Music

Written documentation of last night’s Wolves in the Throne Room fan who solemnly held aloft a single invisible orange for several minutes.

Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests?

They had me sign my rights away for $1,” Ms. Crane told me. She never did get that dollar.

Meanwhile, in most areas of the United States, women still need permission from a doctor to buy birth control pills, even though they are arguably safer than a lot of other drugs now sold over the counter and there are very few health risks involved. It’s true… See more →

“Dude, you have orange earplugs! I hate orange. I like green!” says the smiling guy at this show with a novel approach to making friends.

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There’s nothing wrong with walled gardens. They’re safe spaces. They take care of your enjoyment and entertainment, so you don’t have to.

But there also a bit boring. I certainly don’t relish the idea of spending my days within the boundaries of someone else’s vision.

There’s a different kind of garden. It takes its name from another short story by Borges.

The Garden of Forking Paths. It is uncontrolled. It is full of possibilities. It’s… See more →

A Gunfight in Guatemala

Crazy story: Sebastian Rotella. Art direction: David Sleight. Animation: Christopher Park.

Police Building Apartments

Lately my favorite part of my commute is passing this building.

Here’s The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker

Having too much to drink was an amateur mistake that I admit to, but it is not criminal. Everyone in this room has had a night where they have regretted drinking too much, or knows someone… See more →

A Final Visit With Prince: Rolling Stone’s Lost Cover Story

“All of us need to be able to reach out and just fix stuff. There's nothing that's unforgivable.”

The Contributions of Others: A Session with Jeremy Keith

“I’ve found that on the web, it’s best to assume nothing. That might sound like a scary prospect, but it’s actually quite liberating. Giving up on “pixel-perfect” control doesn’t mean giving up on quality. Quite the opposite: it… See more →

Police Body Cameras: What Do You See?

“People are expecting more of body cameras than the technology will deliver,” Professor Stoughton said. “They expect it to be a broad solution for the problem of police-community relations, when in fact it’s just a tool, and like any tool, there’s a limited value to what it can do.”

Inside Operation Trump, the Most Unorthodox Campaign in Political History

Politics require some amount of cynicism and hubris. Trump… See more →

Anonymous BrooklynVegan Comments, Rest in Peace

Glad to see BrooklynVegan taking on its cesspool of a comment section. Rolling my eyes at the inevitable naysayers.

Lupita Nyong’o and Trevor Noah, and Their Meaningful Roles

My mom was like: “Jesus didn’t have his dad, either. You have a stepdad.” People always make it seem like there’s one experience that’s the gold standard to aim for. I didn’t grow up that way.

One of the best things… See more →

The Website Obesity Crisis

Everything we do to make it harder to create a website or edit a web page, and harder to learn to code by viewing source, promotes that consumerist vision of the web.

The 2015 ProPublica Year in Visual Storytelling

A nice roundup of ProPublica’s more visually and interactively rich stories from the past year.

Animated homage to The Wire

When I hear Blind Boys of Alabama’s cover of “Way Down in… See more →

It’s been a shitty week, but luckily @lowtheband came to town tonight to wash off the muck.

As Mondays go, it turns out that the one where you get to see a free, surprise Stevie Wonder show is a winner.

I think it’s fair to say that Faith No More had run its course by the time the band split up in 1998, and seventeen years later, Sol Invictus finds the guys pretty much picking up right where they left off, which renders the album sadly inessential. This is not to say that it’s bad, especially by reunion record standards, but none of its songs are likely to become classics, and some probably should have… See more →

Color me impressed that @ChamberMonster managed to keep a secret for 2+ months, and tonight we’re seeing Stephin Merritt!

After being a Wussy fan for a few years, I only just now noticed that this song borrows liberally from the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks.”

Though a few good bands are included, no one on this compilation does an even remotely compelling Nirvana cover.

I haven’t heard or thought much about this album in probably at least fifteen years. Apropos of nothing, several songs from it have been getting stuck in my head lately, and it’s very confusing.

I never expected to get so much enjoyment from something that reminds me of Sheryl Crow.

