In 2008, a big day for record sales is a relative thing, for the majors and the indies alike. Physical sales are lower than ever, even for superstars; bands routinely crack Billboard’s top 10 with sales barely in the five digits. But today is a big day in the record industry.
Coldplay's newest, Viva la Vida, Read More
Over the past two years, the parodists from New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords, have scored with a hit HBO show (in which they play a hapless struggling band whose mundane adventures are punctuated by song) and won a Grammy award with their debut U.S. E.P. (seriously, a Grammy, and seriously, for an E.P., which Read More
A chorus on Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s new record, The Letting Go (Drag City), begins with a familiar apostrophe: “O love o love o careless love.” In the most desperate stanza of Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” a car radio bleats the same refrain from the old folk song, a dark piece of Americana about the unforeseen Read More
A chorus on Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s new record, The Letting Go (Drag City), begins with a familiar apostrophe: “O love o love o careless love.” In the most desperate stanza of Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” a car radio bleats the same refrain from the old folk song, a dark piece of Americana about the unforeseen Read More
What is it about Felt? Legend has it that about 10 years ago, Stuart Murdoch-the genius behind the widely adored 90's twee-pop ensemble, Belle and Sebastian-left Glasgow in search of Lawrence Hayward, the genius behind the great 80's cult favorite Felt. He never found him-but, as always, the failure to encounter an idol in the Read More
