Issue 21

issue 21

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ke nic a o m e ico t ity erag l i b ev a s ' eb p ho erag p hi av an

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D E L Z Z D de O i S u E g , SHking D E A drin K M A ive S s O S NDprehen A om ac

M I K C I N

northeastern students on music

Kyle Risley President Katie Price Editor in Chief Anne Latini Art Director Andrew Phan Marketing Director Edwin Morris Web Director Bryan Berlin Features Director Alyssa Mastrocco Features Editor Em Cassel Interviews Coordinator Sammy Kaufman, Colin Peters Interviews Editors Dave Tscheigg Reviews Director Chris Stoppiello, Mel Bertoldi Reviews Editors Tom Casey Copy Editor Caitlin Kullberg Promotions Director Chrissy Bukalites Photo Director Staff Writers Aadil Sulaiman, Dana Jensen, Dinorah Wilson, Kade Krichko, Jordan Munson, Lauren Moquin, Leslie Fowle, Madi Daigle, Matt Baddour, Michelle Buchman, Nick Hugon, Runyon Colie, Sapphire Reels, Susan Ng, Susie Conway, William Duane Marketing Staff Trevor Burns, Michael Gasiorek, Caitlin Kulberg, Alex Taylor Marketing Designers Chris Bowers, Chris Eddins, Charlie Doucette Contributors Adriel Tjokrosaputro, Ashley Jacobs, Bianca Falcone, Brooke Daly, Cassie Hebert, Chris Mack, Dan Arias, Dan Thompson, Dan Wilets, Evan Prawda, Felicia Gonzalez, Patricia Concepcion, Grace Munns, Harrison Seitz, Jake Rolf, James McKeon, Jay Cook, Jeff Lewis, Kate Lieb, Kirby Smyth, Lauren Taylor, Megan Pollock, Natasha Perez, Nathan Goldman, Olivia Zhou, Patricia Hunter, Patrick Duane, Patrick Torpey, Rachel Drudi, Rebecca Stadlen, Rebecca Timson, Sean Pierre-Antoine, Shea Geyer Art & Design Chris Bowers, Chrissy Bulakites, Runyon Colie, Chris Eddins, Charlie Doucette, Jessie Contour, David Tschiegg, Susan Ng, Abbie Hanright, Brian Cantrell, Katie Dunn, Laura Crossin, Alyssa Sullivan Tastebuds Michelle Buchman, Em Cassel, Katie Doucette, Nathan Goldman, Dana Jensen, Eric Luke, Sachin Mitra, Shannon Murphy, Samantha Robinson

staff quotes "I know that we are young, and I know that you may love me, but I just can't be with you like this anymore...!"

- Nick Hugon (International Affairs)

"I have an incredible sugar high and three new cavities due to the amazingly sweet taste of Tastemakers... it's just so tasty!"

- Colin Joseph Peters (Awesome)

"2 a.m. Officers responded to a call from the Renaissance Parking Garage about a student who appeared to be assaulted."

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calendar

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show reviews

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local photos

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- Chris Bowers (Graphic Design)

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"We are wine bottles."

- Laura Crossin (Graphic Design)

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Cover Art by Chris Bowers (Graphic Design)

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maybe some things are sacred

keeping score

weep not for the weepies

one hit indie wonders

the rise and fall and rise of julian casablancas

the new danger: alternative music blogs

putting the pieces back together: and interview with chris conley

soaked, sozzled, and smashed: a comprehensive drinking guide

hip-hop's ability to make an averaged beverage iconic

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business in the front, party in the back: a tale of two genres

a q&a with matt and kim

predictions and superlatives for a new year & bizarre christmas albums

cd reviews

just a taste of: lady lamb the bee keeper

etcetera

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2.26 girl talk @ house of blues alyssa mastrocco (english) “Let me break it down. Take some songs that you already know, mix in some contagious dance beats, add plenty of sweaty frat guys and a handful of drunk biddies drenched in Rubinoff and what you get is Girl Talk.”

2.3 chromeo @ house of blues eric luke (business) “Oozing with hot synths, disco beats and electrofunk, Chromeo’s brings back the 80s with retro flair. Their latest album “Business Casual” will make you want to don a suit, finish your brandy and hit the dance floor. Chromeo promises to entertain with their suave style, lustful melodies and cheesy antics. Craving glamour, women and a good time? Look no further than Chromeo.”

1.28 the dismemberment plan @ paradise kyle risley (marketing) “Post-punk legends The Dismemberment Plan have reunited for a short string of east coast shows to celebrate the vinyl only re-release of their magnum opus, /Emergency & I/, via Barsuk. This may be the only chance you’ll have to hear Travis Morrison lament the pains of being lonely or witness the agile drumming of Joe Easley. Unfortunately, it’s very sold out, so unless you have upwards of $60 to dish out you’ll be stuck blasting 'Ice of Boston' by yourself in your room. Sounds like a win/win situation to me.”

1.19 little dragon @ brighton music hall andrew phan (pharmacy) “I had a chance to catch Little Dragon on stage with the Gorillaz this summer during Coachella.

Since then, I’ve warmed up to her groovy, soulful sounds. Make sure to see her before she lands in an iPod commercial so you can tell all your friends, ‘I told you so.’”

1.13 the punch brothers @ somerville theatre katie price (music industry/journalism) “Fresh off their appearances on Prairie Home Companion and The David Letterman show with Steve Martin, the Punch Brothers have a big year ahead of them. The bluegrass group has remained relatively out of the spotlight, but it won’t stay that way for long as they start touring here in January finish out at Stagecoach in Indio, CA during the summer.

Catch their bittersweet harmonies early before the secret’s out!