Needs more cowbell.

A friend once said that early Skinny Puppy sounded like “someone left Depeche Mode out on the counter overnight,” which I think is a perfect description. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I do.

After politely listening to one of my diatribes on the untapped potential of music metadata, Jeremy Keith introduced me to the work of Chloe Weil in the fall of 2012, specifically Sound of Summer, which dynamically collates the songs that soundtracked her summers dating back to 2001. I was fascinated by the project, but didn’t get around to actually meeting her until Jeremy introduced us in person a year later at Brooklyn Beta, and we… See more →

US Air Guitar first came to Philadelphia in 2008. It was my first air guitar competition and I approached it with the expectation that it would also be my last – it didn’t occur to me that this was something anyone did more than once. I was disabused of that notion by the many wonderful weirdos I met in the green room before the show, some of whom had been traveling up and down the… See more →

Fuck, you guys. White Lung.

Man, this is great. Better produced and more melodic and varied than White Lung’s previous efforts, without sacrificing any of the band’s frantic aggression. The howling vocals, the intricate guitar lines, the four-on-the-floor stomp – this record kills.

Spent the evening catching up with @mrclean, @magnetbox, and @ems, followed by some rock and/or roll from those Dead Milkmen. Summertime!

I can’t decide if Tesco and the boys resurfacing the same week as #YesAllWomen is the worst timing ever or the best.

I once knew a guy who, while gazing up at a clear night sky with a young lady companion, pointed at the brightest star and softly declared, “That’s your star.” This album is thirty-seven saccharine minutes of that same eye-roll-inducing sentiment. Kip Berman has never been a particularly artful lyricist, but at least the band’s early recordings were able to musically express an understanding of romantic love more complicated than that of your average… See more →

Energetic, catchy, fuzzy lo-fi with solid songwriting. On paper, I might not find that description enticing, but I think the monster rhythm section is what sells it for me. Great stuff.

After having their records in steady rotation for several months, tonight I heard Whores the right way. Best live band I’ve seen in ages.

Last night’s Nothing show was way more of a punk thing than I expected; it isn’t the dominant vibe I get from the record. Not a bad thing.

The plush, brightly lit green room at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles is clean, colorful, and carpeted, with two large couches, a bathroom with a shower, and an abundance of mirrors. It is probably the most spacious and comfortable backstage area of any we’ve encountered, but it’s still inadequate. Between organizers, performers, friends, and photographers, the room is at more than twice its capacity, topped off with a showgirl’s ransom… See more →

Parts of this song remind me of Menthol’s “USA Capable” (which isn’t currently available on Rdio). http://youtu.be/KrVxf-nO2QI

When it comes to aging, there is nothing I am more wary of than nostalgia. There’s a fine line between basking in fond memories and believing your best days are behind you, and getting older presents ever more opportunity to cross it. For many people, and certainly for myself, nostalgia’s gauzy glow is most acute in music. After all, it’s the soundtrack to our lives, and for whatever reason, most of us tend to engage… See more →

Joe Elliott can’t hit the high notes quite as forcefully as he used to, but otherwise, Def Leppard sounds pretty fantastic here. It’s impressive to hear an album as quintessentially overproduced as Hysteria pulled off live this faithfully, and 25 years later at that. (Of course, the band has had plenty of recent practice aping its younger self by recording verbatim recreations of its classic hits to spite its domineering record label.)

For my money,… See more →

Well, at least we’ll always have that first album.

I got into Shudder to Think just as they were splitting up, and I couldn’t make it to any of the dates on the short reunion tour they did ten years later. So this live album – culled from those reunion shows – is bittersweet for me, since it demonstrates conclusively what a fantastic live band they were. Also, if you’re new to Shudder to Think, the set list here is a great overview of… See more →

Swans and Chelsea Wolfe made my two favorite records from last year, and now I’m heading out to see them play a show together.

First time I’ve been frisked at a music venue in NYC. Makes me kinda homesick for Philly.

You know, I bet female musicians just love it when their male fans shout marriage proposals at them onstage.