February 2012
11 posts
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The National | Two disparate albums all part of... →
Fatima Al Qadiri’s music has blown my mind more than any other artist’s over the past couple of months (“Vatican Vibes”, “WARN-U”), and she’s an amazing interviewee too - whip-smart, articulate, funny. A ton of stuff that had to be [redacted] because of regional sensitivities…
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FACT | Lady Leshurr - 2000andL →
Reviewed Lady Leshurr’s sixth mixtape in three years. Will someone make this girl a massive star already?
Guardian | Valentine's Day: seduction songs →
I’ll take it as a compliment that I was asked to write this, I guess. *puts Jade Alston’s Single On A Saturday Night on again*
katherinestasaph:
whosboniver:
VERY SENSITIVE/LITERARY INDIE BRO WHO WRITES SONGS THAT SOUND LIKE A “LOOSE PILE OF GAUZE” AND “GENERALLY SINGS AS IF HE’S AFRAID HE MIGHT BRUISE A WORD BY ARTICULATING IT.” HE WAS CONFINED TO A REMOTE CABIN BY THE WISCONSIN STATE GOVERNMENT BUT LATER RECEIVED A PARDON FROM SCOTT WALKER. YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO BEYONCÉ INSTEAD
<3
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My Whitney tribute for the Guardian →
It’ll be in G2 tomorrow too, in slightly rejigged form. Upgraded to print!
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FACT | Emeli Sandé - Our Version Of Events →
What a disappointing album.
BACK & FORTH @ POWER LUNCHES, 8/2/12
Zakia and I put on a night called BACK & FORTH last night. Here is what I played.
Set one
Teairra Marí - Make Her Feel Good
Teedra Moses - So Kool
Rasheeda - Georgia Peach
Beyoncé - Best Thing I Never Had (Original Version)
The LOX - Ryde Or Die Bitch
Usher - Pop Ya Collar
B2K - Bump Bump Bump
Toni Braxton - He Wasn’t Man Enough
Brandy & Monica - The Boy Is Mine
Trina ft....
rmxbb: all 4 u →
theremixbaby:
Of course, my current problem with Lana Del Rey is that I literally can no longer trust any [heterosexual??] man to give a reliable reading of the image she is portraying. (Sorry guys, maybe stick to explaining how “Born to Die” sounds like Lovage; that one seems good). Someone wrote the she…
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I went to St Petersburg in November and here is... →
January 2012
18 posts
Three faces of feminism: Louise Mensch, Laurie... →
And after that link-dump to my own stuff, here’s something not by me and way more important, via @dipod on Twitter:
The paradox of feminism is that it’s not just about feminists: it’s not about us, it’s about all women. Feminism is useless if it’s only interesting to the women who are on Newsnight, or watching and tweeting about it. It’s useless if it’s only about people who know they...
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Guardian | John Talabot - ƒin →
This is my favourite album of 2012 so far. I actually gave it 4* but am disinclined to correct whichever Guardian sub upped that to 5*.
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FACT | Robin Thicke - Love After War →
Review of the new Robin Thicke album for FACT. Trad R&B »> indie-R&B.
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FACT | T.I. - Fuck Da City Up →
Reviewed the new T.I. mixtape for FACT. Let’s have no more Rick Ross talk now the KING is back, eh? (BTW I am now doing weekly album/track reviews for FACT, so keep an eye out for those. If you want.)
Pazz & Jop 2011: Alex Macpherson On Pistol Annies,... →
Breaking down my P&J ballot for the Village Voice. Thanks for asking me Maura!
katherinestasaph asked: Kreayshawn at No. 10? Lana at No. 2? Booooooo on ILX.
This is why the ILM poll is my favourite...
Top 77 tracks under the cut. Unlike all the other boring crit consensus lists of 2011. Not perfect (they like Destroyer too much) but it’s not just great in the sense of defining a specific aesthetic but in getting taste broadly right. One pertinent example: roundly rejecting Drake, but placing JoJo’s Drake cover at #13. LOVE.
EDIT I can’t get the line breaks to work because...
"I think the reason I find geek culture so... →
maura:
More at the link, and to all of it: Yes. YES.
A victim complex and at the same time a completely unwarranted superiority complex. Also, bad posture.
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Jie “Jay-Z” Zheng continuing to win is my favourite thing about the Australian Open so far. Hoping for a QF showing at least.
Why music-makers need to get out of the bedroom... →
Kind of started after I bitched that making your music sound like staring at a laptop on your own in your bedroom at 3am has become critical catnip these days, then I realised that it’s kind of the modern condition for, uh, “creative” types. Sadly my footnote, in which I reveal that this article was written on my own in my bedroom at 3am while staring at the internet, got lost....
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Guardian | Eskimo Dance: the Return – review |... →
This was a terrific night.
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WHY can no one spell Lana Del Rey’s name? REY. Three goddamn letters. It’s not hard. And it’s people in the media getting it wrong, too. Where the fuck is everyone getting “Ray” from? This is the by far most annoying part of the LDR narrative to date.
Guardian Music Weekly podcast →
I’m on this, talking about this brilliant new Shawnna track, slagging off the Magnetic Fields, discussing the Racist Florence Video that I thought was gonna cause more controversy than it did because apparently her fans don’t care about racism, talking about what I did on NYE (“I don’t remember anything”).
Raving 2003-07 →
Matt DC made a Spotify playlist of all the anthems we raved to in 2003-07. It is the best music ever // so many memories // the music that made me.
