Arcade Fire’s Reflektor is Nothing Short of Astounding

November 6, 2013
Image Courtesy of Wikipedia

It’s here.  After a beautifully executed marketing campaign highlighted by street art veve drawings and fictional bands, Arcade Fire’s fourth studio album, Reflektor, has arrived to bring music to our waiting ears.  At a personal level, this record has struck a vibrant chord with me.  The simplistic epic that was “Wake Up” from Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral, was one of the first songs that opened up my musical horizons past classic rock, where I had always thought that the guitar solo was king.  I’m finding my tastes diverging now into more like that of a dance-maven, and so a danceable album from the band that was a real catalyst in getting me to originally expand my musical horizons might just be my favorite release of the year when it’s all said and done.

Meet Electronic Music Producer, Gold Panda

November 4, 2013
Photo courtesy of oohbrilliant.com

 

London born electronic producer Gold Panda’s sophomore album Half of Where You Live, released this past June, showcases his experiences jetsetting throughout the world for the past three years, and boy is it a treat for the ears. The album stays fresh yet minimal by sampling different vibes from South American, Asian, and European countries in tracks named like An English House, Brazil, My Father in Hong Kong 1961, and Enoshima.

Fly Free Festival 2013

November 4, 2013

Adams, TN is a brief town: home to barely 600 people and a few miles of softly rolling fields, glinting golden in the husky glow of the late autumn sun. Signs for corn mazes and freshly harvested clover honey adorn the narrowly winding US 41–leading a silver Chevy, stereo blasting James Blake’s “Retrograde,” to the Red River Campground, where the one rule of the weekend is to fly free.

This past weekend hosted the inaugural Fly Free Festival, a festival aiming to de-Roo the middle Tennessee music & arts community. Bonnaroo, though it is a world of magic, has grown to such incredible proportions that it has lost the intimacy and mindfulness of the original festival mission–it is, essentially, a temporary urbanity. Fly Free was the type of festival where an unlocked car did not mean property theft and falling asleep under the stars did not pose an invitation for violence.

8 Songs to Play at a Halloween Party That You Might Not Have Thought Of

October 30, 2013

My fellow staff writer Lucas Kunsman recently wrote a very good list of songs that are hauntingly beautiful. A few of my favorites — “Oh Comely” and “Kasimir Pulaski Day” — made the list. But it got me curious: what are 8 songs that are actually appropriate for a Halloween party? Now, these aren’t all Halloween songs, I know, and a lot of them aren’t really that dark or scary; I didn’t want to give you a list filled with horror-film scores and industrial metal. I also didn’t want to give you a list of songs like “Monster Mash” and “Thriller”, so I tried to pick songs you haven’t thought of.

So here are a few songs that are vaguely sinister and festive, but still fun enough to justify playing at a party. No one wants to hear the theme from Psycho while they’re sipping a beer and trying to hit on the girl in the inappropriately revealing costume.

Between the Buried and Me at Cannery Ballroom: Out of this World

October 28, 2013
Between the Buried and Me, probably the best progressive metal band around today.
Between the Buried and Me, probably the best progressive metal band around today.

I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, and it shows when I think about my five favorite artists.  Four of those are Rush, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Beatles and (the most recent addition) Kanye West.  All revered throughout their community of contemporaries and listeners, all well-known to the general public.

The fifth artist?  Between the Buried and Me.  Never heard of them?  Not surprising, seeing as their genre is progressive death metal.

Why October 29th Is Gonna Be Amazing

October 25, 2013
My reaction upon seeing next week’s new releases
Photo courtesy of Neatorama.

Next week is easily the best week of music releases so far this year. While most weeks may have one or two big releases, this next week has so many interesting listens for fans of all genres, a few of which have me giddy in anticipation.

Here’s just a sample of the smaller releases coming this week. For jazz/hip-hop fans, you have pianist Robert Glasper’s Black Radio 2, the sequel to his smooth album Black Radio featuring guest spots from Jill Scott, Common, Lupe Fiasco, Norah Jones, and more. For you Odd Future fans, Mellowhype drops their new album on Halloween. For hip-hop heads who want to look outside the Americas, UK synth-funk hip-hop group band Paper Tiger (not to be confused with the incredible Minneapolis producer/Doomtree affiliate of the same name) has a new album coming. Metal fans can check out new albums from Toxic Holocaust and Skeletonwitch. Garage-rock/soul/funk-rock fans can feast their ears on the new album from White Denim. And those are just the smaller cool releases I wanted to highlight. Here are the top 5 reasons that the 29th of October is going to be a quite exciting day in music.

