forkcast tracks
- Dinosaur Jr.: Farm
- Jay-Z, Wallpaper.: "D.O.A./ 99 Problems (Wallpaper. Remix)"
- Real Estate: "Green River"
- Black Moth Super Rainbow: "Twin of Myself (The Go! Team Remix)"
- David Lynch, Fox Bat Strategy: "Shoot the Works"
- Fever Ray: "Triangle Walks (Rex the Dog Radio Edit)"
- Radical Sons: "I'm So Sick of the 21st Century"
- Lusine: "Two Dots"
- The Skygreen Leopards: "Dixie Cups in the Dead Grass"
- Mark Pritchard, Om'mas Keith: "Wind It Up"
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Like a raving street lunatic with a sandwich board, the Fiery Furnaces' new single, "The End Is Near", predicts that doom is imminent. Yet somehow, despite the apocalyptic sentiment, the song just isn't crazy enough. "Down the road and up the creek, it's over/ It's such a clear and certain hell of a thing, it's over," sings Eleanor Friedberger over brother Matthew's groovy, relaxed, and somewhat incongruous piano playing. The origin of all this considerable anxiety, however, remains unrevealed. As recently as 2007's Widow City the Friedbergers were as rich and florid in their lyrical imagery as they were chaotic and unpredictable in their instrumentation. But "The End Is Near", drawn from the duo's upcoming record I'm Going Away, is lean in both its arrangement and narrative. And economy isn't particularly flattering for the Fiery Furnaces in this case. Lacking the sudden left-turns and manic storytelling of the duo's best work while also coming up short as far as melody, "The End Is Near" is a little too clear and cogent for its own good.
— Aaron Leitko
Relative to the other high-ranking Wu-Tang officials, Raekwon has always been strictly for the heads. RZA has his legions of weirdos, Ghost holds it down for the hipster set-- even GZA has managed to carve out a niche for himself with some of his headier constructions. But the Chef has made his M.O. pretty clear, his flow remaining entirely un-fucked with, his production as stocky and raw as the man himself. So if you're going to look at "Olympus" (supposedly from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, but you never really know with these guys) in any other context, well, you probably aren't a big Raekwon fan. Are the stories any good? Are the punches tight? Is he getting aggro or cooling out? It's kind of a mixed bag. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that this is Rae getting gassed up, squeezing in a little exercise before the main event. Most of the quick little couplets land nicely over Tru Master's unassuming baseplate of snaps, shakers, and a wavy little synthesizer loop. This isn't Raekwon at his ballsiest or brawniest; instead, he's using "Olympus" to loosen up and get his mind into full-on Linx mode. Casual fans probably won't give "Olympus" a second spin, believe that the true heads will be able to find something here.
— Zach Kelly
Indie rap isn't quite the same beast it was when Anti-Pop Consortium broke up back in 2002-- at least, it shouldn't be if it's done right. The good news here is that the comeback track from the epochal, two-years-reunited avant-rap dons sounds comparatively dated only because time finally caught up with them-- and even then, "dated" in this case means it sounds like it's from three years in the future instead of 20. The beat's all gear-grinding electro engaged in a space-laser dogfight, spark-and-hiss malfunction funk tasered until those haywire twitches get subwoofers throbbing; it's bracing stuff even if it's not all that more out-there than some Jeezy deep cuts. And their flows are rendered practically grotesque for effect against that backdrop: Beans sounds like he's punching back against each beat, High Priest is filed down to a flat drone more interested in jostling his rhythm than his range, and Sayyid spends most of his verse emulating a caricaturized, monotone rapbot with a brief, almost non-sequitur fast-rap interlude as digression. Even if they've lost a bit off their abstraction knuckleball-- Kimbo Slice metaphors, profiling gripes, and supreme-technique boasts are more straightforward than you might remember them being circa Arrhythmia-- they've still managed to put together one of the best surprises of the summer.
