Alternately titled: How I got in to Two Sold Out Yeasayer Shows in New York City, A Tale of Happiness & Triumph
One of the biggest challenges a music writer can face is writing about a band you adore. Sometimes you like something so much that the task of describing it is an overwhelming pressure. You [...]

I’m not so smug as to think that I can pin-point the albums that will, in retrospect, stand out the most from the 2000s. Nor would it be accurate to argue that the albums that affected me the most on a personal level were “the best.” But if I were to completely take the personal [...]

Hey, look at that – we’re still alive! Complete truth: I meant to post this a good week earlier, but was having server troubles.
2009 was a rough year, personally, for your poor webmistress, but it would take quite something to stop the compiling of year end lists. Though, 2009 wasn’t such a competitive year for [...]

I’m truly sorry T-Sides and all related projects have been offline for so long. Chalk it up to summer, chalk it up to a quarter-life crisis, chalk it up to any sorry excuse for life taking us away from the things we love that require any amount of work. But let’s turn the focus on [...]

An overwhelming 27,000 people showed up to see David Byrne play a free show at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn on Monday night. The show was the opening of the 2009 Celebrate Brooklyn concert series. Celebration was easily the theme of the night, whether you were celebrating the fact that it didn’t rain, the [...]

Summer’s basically here. I can taste it. Spent my Memorial Day Weekend in the green bounty of Vermont. The minute my train rode into Vermont’s green border, the smile on my face couldn’t be removed. Managed to get a little work done while I was there, though –
Wrote an 8+ for Ear Farm on the [...]

Pattern Is Movement have certainly lived up to the Movement part of their name, touring relentlessly since the release of their excellent fourth album, All Together. Seeing them for the third time since October, Pattern Is Movement’s set at Webster Hall last Wednesday was yet another in a line of charged, exciting performances. The duo [...]

After seeing jam-freak-avant-folksters Akron/Family put on an incredible show at Brooklyn’s Union Pool in March, there was only one thing left to do: Go home, go online, buy tickets to see them again. After seeing Akron/Family put on an incredible show at Manhattan’s Bowery Ballroom last night, there’s only one conclusion that can be made: [...]

“You are no longer a river to me,” Miles Seaton sings on “River,” the new single from Akron/Family’s upcoming album, Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free.
Akron/Family: “River” (download)
He compares his lover to several bodies of water – a docile stream, a glassy bay, a vast and open sea. And though his lover and the element [...]

Cursive: “From The Hips” (download)
“From the Hips” is one of the tracks that most echoes the band’s earliest sentiments on their excellent new album, Mama, I’m Swollen. Opening slow and somber, front man Tim Kasher wearily sings, “I’m at my best when I’m at my worst,” used as a line on a date in this [...]