8 Songs That Are Hauntingly Beautiful

October 24, 2013
Image courtesy of Shadow Mill Productions

Halloween is only a week away.  Many people would say that it is a haunting time of year.  Haunting is defined as “poignant and evocative; difficult to ignore or forget.”  In that spirit, here are eight songs that are haunting in some or many aspects, but at the same time leave you in awe of their beauty; a different kind of Halloween song.

Pluck All Your Silly Strings: Neutral Milk Hotel, in Chattanooga, TN (10/19/13)

October 20, 2013
Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998. From left to right: Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes.

 

This is covert stuff. I’ve been waiting in line for 45 minutes to attend a show for which their are no real tickets — it’s all electronic, so as to prevent reselling and scalping. Now, the throng of diehards here to see a band that died 15 years ago, is herded into single-file lines. Women’s bags are checked. Men are given full-body pat downs. We’re all warned several times: no cameras, no video recorders, no audio recorders, no cell phone videos or pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to file for Level 3 Security Clearance. People talk in hushed tones. What is inside Track 29, in Chattanooga, isn’t meant to get out. Inside is an experience, ephemeral, to be stored in one’s mind and not one’s computer. It’s like the nineties. Entering this venue is entering a time machine. This is not surprising, considering that the band we’re all here to see famously sang “I wish’d I could save her in some sort of time machine.” Everyone thought Neutral Milk Hotel was dead; perhaps they were saved in that very same time machine.

A Closer Look at Why We Hate Nickelback

October 14, 2013
But why? ...Okay, that soul patch is pretty bad.
But why? …Okay, that soul patch is pretty bad.

This past weekend, I was having a GroupMe conversation with a few of my fraternity brothers and, somehow or other, Nicolas Cage popped up.  He always seems to do that in the strangest of places.  We threw around the idea of having Cage be the entertainment for our next party–“he probably needs the money,” quipped our social chair–when I brought up the possibility of a Nick-themed rager: Nicolas Cage PLUS Nickelback.  So bad it would be legendary.  “Cagelback: Because we hate you.”

We all had our laughs but then I remembered something: I used to like Nickelback.

My Top 5 Road Trip Albums

October 9, 2013
Image courtesy of Wikipedia

I go on a lot of road trips.  I have to drive between Albuquerque, NM and Nashville, TN twice per year so I can have access to my car in my two homes.  I drive to retreats and district events for Tau Beta Sigma, the band service organization I am a part of.  I drive to various music festivals.  I’m going to be driving to Mardi Gras this spring.  And while some people may not understand it, I love all of these long drives, and one of the main reasons for that is having a good road trip playlist.  Having been fortunate enough to be travelling to festivals for two of the past three weekends, I’ve decided to share a few of my current favorite road trip albums.

Jake Bugg’s “What Doesn’t Kill You” Review

October 5, 2013
courtesy of videostatic.com

Now let me say singer-songwriter Jake Bugg is hands down my all time favourite artist in the whole world, so when he released his newest single around two weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised by the harsher, tougher, sound of What Doesn’t Kill You, marking a huge shift from the indie folk/rock sound of his debut album Jake Bugg. For his fans who prefer the tracks with just Bugg’s voice and his acoustic guitar (Simple as This, Country Song, Note to Self, Someone Told Me), it may take some time for the new single to grow on them, but Bugg’s charismatic voice and intimately personal lyrics only get better with each listen.

Under-appreciated Albums: “The Hazards of Love”, by the Decemberists

October 2, 2013

A few weeks ago the National played at the Ryman, and fellow staff writer Nick Kline and I happened to meet up there. We talked about music, favorite bands, past concerts, and then we hit upon The Decemberists — we’d both seen them live, on their 2009 A Short Fazed Hovel tour, where they played the entirety of their recent album The Hazards of Love. Nick mentioned as an aside that HoL his least favorite Decemberists album, and conversation moved on.