— Nate Patrin
Monday, June 15, 2009
There's something about the West Coast. I've never been, so I can't explain it, but for all its happy sunshine pop and gloriously liberal policies (Prop 8 notwithstanding), it's produced some of the darkest music I've ever laid ears upon. Hell, the Red House Painters single-handedly keep my utopian fantasies of San Francisco in check. And now Jesy Fortino-- better known as Tiny Vipers-- is doing the same to Seattle. Okay, the latter city isn't quite so cheery (cloaked as it is in constant drizzle), and its grungy reputation doesn't do it any favors, either. But where Kurt raged and bitterly struggled to exist, Jesy takes the Mark Kozelek approach, using an acoustic guitar to strum a single sad, slow melody, over and over, to impressive (albeit depressive) results. But let's dispense with comparisons, so we can focus on Fortino's most unique and, not coincidentally, valuable asset: her voice. A guttural warble in the best sense of the term, it's deep yet fragile and feminine-- and when it cracks with the high notes, it only accentuates her anguish, giving us a glimpse of a pain so private, we can't even begin to comprehend. The lyrics sure aren't offering any clues: with lines like "What can we learn when we can't understand?" and "What do these feelings mean?" Fortino offers more questions than answers. But when she grows quiet toward the end, focusing her energy to erupt in one last plea-- "I'm dying for a way out"-- it's impossible to misunderstand, and difficult to remain unmoved.
— Sean Redmond
The song title and the jingle-jangle of what sounds like a Rickenbacker might make listeners think of the Beatles, while the tune's pastoral lilt (ably abetted by some ethereal harmonies) might recall the folky shimmer of the Go-Betweens. But whenever the Kilgour brothers and friends get together-- be it to chisel the Rosetta Stone that musicians of the indie persuasion all across the globe are still trying to decode, or simply to write songs as effortless and gorgeous as "In the Dreamlife"-- it always sounds like the Clean. The lyrics' consideration of day-in day-out drudgery might be plain-spoken to a fault ("You wear the same face every day/ Worried that you might have a small hole in your soul"). However, when combined with the song's gently propulsive melody, these words are imbued with an honest wisdom, and the phrase "in the dreamlife, you need a rubber soul" transformed into a mantra that sounds like it could hold the answer to all of your troubles.
— David Raposa
As a precursor to R. Kelly's first major post-trial release, Untitled, the DJ Skee/DJ Drama-hosted mixtape The Demo Tape has reignited the conversation about whether the embattled R&B star is either relevant or, at very least, welcome in this industry anymore. Acquittal notwithstanding, Kelly has spent the past seven years as one of pop's most polarizing figures, surprisingly incapable of stunting his unpredictable creative output, especially in the looming shadow of enough legal paperwork to silence, or perhaps ruin, any other public figure of equal or greater standing. But maybe that's why we've stuck with Kelly, and despite the hollow catharsis exhibited on 2004's gospel offering, U Saved Me, the records he has released since his indictment have managed to remain as raunchy, bizarre, and enjoyable as anything else in their respective orbits.
So it's a relief that it's back to business with The Demo Tape, most notable on the Kelly-assisted remix of Jeremih's smash "Birthday Sex". It's actually kind of disappointing that Kelly doesn't have owners' rights to this thing, an impossibly silky headboard thumper that has Kelly's brand of funny, knuckleheaded horndoggedness written all over it. Mike Schultz's production is quite masterful in its own right, with its bongo raps and celestial twinkles reserved only for lap dances in zero gravity. But the real star is Kelly, with his slightly Auto-Tuned voice as buttery and recognizable as ever. Though really only giving the NC-17 tweak to Jeremih's lyrical construction (watch him nail that "Girl you know ay ay ay!" part), the larger statement taken here is that, like it or not, this is what R. Kelly does, and he can do it better than you can. Now go on, blow out those candles.
