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French Montana, 'Excuse My French' | Album Review

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:22:07 -0400

French Montana, 'Excuse My French' | Album Review:

I wish I liked this album more than I do. Click through for my short take.

Kanye West Brings Out New Material at Surprise New York Show

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:38:41 -0400

Kanye West Brings Out New Material at Surprise New York Show:

Sometimes it’s a random weekday and you hear that Kanye is about to play a secret corporate gig two blocks from your office. If you’re lucky, you get in. Notes on a weird, fun night.

I talked to Four Tet on the 10th anniversary of 'Rounds.'

Tue, 14 May 2013 14:47:00 -0400

I talked to Four Tet on the 10th anniversary of 'Rounds.':

Such a great record, all these years later. I was surprised/amazed to learn that he made the entire thing by collaging samples on a clunky old desktop PC. My other favorite revelation:

“Rodney Jerkins actually was the most influential for me,” he says, citing the producer’s work on Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay” and Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” “The fact that one was led by a thumb piano and one was led by a harp, and he combined those things with very crisp electronic rhythms – at the time, I thought of him alongside Aphex Twin as being on the cutting edge of electronic music.”

My Rolling Stone feature on Macklemore from this spring is now online.

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:24:00 -0400

My Rolling Stone feature on Macklemore from this spring is now online.:

My favorite thing I’ve written this year, now available for your Internet reading pleasure.

New Atoms for Peace! “The Z is v important,” says...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 12:11:15 -0400

New Atoms for Peace! “The Z is v important,” says Thom. Clearly.

I wrote a short profile of Vampire Weekend for the new issue of...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:44:10 -0400

I wrote a short profile of Vampire Weekend for the new issue of RS (Bruno Mars is on the cover). Pick it up on stands this Friday for many entertaining exchanges with Ezra Koenig and Rostam Batmanglij, plus a special guest appearance from Ezra’s BFF Lena Dunham.

I know the Internet loves Thom Yorke, but even so I was pleasantly surprised by how much pickup my...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 11:32:24 -0400

I know the Internet loves Thom Yorke, but even so I was pleasantly surprised by how much pickup my interview with him and Nigel Godrich got yesterday. Thanks to everyone who linked to it! A few of my favorites are after the jump.

Pitchfork
Stereogum
SPIN
NME
Vulture
The Daily Swarm
Fuse
At Ease
Radiohead.fr
Consequence of Sound
Pigeons and Planes

A conversation with Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:01:04 -0400

A conversation with Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich :

Last month, I spent an hour chatting with Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich. How wild is that? I met them at a downtown hotel, the day before they played Le Poisson Rouge. It was one of the most fun interviews I’ve ever done – the kind where I barely even had to ask questions, because they were both in such chatty moods. Radiohead was my absolute favorite band throughout my formative years as a music nerd, so, yeah, to say I was psyched about this experience would be an understatement.

My looooong Q&A with Yorke and Godrich is online now. (Another piece of the interview ran online last month, and there’s also a short item in the new issue of RS.) If you’re like me, you’ve probably already clicked through to devour all 3,000 words, but just in case you’re still on this page, here are some of my favorite tidbits:

Thom Yorke on being beaten on the Billboard charts by Bruno Mars: “Who the fuck is Bruno Mars?”
Thom Yorke on Top 40 EDM stars like David Guetta and Calvin Harris: “They wash the surface off and they’ve cleaned it up and Auto-Tuned it. It’s like, ‘Fuck you!’”
Thom Yorke on DJ culture: “If I’m brutally honest, 90 percent of that whole culture, I don’t get on with. I find it really bonkers when, you know, like, a promoter in Ibiza is emailing us, saying, ‘Do you want to go?’ And I’m like, ‘No!’”
Thom Yorke on when Radiohead will make another record: “I don’t know. I really haven’t got a clue, which I quite like.”
Thom Yorke on the name of his new Tumblr: “It’s a quote from The Simpsons.”
Thom Yorke on the Oscars: “I watch a shitload of movies. Lincoln was all right. I didn’t really understand [Argo]. Better things than that.”

UNCOOL #1!

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:06:00 -0400

UNCOOL #1!:

uncoolmag:

We made you a zine.

