It’s hard to sum up an entire year of pop music in one concise “best of” list. Instead, here’s a tidy little look at some of the highs and lows in pop music over the past year: Hip-Huh?: The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones declared that hip-hop was dead and upset a lot of hip-hop heads. … [Read more…]
Tor, one of the musicians who topped my “Best Free Albums of 2009” list and one brilliant mash-up artist, is at it once again. Eight hours ago, Tor dropped a new mash-up. Instead of another re-mixing of Sufjan Stevens, Tor tossed wordmaster Q-Tip onto some fine violin-work by Final Fantasy, otherwise known as Owen Pallett. … [Read more…]
The new year is almost here, and with it comes a maelstrom of “End of the Year Lists.†Here on Ex-Spectator, I’ll be rolling out a few “End of the Yearâ€/â€End of the Decade†lists. Today’s list: The Best Overlooked Albums of the Aughts. A while back I started an ongoing feature called “Overlooked in … [Read more…]
Someone on YouTube has taken a note out of Herbert‘s songbook. That being, find something, sample every sound that comes out of it and create some wonderful ditty. Here’s what’s been made of Pixar’s brilliant film, Up: [youtubevid id=”JVxe5NIABsI&feature=player_embedded#”] It’s a pretty jubilant, bouncy tune, not unlike something off of Herbert’s Scale, where the musician sampled … [Read more…]
Singer-Songwriter Vic Chesnutt died this afternoon in Athens, Georgia. There had been unconfirmed reports that he died last night, which proved to be untrue. At 5:27 PM EST, New York Times critic Ben Sisario gave an official word: Vic Chesnutt, a singer-songwriter whose music dealt with mortality and black humor, died on Friday in a hospital … [Read more…]
As I mentioned last night, there were a few reports that said singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt died after slipping into a coma. All of those reports seemed to point to one source: Henry Owings. However, as of about an hour ago, new information has surfaced that Chesnutt has not died and is indeed still in a … [Read more…]
Singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt has been reported dead after slipping into a coma on Thursday. Chunklet‘s Henry Owings took to Twitter two hours ago with the following message: RIP Vic Chesnutt… The A.V. Club’s Josh Modell posted the information an hour later, but was skeptical in declaring Chesnutt dead due to the source of the news. … [Read more…]
The finest piece of music criticism in 2009 did not come from a paper of record. It did not come from a music-dedicated blog. It came from the disastrously-produced superhero film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I had the (dis)pleasure of viewing Wolverine the other night, but was tickled pink by one well-put bit of subliminal music … [Read more…]
It was indeed “A Decade Under The Influence.†But while Taking Back Sunday could string together a few solid hits drenched in a post-hardcore milieu and cut with pop sensibilities, chances are no one in the band could have predicted how influential emo would become in the aughts. The presence of the word in the … [Read more…]
In September, super-producer Danger Mouse and Shins’ frontman James Mercer announced a new side project. The duo was thus christened “Broken Bells.” About a week ago, the band started some oddball viral campaign, where they set up websites with domain names that are anagrams of Broken Bells. Each site had a specific splice of music … [Read more…]