Beach House, the cinematic slow-pop duo from Baltimore, tends to inspire extreme reactions for such pretty music. On one hand, there are the rabid Beach House devotees, a cluster of romantic, long-haired women and dapper men (probably the kind who would have been really into twee pop in that era). This camp gets swept away [...]
At first it looks like an amateur sex tape – not that high-quality National Geographic porn. The huge 1,500-pound creatures flop around as beach goers watch, and are shockingly fleet-flippered when chasing down one particular manatee. A kid yells, “they’re mating!” while a man observes it as more of a “gang bang.” But instead of [...]
Carnivores has been described as “tropical punk,” “psyche-surf,” and several other bizarre combinations that only arise in instances in which music journalists, desperate to pigeonhole bands as we are, must invent new subgenres in order to properly categorize something that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else. And maybe that’s the best descriptor of Carnivores’ music: It [...]
In North America, “punk rock” long ago slipped into a holding pattern. For the most part, its classic visual look – studs, spikes, fanciful hair – is now just another codified set of fashion flourishes rather than a sign of real subcultural allegiance. On another end of the spectrum, it’s burrowed completely underground, embedded in [...]
Remember when banned books were brilliant works of literature? Tropic of Capricorn, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lolita – just a few of the many books that have been denounced for their sexual content, then read by adolescents for that very reason. Great literature is a lot more interesting to 12 year olds when sex is involved. The [...]
Did President Barack Obama blow it by saying nothing about the death last week of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch? Yes, he did, according to one apparently heartsick Beastie Boys fan, who took to the pages of the Washington Times on Sunday to eulogize Yauch and needle the president. Yauch, 47, died Friday of complications from [...]
Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale So, this (also above) is really hilarious. If you haven’t already seen it, Kate Beckinsale, Judy Greer, and Andrea Savage describe just how much they want Republicans in their vaginas. The video cuts between the three women as they smile brightly from wealthy suburbia and say things like, [...]
Adam “MCA” Yauch passed away Friday, prompting The Nation’s sports editor, Dave Zirin, to write for NPR, “In the ’60s they said, ‘don’t trust anyone over 30.’ When it comes to remembering Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch … I don’t trust anyone under 30.” It doesn’t feel fair to write about Yauch in any way that is [...]
The best thing about the parties Mikey Ramirez, Jasper Delaini, and Nick Dewey threw at the Mai Kai was — besides the fake tropical landscape — the music. One wouldn’t expect less from the likes of these guys; the novelty of the Mai Kai was always a factor in making everything feel so awesome, but [...]
There are two kinds of first concerts, and both are often equally embarrassing. There’s the first concert your folks took you to see, and then there’s the first concert you went to sans parents. The first usually takes the form of some ridiculously dated legacy band from your parents’ glory days, and the second is [...]
