STATIC and FEEDBACK
Posts tagged nick
For better or worse, James Mercer runs The Shins on Port of Morrow
Five years after Wincing the Night Away, James Mercer has reconstituted the Shins and rolled out a record. So how does the new band compare? Read on, read on…
Bruce Springsteen channels the 99 percent on ‘Wrecking Ball’
More than simply exploring emotions or the gentle confines of the rock and roll medium, Bruce Springsteen is typically at his best when he feels some sort of purpose with his music. In his early days, that sense was overflowing; exploring the broken dreams of his hometown, the pitfals of relationships and, later, fame, or the plight of the working American were all documented so expertly that a template of sorts was set on Springsteen. …
Do the Black Keys work in giant venues? Absolutely.
Or, as much as any band can be expected to work.
Tracing the path of Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’
Cutting through all else, the song is a simple call back to a childhood home, the inevitable stage for all the confusion and turmoil that comes with maturity. It’s simple structure — the song never breaks from that D-A-G path — runs in contrast to the weight of growing up, growing old and moving out.
It’s time to sum up the best music of 2011, and the Black Keys top our list, with El Camino walking away with “album of the year.”
What else did Nick highlight? Check it out now.
Noel Gallagher flies high on his own
Without his brother and bandmates, Noel has full control of an album again, and he makes the most of it with High Flying Birds.
The opening “Brandenburg Gate” starts out interestingly enough, with Reed reciting “I would cut my legs and tits off/When I think of Boris Karloff/In the dark of the moon,” but it’s not long before the weirdness kicks in, Metallica’s full-scale riffing and James Hetfield’s repeated “Small town girl!” punctuating the rest of Reed’s pseudo-ranting.
And it just goes on like this…
Revisiting the mechanical world of walkmans and cassettes
What began as an experiment in the wake of a dead iPod turned into a love rekindled with a gloriously imperfect format and an outdated music player.
