The past few years, one word has come up constantly in conversation about today’s pop music: Balkanization. Be it another teeny-indie scene given the tag “glo-fi,” or another subset of Brooklyn bands revisiting the aural atmosphere of ’60s garage pop, the message remains loud and clear: As micro-scenes develop within pockets of our society, our … [Read more…]
The folks behind Lollapalooza officially unveiled the lineup for this year’s fest (that’s right - no more letter guessing) Tuesday morning. And it looks like someone’s been reading Pitchfork. The lineup is jam packed with indie bands. Many of those acts have received the greatest praise Pitchfork has to offer, the oft-coveted “Best New Music” chalice/crown/shiny thing. … [Read more…]
Lollapalooza, the gigantic three-day alternative pop music extravaganza, announced its 2010 lineup. Except you’ve probably got to be Vanna White to be able to discern who will be there from this quirky/gimmicky mess: It’s a cute concept, but you’ve got to wonder why they decided to only use the “Os” from Lollapalooza and not any … [Read more…]
Pitchfork announced its annual music festival will take place July 16-18 in Chicago’s Union Park. Tickets for the Pitchfork Music Festival will go on sale Friday, when the music site will also announce part of its lineup. The Chicago Tribune‘s Greg Kot got word that Pavement and St. Vincent will be performing at the festival. The … [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 Albums of 2009. As I’ve mentioned previously, there are a lot of pitfalls for “best of†… [Read more…]