The Conscious Consumer
By Taylor K. Long While record browsing with a friend at Greenpoint’s Permanent Records last week, I found a copy of the Long Winters album, When I Pretend To Fall in the .99 section and realized that though I love it, I don’t own it in any physical form. The kind clerk informed me that...
Wild Beasts @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, Sunday, February 28th
When Wild Beasts came to New York City last fall, they found themselves in the pressured position of having a lot to prove. They’d made only one US trek beforehand, to SXSW. Members of the press came out in droves to hear and see the UK foursome, now on their second album, Two Dancers, which...
Yeasayer @ Bowery Ballroom, Monday, February 8th, & @ Music Hall of Williamsburg, Tuesday, February 9th
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....
David Byrne @ Prospect Park Bandshell, Monday, June 8th
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...
Throbbing Gristle @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Tuesday, April 28th
If anyone other than Throbbing Gristle had been playing the Brooklyn Masonic Temple on Tuesday night, the fact that the crowd was older and stranger and on more drugs than the average New York City crowd might have been off-putting. And if anyone other than Throbbing Gristle had been on stage, the fact that they...
T-Sides Contest: Win a TV on the Radio poster designed by Tunde Adebimpe
As you may have guessed from a few entries, or read in recent interviews, T-Sides can’t get enough of TV on the Radio and their latest album, Dear Science. In honor of these talented men from our home-base borough of Brooklyn, we’re giving away a poster designed by singer Tunde Adebimpe. I looks like that...
Death Cab for Cutie at McCarren Park Pool: The Injury-Ridden Aftermath
Image courtesy Sam Rosenblatt Now that my review of Death Cab for Cutie’s concert at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park Pool is up on Bullz-Eye, I can give an account of the upsetting events that happened afterward. You’ll want to read the piece on Bullz-Eye first, so pop on over there and read it. Don’t worry, this...
Joanna Newsom @ BAM, Thursday, Jan. 31st
A Joanna Newsom album has never sounded as good as she did when she played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last Thursday. Even the most middling of fans, the most ardent of critics, could not possibly have walked away unswayed by the remarkable skill and charm she emanated throughout the evening. Accompanied by the...
Papertrigger @ Southpaw, Thursday, Dec. 13
Like a talent sandwich of sorts, Papertrigger was the filling center of an otherwise “meh” line-up consisting of the Diggs (unremarkable standard indie pop fare with stalkeresquely creepy lyrics) and Most Serene Republic (who started off strong but blended into repetition far too quickly). The relatively young Philly band (both in terms of the band’s...
Sufjan Stevens @ BAM, Thursday, Nov. 1
It was difficult to walk into the world-premiere of Sufjan Stevens’ “symphonic and cinematic exploration” of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway without feeling the foreboding sense that something musically important was going to happen. Lofty expectations would be the death of nearly any other modern indie performer, but Stevens – who’s previously announced such infamous knee-buckling goals...
Goodbye, Astroland?
Astroland closed for the summer this weekend – and quite possibly forever. I’ve spent a lot of time at Coney Island over the past year and a half, so if it does indeed shut its doors forever, I’ll greatly miss it. Death Cab For Cutie: “Coney Island” (download) Death Cab For Cutie: “Coney Island (Alternate)”...
This is the Way Siren Fest Ends: Not with a Bang, but a Whimper
With the impending closure of Astroland at the end of the Summer, one question drove this year’s Siren Festival: “will it be the last?” The lackluster line-ups for the Siren Festivals of the past two years almost indicate that somebody knew this was coming. From 2001-2005, Siren Fest was a haven for people who didn’t...
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