick Lamar, Death Grips, and many more. But what tracks stood out above the rest? We asked our staff to tell us a little bit about their pick for favorite song of 2015 so far. Read on for their selections, and be sure to check them all out in the Spotify playlist at the end.

Dan Deacon — “Feel the Lightning”

“Feel the Lightning” by Dan Deacon makes you do just that — feel an electrifying force pass your entire body. It is the perfect mixture of upbeat and hypnotic, catchy but complex, and successfully maintains the typical “Dan Deacon vibe” of collectively bizarre, yet intriguing electronic music.
–Julia Anderson

Your Guide to Summer Music Festivals

Summer is just around the corner, and that means that thousands of music fans will be attending the music festivals taking place all across the country. But with tickets to these festivals typically costing $200 or more and lots of artists playing multiple festivals, it can be hard to decide which festival you should go to. Here’s my recap of who is playing which festivals so you can decide where to spend your hard-earned cash.

Music Festival Chart

Remixes and Refixes and Extended Mixes, Oh My!

Even though I like to pretend I’m a music aficionado, let’s face it: I seriously have no idea what’s going on when it comes to titling remixes. Sure, I have every song in my iTunes library labeled to a tee. I take care to list who’s featured on a track, who produced it, what label it’s on (if any), and most importantly, what the artist labeled the track. As a result of this OCD tendency combined with my love for all things electronica, my music catalog is brimming with words like “refix,” “original mix,” and “flip.” Despite this need for classifying these songs with various descriptors, I have no clue what most of these words actually mean. I’m sure many of you guys are in the same boat. So, after a few days of digging on Reddit and a few Google searches, let’s see if it’s possible to clear up some of this jargon.

One of the primary differences between tracks is length. Each different length has a different name. In a sense, every song in its purest form is an original mix, but some songs come in multiple versions. Although it seems intuitive, it’s still helpful to clarify that original mix denotes the first complete mix by the original artist. Simply put, it’s a song by an artist with no other changes; it can be of any length. If an artist prefers the track to be longer, he or she will produce an extended mix. In the extended mix, the track usually includes a longer intro and outro and is longer than the original mix. This type of mix is how the original artist imagines a song without time constraints — usually too long for radio. The last type of mix in this temporal category is the radio edit. In the radio edit, expletives are taken out and the length of the track is cut between 3 and 5 minutes in length (but usually closest to the three minute mark). Intros and outros that may bore radio listeners and take up valuable advertisement time are cut down.

Jazzmaster Jams

I’m a guitarist.  Like most guitarists, I have a favorite model of guitar: the Fender Jazzmaster.  First, just a little history about the guitar.  Fender first released the Jazzmaster in the late 1950s as a mode of reaching out to jazz musicians.  However, most jazz musicians ended up still using the other brands due to the Jazzmaster’s innate ability to produce feedback, something that jazz doesn’t really call for.  But the model gained a huge following among surf rock bands of the 1960s, the first place where the instrument came to prominence.  Still, with a warm tone and a lack of sustain, most 70s rock guitarists favored the mighty Gibson Les Paul, while Fender purists went back to the Stratocaster.  That left Jazzmasters as pawn shop guitars, cheap yet high quality.  So, many notable bands have picked Jazzmasters up since the 1950s, and many guitarists use primarily Jazzmasters.  Below are some of my favorite songs recorded using the model.

Because the Haters Gonna Hate: Taylor Swift Buys New Adult Domain Names

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Just last week, pop star Taylor Swift bought up two new websites: TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult. I doubt it will surprise many of you to hear that neither of these sites will be utilized for their implied purpose. Instead, this is another instance of “domain squatting”, where an individual purchases a domain name either with the intent to profit off of a large amount of ads placed on a legitimate-sounding domain, or in this instance to prevent others from having the domain title. With Swift’s high degree of visibility, it was probably a good PR move. Not all celebrities have been that lucky, however.

Death Grips Release “Final” Album

After months of anticipation, Death Grips’ second half of their final two-part album, The Powers that B, is finally available to the public. Entitled Jenny Death, this album was uploaded to YouTube months after the first half of the album, N***** on the Moon, was released for free (reviewed here by WRVU DJ Brett Tregoning). After their break-up announcement via napkin last summer, fans have been on edge to listen to what could potentially be the final installment in their discography. As always with the painstakingly unpredictable group, things have not always been very transparent with the band. However, the band always delivers on their album promises, and this time the wait was worth it.

