Acts of Volition

I’ve always liked the idea of using a live performance for a music video. Not necessarily concert footage - it could be live to camera just for the video. The band Hey Rosetta! (the exclamation mark is theirs) have done just this in their beautiful and affecting video for the song Bandages. It was …

In this interview with Chris Murphy from Sloan, he was asked about song-writing themes as the band gets older. Chris says:  •  ““I’m trying not to write songs about how much I hate getting up at 5:30 am with the baby. It’s so boring but that’s all I know these days.””  •  Chris, I would love to …

This mix of dozens of YouTube clips of musicians covering Radiohead’s Paranoid Android is a remarkable editing job:  •  Thanks to Paul Kim for sharing.

On their 20th anniversary as a band, Sloan has release their best album in a while. The Double Cross arranges song order, bleeds one song into another, and calls back to hooks from other songs in the way that made their 1998 album, Navy Blues, so amazing.  •  Like all of their albums, The Double …

Fact: there is a Canadian-made Larrivee guitar on the International Space Station.

In David Byrne’s talk at the TED Conference, “How architecture helped music evolve”, he takes a walk though the history of venues and their accompanying influence on musical styles. Apparently birds adapt their music to the venue too.

A few music updates:  •  Following up on my plan to enjoy one album a month: After enjoying Dan Mangan’s Nice, Nice, Very Nice during January, I’ve selected The Avett Brothers I and Love and You for February. I loved their album The Gleam II and I’m already loving this one.  •  According to their …

It’s easy to romanticize the medium of our youth. I’m too young to miss vinyl; for me vinyl means Nana Mouskouri’s Christmas album. No one really misses cassettes; except maybe for mix tapes, which we mostly loved because of how much work we put into them. CDs are also hard to lament. They were …

Quoth George Stroumboulopoulos on The Strombo Show:  •  ““Ska music is like a romantic comedy, unless it's genius, it's terrible.””  •  He goes on to say that “[a]verage, middle-of-the-road Ska is some of the worst music you’re ever going to hear in your life.”  •  The Strombo Show is George …