The National | Young Jeezy and Yelawolf albums... →
For very different reasons, though. (I still basically like the Yelawolf album.)
December 2011
25 posts
MY TOP 6 MIXES OF 2011
6. Ikonika - Mix for Lovebox
5. Jam City - Daytime Lover/Into The Night
4. Andy Jay & S-Tee - Radio Raving Mix
3. Ceri Covach - Secrets Of The Interior
2. Âme - Fact Mix 212
1. Nguzunguzu - The Perfect Lullaby
ESS ESS ESS AND PLEASE KILL ME →
tomewing:
My indelible memory of “S & M” is hearing it played as part of the soundtrack for the kids’ pilates workout at my four-year-old’s school summer fete. I thought this was very funny which probably makes me a Bad Parent.
(I don’t mind this song TBH, it’s not very good but it didn’t infuriate me.)
I disliked “S&M” when I first heard it but like “Only Girl (In...
Youtube playlist: the best of 2011 →
I finally finished it! Much better and more exhaustive than the Spotify one, to the tune of, um, 13 hours. Have I said how much Spotify sucks lately? Yeah.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-25) →
Cher Lloyd (28)
John Talabot (25)
Phaedra (24)
Robin Thicke (20)
Legowelt (20)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
And now the mathematics of filling in my P&J ballot are breaking my brain (completing what Tumblr and Spotify have already started today). How do I get these points to add up to 100? How?
MY TOP 121 TRACKS OF 2011
Done! Really, the numbers are a little meaningless between, like, 20 and 121, but you have to present it somehow. Here is a woefully inadequate and senselessly arranged Spotify “best of 2011” playlist. Over half the songs are missing, because Spotify is the worst. Am in the process of putting together a Youtube one but it’s taking a million years and I’m so. bored.
(A few...
MY TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2011
Links to where I’ve written about the album (or interviewed the artist) where relevant. Tracks to come. The obligatory Spotify playlist too, once I’ve finished wrestling with it. I haaaaaate Spotify but no one will listen to anything anywhere else any more ;_;
50. TOM WAITS - Bad As Me
49. L-VIS 1990 - Neon Dreams
48. TIA LONDON - Love Junkie
47. GAZELLE TWIN - The Entire City...
I wonder what other r&b records from 2011 those...
maura:
Sorry if this sounds snobby! It’s just, ugh, this is all reminding me of how Eminem gets airplay on rock stations. Cultural signifiers and aesthetic preferences becoming confused and elevating stuff for possibly weird reasons.
Maggoty Lamb's awards for music journalism in 2011 →
3. Most consistently provocative use of the star system
The prize in this very competitive category goes to the Guardian’s own Alex Macpherson, for following up 2010’s visionary two-star dismissal of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with an even bolder “Texas” (as lecturers in music journalism technically term the lone-star review) for Drake’s...
Critically divisive films that last about 15 hours...
Tree Of Life: I get genuinely quite angry whenever I remember this film existed. Not just because of the time I wasted enduring it - why can I never walk out of terrible films or stop reading terrible books? why do I make myself persist to the end? 2012 resolution will be for ZERO TOLERANCE - but the gigantic temerity in trying to pass this utterly banal, boring bullshit off as meaningful art....
Good vzzzzzz Important →
tomewing:
What’s an Important Album? It’s an album that is perceived to be a momentous work of ambition, invention, and high artistic credibility before it is released, and then proves to actually be so, planting itself in a highly visible place in the culture and acting as a signifier for the year in retrospect. It’s the one album you can’t avoid hearing about at the end of the year to an...
I didn’t think nine months ago that my favourite song on Born This Way (and indeed only song I ever feel like hearing) at the end of the year would be “Electric Chapel”. Unrelatedly I have realised that I finally have thought of some things to say about “Video Games” but also don’t particularly want to clog up the internet with more LDR detritus.
A decade of my Albums of the Year
Whetting your appetite for my albums and tracks of this year, which will appear, um, at some point.
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-12-11) →
Robin Thicke (44)
Tia London (36)
The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble (32)
Me’Shell NdegéOcello (25)
Rebecca Ferguson (25)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Same As It Ever Was →
desperationtentacles:
maura:
marathonpacks:
via Keith Harris
was hoping to see more results like this:
Andy Hutchins: If I ran Pitchfork, I would have put Super Bass #1. maura johnston: ahead of fucking holocene at last maura johnston: oh well maura johnston: can’t complain
AND YET.
I mean, I enjoy watching anti-pop hipsters sputter about Super Bass as much as the next person, but ...
Guardian | Music weekly →
Talked a bit about some of the best R&B around on the Guardian music podcast - Nikkiya, Raphael Saadiq, Kalenna, Dawn Richard. Marsha Ambrosius and Tiffany Evans got cut sadly. 100% tumblr&b-free zone guaranteed though! Do not even try to tell me that The Weeknd or Frank Ocean made the best or most interesting R&B this year. Do. Not. Try.
Following David Cameron's Europe raspberry, how... →
It is now clear that the tuition fees U-turn was merely the gateway drug to the big one. Clegg is now mainlining U. His story arc is like some Westminster version of Trainspotting, featuring grotesque scenes of personal degradation in pursuit of what must surely now be an ever-diminishing high. Perhaps a physicist would care to get in touch to explain whether there is a theoretical point at which...
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