— Zach Kelly
Friday, June 12, 2009
Diabetics take heed-- this is some sugary stuff, right here. New Orleans duo Generationals are Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, two guys seemingly obsessed with the twist 'n' shout of yore, jam-packing their tunes with blasts of late-1960s sunshine pop. "When They Fight, They Fight" comes from the band's debut, Con Law, which spins a series of songs that don't stray far from "Fight"'s time-capsulated goodness. It comes as kind of a pleasant surprise to hear a band from N.O. sound this bright and enraptured in life's simple joys. But man, does this thing flirt with overdoing it. You'd have to be pretty cold-hearted not to raise some sort of a smile for those fun little bossa nova nods, big horns, and amateurish girl-group harmonies. However, if you don't happen to be spending your Sunday flipping through teeny-bopper magazines and kicking your legs in the air with delight, or watching the credits roll on the latest Zooey Deschanel eye-roller, "Fight" can feel just a tad too blithe for its own good.
— Zach Kelly
Twenty-four-year-old Jason Chung, aka Nosaj Thing, isn't the first spelunker to bridge instrumental hip-hop, electronica, and a pinch of dub-- hell, he's not the thirtieth. So what's the story here? How his synths clink and bump off the walls like the Gemini Laser from "Mega Man 3"? How his hall-of-mirrors sound effects squeak and ding like a newborn Martian's busy box? How this is exactly what I'd expect Lindstrøm's Where You Go I Go Too to sound like if it went trolling for booty on a Saturday night? With almost no relation to the squelchy air-raid sirens of "Light #1", from the same album, Drift, here Chung offers a glitch-free paradise of dizzying columns of triggered arpeggios. He may risk more when a few albums removed from his debut, but for now let's bask in the anonymously beautiful. Cue up the trippy Windows Media Player visualization at your peril.
— Dan Weiss
He starts off dismissing Proust for being "a little too long," and by the end of the song turns to Judge Judy for a verdict. In between these brows of varying height, Ira Kaplan makes like a sickly uncoordinated mope for whom slouching's too much work-- imagine if the words to "Summertime Blues" were written by a Brian Posehn kicking back more than the recommended daily allowance of Robitussin. But where the words to "Periodically Double or Triple" reek of a distinct lack of confidence, the actual tune more than makes up for that deficiency. The song's organ-based groove might recall any number of precedents-- our own Ryan Dombal hears Booker T.; I'm hearing a little Sun Ra and the Zombies, especially in the solo-- but that cozy little pocket Yo La Tengo occupies when they're in that groove is the sort of thing that can't be plagiarized. Add in some little touches that mean so much-- a tambourine here, some shooby-dooby back-up vocals there, and an out-of-nowhere elevator-music break-- and it's clear that Yo La Tengo, as ever, still own their little corner of the world.
— David Raposa
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Ghostface Killah is arguably the most prolific post-Wu-Tang member, so when rumors started to swirl about his next album being an R&B-inspired release-- or at least as R&B as the emcee can be-- a common response was likely a knowing shoulder shrug. A far cry from his weight-pushing slang rap of Fishscale and The Big Doe Rehab, "Forever" is basically what you might expect from a Ghostface R&B release: his signature deep storytelling, girl-you-so-fine rhymes, and Ghostface getting his grown man on. The song's lineage can most closely be drawn to Jay-Z's "Girls, Girls, Girls", from the poorly sung chorus to the East Coast hardcore rhyme spitter paying homage to his various women. Even the production sounds like a Roc-A-Fella classic (read: Kanye West beat), having the strings of Twista's "Overnight Celebrity" and the classic sample-flow weaving of so many of Kanye's greatest works. And that's to say nothing of Ghostface's pinpoint flows; he seems more focused and sharp, possibly having exhausted all of his crack-rap metaphors and being exposed to an entirely new, wordplay-ready topic.
