i hate the sound of guitars

Artist of the week: Robert Pollard
Hullo, is it Monday yet?
I’ve been wrestling with contradictory opinions: on the one hand I have the impression that Robert Pollard is on a bit of roll since 2008 with a series of strong solo albums as well as with the Boston Spaceships. I enjoyed the first time I listened [...]

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artist of the week: The Magnetic Fields
Usually I’d expect that after seeing an artist two nights running I wouldn’t want to spend the next few days listening to the artist’s catalogue, but when the artist is The Magnetic Fields the usual rules do not apply. The wide-ranging setlists inspired me to revisit records I didn’t [...]

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artist of the week: Stripmall Architecture
artist of the week: The Indelicates
artist of the week: Pest 5000
Stripmall Architecture and back
A friend on Twitter mentioned the new Stripmall Architecture single Radium Girls. I liked the title — reminded me of OMD’s “Tesla Girls” — so I listened. Liked what I heard, bought it, and more. Stripmall Architecture [...]

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artist of the week: Holden
artist of the week: These are Powers
artist of the week: Johnny Foreigner
artist of the week: Gay for Johnny Depp
Case in point why I don’t even try to come up with year’s best lists anymore — last week I discovered 4 artists with albums last year that could have been contenders.
Holden: [...]

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artist of the week: The Organ
Quick-trip to self-referential land: My post on Sky Larkin convinces Terri to give them a listen; she responds that they remind her most of The Organ*, so I have to listen to them.
The Organ sound more self-consciously retro to me than Sky Larkin — I totally get why they draw [...]

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Artists of the week: Theoretical Girl, Veda Hille
Theoretical Girl did an avent calendar thing on the theoretical girl blog, offering up a mix of live tracks, alternate versions, and covers of folks from Joni Mitchell to Tokyo Police Club. Well worth the time it took to persuade the file hosting service to let me download [...]

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Artist of the Week: Sky Larkin
Late with this week’s post in part because I find Sky Larkin tricky to describe. Singer Katie Harkin’s voice reminds me a lot of Land of Talk’s Lizzie Powell, which is the sort of comparison I hate. Perhaps more usefully, both bands are guitar/bass/drum indie rock trios. Beyond that, [...]

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Artist of the Week: Radon
I never heard Radon in the twentieth century, but I fell in love with their 2006 reunion effort Metric Buttloads of Rock!, largely on the strength of “Minneapolis,” a rough-edged but tuneful ode to the likes of The Replacements (explicitly mentioned in the lyric) and Hüsker Dü (explicitly referenced by the [...]

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artists of the week: 13ghosts, masshysteri, the vicious, gorilla angreb
My friend Joe has been lately been mentioning some unjustly overlooked best-of-decade candidates. His first pick was 13ghost’s Cicada. After only a spin and a half, I’m not prepared to say “best of decade,” but it deserves more attention for sure, and I might eventually decide [...]

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Artist of the Week: Arctic Monkeys
On my first trip through Humbug I had the impression that Arctic Monkeys had done an about-face: laddish, spastic bursts like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor,” were traded for slower, moodier, much more subtle (and, to me, interesting) compositions that evoke Spoon and Sparklehorse (while somehow [...]

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