I’ve tried to write the introduction to this review four times, deleting and revising my attempts to introduce the uneducated to Reggie Watts. I give up. It’s impossible to truly explain Reggie Watts in any kind of condensed, summarized version. He stands for so much, while also standing for nothing. He’s hilarious but unfunny in the most intentional and unintentional ways. He’s a genius composer and skilled beatboxer. And nothing about him makes any sense unless you want it to.
With the release of his newest standup/music CD, Why $#!+ So …

Brooklyn noise-rock duo Sleigh Bells sure picked the right title for their debut album. Not because it’s necessarily a treat to listen to it, but in that it’s essentially the musical equivalent of the sugariest or sourest candy you can think of. At first, it’s a sensation you’re not really used to, kind of exhilarating even in its discomfort. But keep ingesting it and it’s not long before you’re as sick as you can be.
Late last year, I downloaded the Sleigh Bells tracks that took the Internet by storm and …

In 1991, Public Enemy released a song called “By the Time I Get To Arizona,” an angry, incendiary track in which Chuck D described a fictional assassination of then real-life governor of AZ, Fife Symington, III. The anger originated from AZ’s failure to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as an official state holiday. In 1990, a referendum supporting the recognition of MLK Day failed, due in no small part to the governor and other legislators’ staunch opposition to the citizen’s ballot initiative.

Almost twenty years later, AZ is in …

The summer music season arrives today with the release of a slew of new albums from big-name pop acts competing for your download or disc dollar. With all that new music on the way, I thought I’d change things up a little bit and do three shorter reviews in place of my usual single bimonthly review.
You’re welcome.
Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record

I really wanted to like this album. I did. Broken Social Scene’s previous record, their self-titled 2005 effort, is something I still listen to now.
This album, I probably won’t …

Unless you lived under a rock in 2008, you probably heard the term “post-racial” used in reference to President Barack Obama’s candidacy. The term refers to the fact that his being black was for all intents and purposes a non-issue. This, in running for President of a country that only four decades prior was still segregating schools on the grounds of race.
Obama’s viability and eventual success gave credence to a sea-change in our public consciousness, that we had moved past, or beyond the era where race was the first and …

I’m proud to say that the new record from James Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem carries on the fine tradition of the previous two.
You may have by now heard the lead single from the album, “Drunk Girls,” which I hate to inform you is the worst track on the whole thing. It’s got a perfectly danceable up-tempo beat but ends up sounding a lot more like the closing music to a 1980s college slobs vs. snobs comedy than I would prefer. On the album itself, “Drunk Girls” also has the misfortune of …

Concept albums about historical figures have always been something of a tricky proposition. Sometimes, they can turn out to be a little obtuse, to the point where longtime fans are surprised to find out that the album was based on anybody. Take Neutral Milk Hotel’s superlatively great album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which, believe it or not, is about Anne Frank. If I hadn’t read that in interviews and reviews in the course of my budding love affair with that record, I would have never known.

Former music critic, Steve Almond, wrote an op-ed piece over at the Boston Globe this past week, blasting the music criticism industry. He stated, rather eloquently, that good critics–himself not included, by his own admission–could never capture “what it feels like to listen to music. Because listening to music is a collaborative endeavor. Fans don’t just sit there (as critics do) parsing the technical merits of a song. They bring to each song their own emotional needs: their lust and sorrow, their hopes and heartbreak.” When faced with the question …

On the making-of documentary included with the “Experience Edition” of Gorillaz’ latest album, Plastic Beach, band creator (and former Blur front man) Damon Albarn bemoans the state of the cohesive album in the age of iPods and Random Play.  It’s a legitimate problem, and one that the first two Gorillaz albums tended to accommodate.  Collections of relentlessly catchy singles alongside more esoteric pieces, neither Gorillaz’ self-titled debut nor their follow-up Demon Days ever really cohered as an album.  You’d start one, get hung up on listening to “Feel Good Inc.” …

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published as being written by Ken Lowery. It was, in fact, written by Eugene Ahn, who writes Self-Titled Eponymous every two weeks.
Paste Magazine’s February 2010’s cover story asks the question, “Is Indie Dead?,” a take on John T. Elson’s 1966 Time Magazine cover “Is God Dead?,” an article that raised eyebrows and, in some cases, furor on both sides of the believer/non-believer debate.
The tongue-in-cheek irony of Rachael Maddux’s well-written article is that for many musical fanatics, the indie genre and mentality might as well …