Stream:> Ghostface: "Forever"
— Chris Gaerig
- Das Racist: "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper. R
- Lil Wayne: "Kobe Bryant"
- Jay-Z: "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)"
- Ghostface Killah: "Forever"
- YACHT: "Psychic City (Voodoo City)"
- DJ Kaos: "Love the Nite Away (Tiedye Mix)"
- Yo La Tengo: "Periodically Double or Triple"
- Simian Mobile Disco: "Audacity of Huge"
- Grizzly Bear: "While You Wait For the Others"
- Circulatory System: "Overjoyed"
- Jay Reatard: "It Ain't Gonna Save Me"
- Cheap Trick: "Sick Man of Europe"
- Magnolia Electric Co.: "Josephine"
- The Minus 5: "Scott Walker's Fault" [ft. Colin Meloy]
- Dinosaur Jr.: "I Want You to Know"
- Pissed Jeans: "False Jesii Part 2"
- Jemina Pearl: "Nashville Shores"
- Dirty Projectors: "Stillness Is the Move"
- Mastodon: "Divinations"
- So Cow: "Halcyon Days"
- Ganglians: "Valient Brave"
- Nudge: "Two Hands"
- Ty Segall: "Going Down"
- Discovery: "So Insane"
- Memory Tapes: "Bicycle"
- Clipse: "I'm Good"
- Anti-Pop Consortium: "Capricorn One"
- Raekwon: "Olympus"
- The Fiery Furnaces: "The End Is Near"
- Tiny Vipers: "Dreamer"
- Jeremih: "Birthday Sex (Remix)" [ft. R. Kelly]
- The Clean: "In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul"
- Yo La Tengo: "Periodically Double or Triple"
- Nosaj Thing: "Light #2"
- Generationals: "When They Fight, They Fight"
- Ghostface Killah: "Forever"
- Blind Man's Colour: "Heavy Cloud Hustle"
- There Will Be Fireworks: "Foreign Thoughts"
- Lil Wayne: "Kobe Bryant"
- Simian Mobile Disco: "Audacity of Huge"
Recently
Reviews
- Little Boots: Hands
- DJ Quik / Kurupt: BlaQKout
- Black Meteoric Star: Black Meteoric Star
- Ada: Adaptations #1 Mixtape
- Pocahaunted: Passage
Track Reviews
TV
News
- Clark Sabine | Zero 7 | Wheedle's Groove
- Beck Posts First Record Club Cover Song
- Supergrass Dudes Start Band With Nigel Godrich
- Woods Tour With Dungen
- New Blur Music Possible
- Premiere: Polvo: "Beggar's Bowl"
- Hear the Very Best Song With Ezra Koenig
- Broken Social Scene (and Feist!) Play Surprise Gig
- Dead Body Found at Bonnaroo
- Air Announce New Album: Love 2
Reviews
- Neil Young: The Archives Vol. 1: 1963-1972
- El-B: The Roots of El-B
- Gregor Samsa: Over Air
- I Was A King: I Was a King
- Tiny Masters of Today: Skeletons
Track Reviews
News
- Beck Enlists Devendra, MGMT to Cover Albums
- New LP: Woolfy: If You Know What's Good for Ya!!
