The Dust Bin
The Perfect Spring Album: The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 12:45 pm
Typically, I make playlists for each season…and not always just one. My iTunes has about five of them just for June-August, labeled accordingly: Summer Life, Summer Rain, etc. This spring, I’m changing my ways. The only music I want to accompany the newfound greenery and sweater weather is the classic country record Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Byrds, featuring the inimitable Gram Parsons. MORE »
Bands, The Dust Bin
Amazing Vintage Video of The Chills Performing “Pink Frost”
Amy Rose Spiegel :: Friday, April 23rd, 2010 5:05 pm
The Chills are an incredible 1980s post-punk band that never really got their due. My co-worker just came up to me as I was listening to the song in the video below and told me this tidbit: “Do you know how The Chills got their sound? They said it was because they got Joy Division’s Closer and loved it, but since they were in New Zealand, they got the memo ten years late.” Charming! MORE »
The Dust Bin
The Dust Bin: Air’s 10,000 Hz Legend
DJ Pangburn :: Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 4:30 pm
I’m going to go ahead and say it right now: 10,000 Hz Legend is the best Air album. Perhaps more important than that, it is simultaneously the best and worst thing that happened to Air’s career. Now that I’ve knocked the wind out of you, I’m going to kick you in the balls and tell you—as I grin over your fallen body—that Moon Safari is no challenge to like. It’s an easy record. Put those grooves on for your grandmother, and she will pick up her knitting kit, hum along and make you a nice pair of socks. Now, if you let 10,000 Hz Legend rip on her old gramophone, your grandmother will knit herself a self-contained, air-recycling, zero-gravity space suit, step inside it, disappear in a beam of light and land several star systems away but be back home in time to bake you a fuckin’ cake before midnight. I’ve seen it happen. Not content with proclaiming it Air’s best album, I’m going to go a step further and say it’s on the short list for best of the last decade. 10,000 Hz Legend easily bests the overrated and not-as-cutting-edge-as-everyone-thinks-it-was Kid A. Both albums were released in the same year, but Radiohead received a surplus of masturbatory accolades from critics who somehow forgot that synthesizers were in use before 2001, and that Thom Yorke and Co. basically lifted their entire sound from Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. But that’s neither here nor there. I’m not out to call into question the supreme artistry of the Yorkshire Puppy. Smile Thom, the world is a lovely place. MORE »
The Dust Bin
The Dust Bin: Blur’s Think Tank
Danny Fasold :: Saturday, February 13th, 2010 7:00 pm
This Week’s Focus: Blur’s Think Tank. I’ve always had a good amount of respect for Blur fans. Not only do they have awesome taste in music, but they’re much harder to come by than their Oasis-loving peers. So when one Blur-head meets another, it’s like something akin to watching a couple of Dune fans geek out on each other about sandworms and foldspace and things of this nature.
But it’s with even greater difficulty that you will find a Blur fan who thinks Think Tank is not only a cohesive record, but one of their very, very best. As the band’s final record before permanently calling it quits in 2003, Think Tank’s probably more well known for having painfully and maliciously ruptured the relationship between Damon Albarn and Graham Coxen than it is for actually having good music. During production, Albarn was able to coax only one song out of Coxen before he stormed out of the studio, guitar in hand. That song was “Battery in Your Leg,” and it’s probably no coincidence that it was track-listed as the last song on the record, or also that it sounds so poignant. MORE »