UNCOOL #1: Guiltless Pleasures is a 43-page .pdf about the ways music makes us feel bad — and sometimes, proud. It was designed by Traci Larson. Sam Alden did the cover art. Here’s what you’ll find inside:

* Punk Rock Princesses: A Case for Something Corporate by Devon Maloney
* Dangerously in Love: My Decade with Beyonce by Jamieson Cox
* Repeat Offenders: Pressing Play, Over and Over Again by Harley Brown
* Guiltless Pleasures: Imagining a Post-Snob World by David Greenwald, Simon Vozick-Levinson and Lindsay Zoladz
* Miss You Like Crazy: Canada’s Lost Boy Bands by Melody Lau
* He Ain’t Even Know It: On Rick Ross, Rap, and Responsibility by Henry Adaso
* I Don’t Wanna Come Back Down From This (Sound)Cloud by Taleen Kalenderian
* Why Bother? Talking To Myself About Weezer by Jillian Mapes

With the help of its readers, UNCOOL is a publication that pays its contributors. Thanks in advance for your support.

DOWNLOAD UNCOOL #1: GUILTLESS PLEASURES.

Participating in the “Guiltless Pleasures” panel with Dave and Lindsay was one of the most fun things I did at SXSW. I’m proud to see that conversation continue in this awesome zine, alongside some of my favorite young writers. For $3.99, you can buy this or, like, a tall frappuccino. Choose this!

Update: Read an excerpt from the panel now.

The Snoop Lion album is actually kind of great

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:59:00 -0400

The Snoop Lion album is actually kind of great:

I think we could all use some positive vibes after this week. Here comes Snoop Lion, just when we need him most! Stream the album now, and click for my review.

Like Willie Nelson before him, Snoop Dogg finally got so high he made a reggae album. Go ahead, laugh. It really is hilarious to hear him preaching Rastafarian gospel in a fake patois. But here’s the thing: For all the easy jokes, Reincarnated is Snoop’s most consistently enjoyable record in years…

April short takes

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 21:17:41 -0400

Fall Out Boy’s ridiculous but fun Save Rock and Roll, Tyler, the Creator’s maddening Wolf, and Iron & Wine’s pleasant Ghost on Ghost. Click for words!

I get email! Note the sender’s address. (Context)

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:01:40 -0400

I get email! Note the sender’s address.

(Context)

Something slightly crazy and awesome happened to me at lunch today: The friendly woman who runs my...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:48:00 -0400

Something slightly crazy and awesome happened to me at lunch today: The friendly woman who runs my favorite Indian food truck insisted on giving me my kati roll for free because she had seen me on Good Morning America. I thanked her repeatedly. Anyway, here is that clip, in which I give Jay-Z his due as “one of the great poets of our age,” along with a few more recent media appearances after the jump. Click through if you enjoy seeing me talk about stuff!

Good Morning America

Interviewed on CNN about Psy’s new single and one-hit wonders

Interviewed by Radio.com about Paramore (thanks, Jill!)

Interviewed by Radio.com about Foals

Hi, I am an aspiring music journalist, and I am wondering what kind of schooling and experience led you to be able to make a career out of music journalism. I would really appreciate your response! Thank you, Carly

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 20:38:11 -0400

Hi Carly! My school didn’t offer a journalism major, but I wrote for my college newspaper, which taught me a lot about how a daily publication works. I wrote about lots of things at first, but after a while I realized that writing about music was by far the most fun. In my junior year, I worked up the courage to start pitching an editor at my local alt-weekly, the Boston Phoenix. In time I convinced him to start giving me assignments – short concert and album reviews at first, longer interviews and features later on. By the time I graduated, I had enough clips to land a summer internship at Entertainment Weekly, which eventually turned into my first real job. That internship was when it first occurred to me that I might actually be able to make a career out of this, and I haven’t looked back since.

Good luck with your work, wherever it takes you. My biggest advice is to listen to as much music as you can and write constantly about what it makes you think and how it makes you feel – on Tumblr, in emails to your friends, in a notebook, wherever. The more you do it, the better you’ll get.

P.S. Thanks for reading this blog and writing in! I love getting reader email.

Made In America

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:41:00 -0400

Roc Nation invited me to participate in a live Google hangout this afternoon to announce the lineup for the second annual Made in America Festival, coming to Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend. Others on the all-star panel included Fuse News’ John Norris, Hot 97’s Angie Martinez, XXL’s Shaheem Reid, GQ’s Nate Erickson and Philly radio host Shamara Afia. We spent an hour talking about the great acts on tap this year – both Knowles sisters, Phoenix, the entire Black Hippy crew, Public Enemy and tons more. This was fun! Check out our archived discussion below.