Perhaps this (and, admittedly, a bad case of writer’s block) is what motivated me to write this. While I don’t necessarily know why it’s Nick’s least favorite, nor do I even know if he likes or dislikes it, the general opinion developed since The Hazards of Love‘s release is that’s it’s overwrought, weird, has too many guest vocals, is too repetitive, and too metal. By the time of the release of The Decemberists’ next effort, the superb The King is Dead in 2011, frontman Colin Meloy admitted “Even I’m starting to believe it, like, ‘I guess The Hazards of Love did kind of suck, didn’t it?'”.  By 2013, it’s largely been swept under the rug, left hiding under the skirt of the bigger and strong releases in their six-album catalog. Yet, I can’t help but love this album. 

Lockwood Barr and a Cloud Control Review

September 30, 2013
I "discovered" Cloud Control this week. According to Christopher Columbus, I can claim them for Spain and force them to mine my gold and farm my crops.
I “discovered” Cloud Control this week. According to Christopher Columbus, I can claim them for Spain and force them to mine my gold and farm my crops.

Hey everybody,

One of the benefits of hosting The VU Backstage for a year is that you develop friendships and solid connections with the artists you invite on the show.  This is especially nice when you are scrambling for a guest for the show on the day of.  You call up a friend–in this case Lockwood Barr–and you do the show.  And the interview is easy because there’s already an established rapport there, making conversation a delight and bringing more personality out of both you and the guest.

That was what happened last night.  Lockwood and I had fun discussing everything from her new band and extensive tour plans to The Catcher in the Rye and gourmet cooking.  It was fittingly awkward when I whiffed on two straight Napoleon Dynamite references, but there was also substantive insight into Lockwood’s songwriting and attitude towards music.  Of course, there was also the music itself, which was fantastic.  You can catch the full show here.

In other news, I discovered a new band (for me, at least; you’ve probably heard of them for a few years).  Generally, I look to the past for my music; Rush, the Beatles, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers with John Frusciante are my three favorite bands.  Any current music I consume has to be introduced to me by someone else, either because a recommendation is a sure sign that a band is worth my time or because I am too lazy to seek out the music myself.  Luckily, I work at WRVU and cannot avoid being introduced to new and unfamiliar music.

CHVRCHES Soar With Thrilling, Excellently Executed Debut

September 27, 2013
Photo Courtesy of anotherrainysaturday.com

Coming off of last year’s monster single “The Mother We Share,” many (including yours truly) have been hotly anticipating more from Scottish synthpop band CHVRCHES. Could they sustain the rush of that song over a whole album? Would they be able to bring enough variety in their sugary-yet-melancholic sound to last an album’s length? Thankfully the answer to both of those questions on debut The Bones of What You Believe is “mostly yes.” With the sonic layers to please synth-heads and the songwriting prowess to please everyone else, CHVRCHES has delivered one of the year’s most fully realized debuts and one of the best pop records I’ve heard in ages.

Atlanta’s Music Midtown Festival is a Can’t-Miss Weekend

September 25, 2013
Image from Music Midtown

This past Friday and Saturday marked the 3rd year of the return of Atlanta’s Music Midtown Festival to Piedmont Park.  The two-day festival included three stages and a diverse line-up ranging from rap genius Kendrick Lamar, to classic rock titans Journey, to live show titans Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I attended the festival with a friend who is a graduate student in chemistry at Georgia Tech.  In short, it was an amazing weekend.  After the jump, I’ll be giving you a look at it day-by-day, and then summarizing the festival experience as a whole to wrap things up.

Meet Soul Belter John Newman

September 22, 2013
photo courtesy of www.standard.co.uk

You’ve heard him on Rudimental’s track Feel the Love (and if you haven’t here’s a link), but John Newman is making it big. Call it soul, r&b, funk, whatever you want, but Newman’s music is unbelievably catchy and charismatic, and although he’s only released a handful of singles (his debut album is set to release October 14!), his climb to fame is attracting attention throughout the UK and seeping its way into America.

Little Known Classics: Important by Jip Jop

September 20, 2013

 

Album image courtesy of Spotify

The Band:

Jip Jop formed sometime between 2006 and 2008 (depending on which online bio you trust) when front man Ben Gershman- Benny Nice behind the boards and on the mic- noticed a few standout students in Indiana University Bloomington’s Jacobs school of music. They each had jazz training, they all liked hip-hop and so naturally they melded the two.

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