Sufjan Stevens Dials it Back for the Intimate ‘Carrie & Lowell’

Sufjan Stevens has never been afraid to bear his heart to an audience. Even at his most thematic and theatrical–2005’s masterpiece Illinois–he wasn’t shy about including a line like “I cried myself to sleep last night” as the centerpiece of a song before asking the listener to question “are you writing from the heart?” But while Illinois buried its confessional nature amidst richly arranged baroque pop playgrounds, Carrie & Lowell is a thoroughly intimate affair; all you’ll find here are fluttering guitars, double-tracked vocals delivered with a whisper, and haunting synthesizer elegies bookending the album’s brisk tracks. It is an album that is simple and anguished to its very core.

Sufjan's seventh album is inspired by his mother and step-father
Sufjan’s seventh album is inspired by his mother and step-father

Songs for a Break-up

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I was recently curious as to why I know so many people who enjoy sad music. It seems especially in times of grief or extreme sadness, like after a rough break-up, everyone wants to listen to a stranger wail about lost love.

Music You May Be Interested In (It’s All Really Good!)

In preparation for me dedicating myself to listening to Earl’s new album for the rest of the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to create a list of what I have been listening to in the past few weeks. All of this stuff is incredible, and should be listened to again and again. Some of it is very, very new and some of it is quite older but all of it was presumably recorded after the year 1994.

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¡All-Time Quarterback! – ¡All-Time Quarterback! (2002, Barsuk Records)

Kendrick Lamar's third album, 'To Pimp a Butterfly', is monumental

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly is a confrontational affair, and the initial response from the general public reflected that. As one of the most commercially successful and critically lauded rappers of the 21st century, looking to follow up 2012’s classic-in-its-own-right Good Kid M.A.A.D City, Kendrick Lamar bravely ensured that To Pimp a Butterfly was too dense to take in with just a listen or two. Infinite tweets, reviews, and “thinkpieces” have attempted to pick this piece of art to the bone, but not a single one will do this labyrinth of cultural and personal meditation justice.

Kendrick Lamar's third album, To Pimp a Butterfly, is monumental
Kendrick Lamar’s ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ had a surprise early release last week

Houndmouth Delivers With Second Album

If you were to travel back in time to the year 1968 and cryogenically freeze the guys of The Band, only to wake them up in the year 2015, you’d probably find them hanging out with the members of Houndmouth. Both groups are harmony heavy, folk-funk powerhouses. While The Band spent a whole bunch of years touring with legends like Bob Dylan, and recording a massive repertoire of legendary jams, Houndmouth is just now coming up out of Indiana with their second album, Little Neon Limelight, dropping on Rough Trade earlier this week.

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Twin Shadow Shifts Closer Towards Pop Immediacy

In retrospect, Twin Shadow/George Lewis Jr. always belonged on a major label, though this wasn’t obvious at the time of his 2010 new-wave-revival debut, Forget. On Forget, retro guitars and a lo-fi drum machine kept Twin Shadow grounded in New Order’s more restrained brand of new wave instead of something flashier. Also like a New Order single, nearly every song on Forget reached for lasting vocal melodies. Songs like “At My Heels” and “Slow” were slick ‘80s style exercises in part, but the striking vocalist and memorable choruses left the lasting impression. Twin Shadow’s next album Confess (2012) honed in on these features and jettisoned potential distractions. While some missed the relative subtlety of Forget, this kind of pop music can benefit from directness. The intoxicating “This isn’t loooooove” on “Run My Heart”, “Five Seconds” with its “can’t get to your heart…”, “Golden Light”: Confess blew relationship feelings into massive proportion. If Forget is the Breakfast Club kids developing meaningful ‘80s connections, Confess is John Cusack in your yard with a boombox.

Twin Shadow's third album is his first on a major label
Twin Shadow’s third album, Eclipse, is his first on a major label

We are all Modular’s People

Upon finding out that Tame Impala had released a new single for their upcoming album (whose name remains unknown), I just had to jump at the chance to see them (again) on their new tour. A friend asked me, how did you know about Tame Impala so early on? I thought about it for a little bit until the light bulb went off on my head. My answer was: Modular People.