- David Lynch Writes a Rock Album
- Polyvinyl l Willie Nelson l Lullabye Arkestra
- Lollapalooza Reveals Festival Schedule
- Echo Chamber: Blur's Alex James
- White Stripes Live Doc Gets Title, Screening
- Battles' Tyondai Braxton Preps Solo Album
- Boredoms to Play on Boat During Eclipse
- Jay Reatard Planned Chris Knox Collaboration
Reviews
- Big Star: # 1 Record / Radio City
- Various Artists: Underwaterpeoples Records Showcase
- Rhett Miller: Rhett Miller
- Sleepy Sun: Embrace
- Client: Command
Track Reviews
Features
News
- Prince | Bob Bogle | Eric Copeland | Whitney
- Os Mutantes Sign to Anti-, Ready New Album
- Pains Tour With Cymbals Eat Guitars
- Mos Def's New Album Available as T-Shirt
- Premiere: Grizzly Bear's Rossen Covers Judee Sill
- Antony Covers Beyoncé on New Single
- Echo Chamber: Black Francis
- New Song: Modest Mouse: "Autumn Beds"
- The Very Best Announce Debut Album
- Video: Beyoncé [ft. Kanye West]: "Ego"
Reviews
- Hot Chip: A Bugged Out Mix
- So Cow: So Cow
- Tim Exile: Listening Tree
- Gregg Kowalsky: Tape Chants
- Jonathan Johansson: En Hand I Himlen
Track Reviews
- Tiny Vipers: "Dreamer"
- Jeremih: "Birthday Sex (Remix)" [ft. R. Kelly]
- The Clean: "In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul"
News
- Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy Team for Tour
- Cat Stevens Forgives Coldplay for Stealing Song
- Modest Mouse Images Collected in Zine
- Echo Chamber: Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste
- Sigur Rós Win Icelandic Game Show
- T.V. Eye: June 15-21
- Blur Make Live Return
- Beastie Boys and Nas Collaborate on New Song
- New Order Swap Peter Hook for Blur Bassist
- Tall Dwarfs' Chris Knox Recovering From Stroke
Reviews
- Busdriver: Jhelli Beam
- Various Artists: Kitsuné Maison 7: The Lucky One
- The Sounds: Crossing the Rubicon
- Tiga: Ciao!
- The Curious Mystery: Rotting Slowly
Track Reviews
- Yo La Tengo: "Periodically Double or Triple"
- Nosaj Thing: "Light #2"
- Generationals: "When They Fight, They Fight"
TV
Features
News
- The Warp Box Set Sure Looks Pretty
- Taco Zone | Nurses | Woodstock | Free Press Fest
- New Release: BLK JKS: After Robots
- Weezer Get Their Own Online Radio Station
- Two-Day Pitchfork Festival Passes Sold Out!
- Sonic Youth Get Signature Guitars
- Sigur Rós Celebrate Agaetis Byrjun Anniversary
- Traffic | Melt! | Witchseason Weekender | Truck
- Mount Eerie Preps "Black Metal" Album
- Oberst/Jim James/M. Ward LP Confirmed
Reviews
- Patrick Wolf: The Bachelor
- Cortney Tidwell: Boys
- Xasthur: All Reflections Drained
- Miike Snow: Miike Snow
- The Warlocks: The Mirror Explodes
Track Reviews
- Ghostface Killah: "Forever"
- Blind Man's Colour: "Heavy Cloud Hustle"
- There Will Be Fireworks: "Foreign Thoughts"
TV
News
- Common Teams Up With the Jonas Brothers
- Merge Records Immortalized in Book, Dance Form
- Echo Chamber: Cedric Bixler-Zavala of Mars Volta
- Conor Oberst/Jim James/M. Ward Album Finally Due?
- Sally Shapiro Announces Sophomore Album
- New Album: Brendan Benson: My Old, Familiar Friend
- Former Shins Drummer's Food Cart, Revealed!
- Thieves Rip Off Itunes by Buying Their Own Music
- Apples in Stereo | MoMA | PBS | stellastarr*
- Trent Reznor Logs Off
Reviews
- Mos Def: The Ecstatic
- Charles Mingus: Mingus Ah Um: Legacy Edition
- Placebo: Battle For the Sun
- Bachelorette: My Electric Family
- Mannequin Men: Lose Your Illusion, Too
Track Reviews
Features
News
- Phil Spector's Mug Shot: AAAAHHHHH!
- New Release: The Fiery Furnaces: "The End Is Near"
- Black Lips' Jared Swilley Attacks Wavves
- The Raveonettes Use Twitter as Focus Group
- Premiere: Anti-Pop Consortium: "Capricorn One"
- Kanye West to Tour With Lady Gaga
- New Release: Flying Lotus: L.A. EP 3 X 3
- Blitzen Trapper Ready EP, Tour
- Air Soundtrack Short Film
- Bat for Lashes | Thrill Jockey | Spinnerette