"Dark Side of the 'Mad Men'"

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:59:00 -0400

I’ve probably said this before, but getting to work with Rob Sheffield on a regular basis is pretty much the coolest part of my job. Even cooler than the parts where I hang out with actual rock stars, maybe. Rob’s latest work of genius is a column in which he discovers that Dark Side of the Moon totally syncs up with the Roger Sterling acid trip episode of Mad Men. You have to read this.

Above: Collage by Tracy Allison

Like everyone else, I’m appalled by Rick Ross’ explicit celebration of date rape on...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:47:00 -0400

Like everyone else, I’m appalled by Rick Ross’ explicit celebration of date rape on “U.O.E.N.O.,” and disappointed by his pathetic attempt to play it off as “a misunderstanding with a lyric.” (For reference, what he said in the song is “Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it/I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” Not much to misunderstand there.) Obviously, this is some offensive bullshit. And I think it’s worth specifically refuting two arguments I’ve seen in Ross’ defense:

1) Rappers talk about killing people all the time and no one cares; why is this different? Because we live in a world where virtually everyone agrees that murder is wrong. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the kind of non-consensual assault described by Ross in this song. Very few people listen to “Shook Ones Part II” (or watch The Godfather, or read the Iliad) and take it as an endorsement of actual murder, but there are clearly way too many men out there who think “enjoying that” (ugh) after drugging someone without consent is okay. This is what people mean when they talk about rape culture. Talking the way Ross does here contributes to an environment where rape is normalized. Not cool.

2) What about when Eminem (or Tyler, or…) rapped about rape? Well, that’s deeply problematic, too, no question. But I actually think what Ross is trying to get away with here might be worse. Those artists talk about sexual assault for shock value. They know it’s a horrible thing, and they’re referencing it expressly for that reason, as a way of provoking listeners into seeing them as demonic evil incarnated. That’s questionable on a lot of levels. But Ross mentions taking advantage of someone who is unable to give consent casually, like it’s no big deal – just another part of his super-luxury player persona. His subsequent argument that he wasn’t even talking about rape because he didn’t use that word makes it even clearer that he just doesn’t understand the awful significance of what he said. “I just wanted to reach out to all the queens that’s on my timeline, all the sexy ladies, the beautiful ladies that had been reaching out to me with the misunderstanding. We don’t condone rape and I’m not with that.” Then why the fuck did you write a verse where you clearly, unambiguously do exactly that?

Macklemore and Phoenix

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:39:00 -0400

The new issue of Rolling Stone includes a couple of stories that I wrote. One is an interview with Phoenix’s Thomas Mars and Laurent Brancowitz, who were as witty and charmant as you’d imagine. The other is a four-page feature on Macklemore, which I reported during SXSW. This made for an unusual festival experience; while everyone else was off watching buzz bands, I was shadowing an underground rapper who recently awoke to find himself a chart-topping pop star. He gets a lot of fans coming up to him in public and pleading for a photo or an autograph. (He almost always says yes.) Macklemore was incredibly honest about some tough subjects, including the role of white privilege in his career and how hard it is for him to stick to sobriety right now. Our time together included a visit to a late-night Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Austin, which is not something I’ll soon forget. I hope this story is as interesting to read as it was to report. (Short preview here; full story on stands now.) Update: My full Macklemore story is now online.

Macklemore portrait by Danny Clinch

Here are a couple more TV appearances I’ve done recently. Interviewed by CBS Evening News on...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:29:34 -0500

Here are a couple more TV appearances I’ve done recently.

Interviewed by CBS Evening News on the new Jimi Hendrix album, People, Hell, and Angels: (Embedding disabled, click to watch on YouTube)

Interviewed by Fuse News on Billie Joe Armstrong’s road to recovery:

Remember “All Gold Everything”? Not so long ago, you couldn’t scroll through a...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:32:59 -0500

Remember “All Gold Everything”? Not so long ago, you couldn’t scroll through a screen of tweets without tripping over a heap of wacky “popped a molly, I’m sweating” references. It was a more innocent time. Anyway, I chatted with Trinidad James recently about drugs, puppies, fashion and so much more. Better late than never?