"The Winter of Mixed Drinks"
Frightened Rabbit
"The Suburbs"
Arcade Fire
"Soundtrack To The End"
Communist Daughter
"Crazy For You"
Best Coast
"Treats"
Sleigh Bells
"Silver Soul"
Beach House
"Little Secrets"
Passion Pit
"Unhinged"
Eels
"Black Smoke"
Tindersticks
With this year’s South by Southwest festival less than two weeks away, it’s time to start picking some bands to see in Austin. First up, Kaiser Cartel. The Brooklyn duo describes itself as “low-fi, song-driven, harmony-heavy,” which sounds about right when you add that the pair is equally at home with a hazy, ’60s California-pop [...]
Imagine, if you will, a parallel universe in which Nirvana’s “Nevermind” was a critical favorite that didn’t sell particularly well outside of the small niche audience interested in the Seattle “grunge” scene. In this universe, the reaction to the combination of ’80s American punk rock and “Paranoid”-era Black Sabbath popular in the Pacific Northwest was [...]
Los Angeles in the ’80s was the site of two very different music scenes. The hardcore punk rock scene that included Black Flag, the Germs, X, Fear and Circle Jerks was famously documented in Penelope Spheeris’ film “The Decline of Western Civilization.” The sequel to that film focused on the glam-metal bands, like Poison, Ratt, [...]
If Public Enemy was hip-hop’s answer to punk rock — and last week we argued that it was — then Fugazi was punk rock’s answer to Public Enemy. If the dynamic between Guy Piccioto and Ian MacKaye wasn’t quite the same as that of Chuck D and Flavor Flav, the energy they brought to every [...]
Before Flavor Flav hawked cell phone plans for Sprint and got roasted on Comedy Central, before Chuck D debated Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on CNN, before mainstream hip-hop was taken over by an endless stream of Auto-Tuned gangsta wannabes, there was Public Enemy. “Yo! Bum Rush the Show” introduced Public Enemy to the [...]
We’re only falling into their trap, but Paste magazine’s list this morning of the 8 greatest songs by the Hold Steady was wrong enough that we here at Listen, Dammit, can’t help but weigh in. Their heart was in the right place: Paste’s list served as a fond farewell to keyboard player Franz Nicolay, who [...]
By 1990 Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty had accumulated impressive resumés. Drummond had been a member of the Liverpool punk band Big in Japan whose other members included Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Ian Broudie of The Lightning Seeds and Budgie of Siouxie and the Banshees and The Creatures. After Big in Japan [...]
In an effort to prepare for the coming wave of ’90s nostalgia while simultaneously making everyone who remembers the ’90s feel old, Listen, Dammit, will be exploring the best music of 20 years ago in chronological order, month by month. We begin at the beginning: January 1990. By the end of the ’80s R.E.M. had [...]
The first decade of the new millennium technically doesn’t end until Dec. 31, 2010, given that the millennium didn’t technically begin until Jan. 1, 2001. Obviously. But we’ll grant that the ’00s end with 2009, so this seems like an appropriate time to summarize the preceding 10 years — it’s still a decade, after all. [...]
Apart from the vast (VAST) staff at Listen, Dammit, HQ, two writers contributed the most during our inaugural year. So we’re rewarding them with the chance to spout about their favorite albums of 2009. (One of them already posted his list at his day job, but whatever.) Here, then, are lists from Kenneth Partridge and [...]
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