In which Carrie Brownstein reminds us why she’s cooler than you and me by giving Madonna the NPR treatment. When she tells us how she discovered music with “fewer filters and disguises, less affect, greater intensity, and most of all, substance” after the apostasy of her youth, it’s as if she never listened to her former

Prince covers Radiohead’s "Creep"

Recorded at Coachella this weekend. Listen quick, before the Little One’s record company decides to pull it. Surprisingly crisp sound too. It would be redundant for me to point out that he’s the only one I want to hear cover this — hell, perform this.

Rob Trucks’ touching interview with Robert Forster adds new wrinkles to his story, not the least of which is the revelation that he’s finished a few of his late partner Grant McLennan’s notes for songs for The Evangelist, Forster’s first solo album in 12 years (more on the album next week). As in the best

Letter from and to a contrarian

I recognize in Christopher Hitchens a kindred spirit – a spirit that relishes combat, embraces contrarianism, and has no problem pissing off friends. My brief flirtation with supporting the Iraq War was inspired partly by the seductive idea of supporting a president whose mediocrity, obtuseness, and messianic zealotry dovetailed with my long-brewing sense that we

It was fun reading The Art of War again, if only to imagine Bill Kristol reciting one of Sun Tzu’s maxims through clenched Cheshire Cat teeth. 

When I saw Daisy Kenyon a few weeks ago, I thought it was not just Otto Preminger’s best film noir, but his best film. Putting his considerable craft to use in enlivening a Joan Crawford love triangle in which the corners (Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews) are regarded as partners worthy of her respect and

“So Haunted” is one of my singles of the year — plaintive, insistent — and it surrenders pleasure after pleasure in ways that its host album In Ghost Colours can’t. As practioners of a post-New Order, quasi-DFA dance aesthetic just catholic enough to allow an Alan Moulder glaze on the vocals and guitar fuzz, Cut

My hometown colleagues at Babalu Blog are having so much fun. After hearing my grandmother go on a tear about Obama’s “socialist tendencies” yesterday, I wonder if a warning went out over the Cuban AM radio stations this weekend.

My hometown colleagues at Babalu Blog are having so much fun. After hearing my grandmother go on a tear about Obama’s “socialist tendencies” yesterday, I wonder if a warning went out over the Cuban AM radio stations this weekend.

Is David Byrne angling for new mainstream viability? I know, it’s not a “comeback,” he hasn’t gone anywhere. But first there’s this news. Then he shows up on stage yelling “You Can Call Me Al” with Paul Simon. Successfully waving aside the gnats of revisionism, despite assaults from white boys who can’t dismiss Vampire Weekend

Is David Byrne angling for new mainstream viability? I know, it’s not a “comeback,” he hasn’t gone anywhere. But first there’s this news. Then he shows up on stage yelling “You Can Call Me Al” with Paul Simon. Successfully waving aside the gnats of revisionism, despite assaults from white boys who can’t dismiss Vampire Weekend

Best mock question in last night’s pathetic Democratic debate

One President Keyes on ILE, posing as George Stephanopoulos: “Senator Obama, if your wife were raped and killed by an American flag, would you salute it, burn it or lethally inject it?”