Spoiler Alert: They’re not actually brothers.”

BP double trouble

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president’s day

clam chowder day

PL fintroll

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happy valentine’s day

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IH lucy kaplansky

super bowl XLV

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agganis arena afterHOURS berklee cafe 939 brighton music hall berklee performance center charles playhouse comcast center

BP dark side of the moon

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AA AH BC BM BP CP CC

bubble wrap appreciation day

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30 MU school of rock presents song of radio head

BP musical theatre production

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23 TT the queers

martin lother king jr. day

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16 MD cracker with camper van beethoven

united nations day

balloon ascension day

BP robert johnson

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BP ernie isley

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BP concert songs of black composers

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BP big head todd and the monsters

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SL davd allan coe

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BP heavy rotation records cd release concert

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BP bobby mcferrin

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BP eclecticism

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HOB interpol

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TA emilie autumn

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IH aztec two-step

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td banknorth tt the bear’s wang theatre wilbur theatre

PR lissie

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WT patton oswalt

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WT bob saget

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MD lovesick radio plus the silent scene, the summer soundtrack and small

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MD the joshua tree U2 trubute

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PR HOB galactic / trombone shorty girl talk & orleans avenue

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PR bruce in the usa

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HOB josh ritter & the royal city band

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MD the radio dept.

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TD TT WA WT

PR dismemberment plan

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HOB john brown’s body HOB

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IH cheryl wheeler

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SL edwin mccain

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palladium paradise the roxy symphony hall showcase live somerville theatre the armory in somerville

MD deerhoof plus ben butler and mousepad & nervous cop

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HOB chromeo

3 BP greg badolato

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BP if you want my body

PL PA RX SH SL ST TA

holocaust memorial day

national peanut brittle day

great scott house of blues iron horse entertainment complex mass art middle east north shore music hall orpheum

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BP jorge drexler

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ST the punch brothers

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IH greg brown

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PA tokyo police club / two door cinema club

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MD chris pureka

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national bean day

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GS HOB IH MA ME NS OR

IH joey acevedo

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IH joey acevedo

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IH joey acevedo

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national trivie day

national chocolate covered cherry day

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cloud cult

the morning benders

@ royale, october 27th photos and article by brian cantrell (graphic design)

@ paradise, november 9th written by nick hugon (international affairs) photo by zack brittingham (behavioral neuroscience, music industry)

With the lights low, Cloud Cult walked onto the stage. The horns and strings started up slowly.

“Unexplainable Stories,” the first track from their latest album Light Chasers, opened the show.

Lead singer/guitarist Craig Minowa sang the entire song through a small bullhorn. It was now time for painter Scott West to prepare his paints and canvas.

West’s canvas was on a rotating easel. Right as the song reached the point where it shifted from mellow to aggressive, he grabbed the side of the canvas and gave it a hard pull. Fury broke out on the stage. Bassist Shawn Neary and Minowa danced while they played, West’s arms attacked the spinning canvas with blue, purple, and green.

The crowd watched in amazement, quickly shifting from passive to mimicking the band’s energy.

Once Cloud Cult had gotten everyone’s attention, it was never lost. As a spectacle, this show was above the level of most. Band members switched instruments constantly, each singing on

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at least one song, including West. Several times during “Running of the Wolves,” cellist Sarah Young drummed on a cookie sheet.

At times, Minowa offered Cloud Cult updates.

“So you may notice Connie isn’t here,” he said.

“That’s because we just had a baby.” Connie Minowa is the band’s other visual artist, and she is married to Craig.

During some new songs, Minowa added an Auto-Tune-like effects to his vocals with a special mic. One such tune, “The Exploding People,” featured half of the band abandoning their positions and encircling a drum that they all played at once.

After the encore, Cloud Cult came forward, thanked the crowd, and bowed. Then a crowd gathered around their merchandise table to bid on West’s completed painting. With 10 minutes left of the silent auction and a few people hovering around the table, the piece was already at $500.

A well deserved price for the piece that not only captured the thrill of the show, but was very much a part of the evening.

I’ll start from the end for this one. The Morning Benders had just wrapped up an animated performance of the latest hit off their summer release, Big Echo, “Excuses,” to close their show, and there’s only one way I can describe their response from the crowd.

Have you ever watched one of those crappy YouTube videos of a concert, and whenever a significant amount of noise is made, the recording device basically capitulates, almost everything becomes inaudible, and you hear a strange and busy silence? That’s what the applause and cheering sounded like, except it was my own ears that failed to cope with the racket.

The Morning Benders are a Berkeley-based alternative rock band fronted by Chris Chu, a

prodigiously gifted vocalist and guitarist. They sport a unique retro-tinged breezy sound, and fortunately for me, the band was able to translate it into a live performance that was musically as enjoyable as it gets.

Although most of the set was from Big Echo, including “Cold War,” “Promises,” “Mason Jar,” “All Day Daylight,” the band also covered Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and Sublime’s “Garden Grove.” Finally, the Benders injected favorites from their debut album, Talking Through Tin Cans, into the performance, playing tunes like “Waiting for a War,” before performing a new song, “Virgins,” as their encore.

Overall, the performance was stellar, but what really made the show was the band’s - and in

particular Chu’s - attitude. He repeatedly thanked fans for assembling on a Tuesday night (and laughed every time a girl screamed for him to take his clothes off).

While concertgoers view the opportunity to see a great band like The Morning Benders as a privilege, this band sees its fans and their devotion as a precious commodity that has to be cultivated and earned, and that was heartwarmingly evident on this night.

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clockwise from top left motion city soundtrack by katie price (journalism/music industry) civil twilight by chriss bulakites (photography/music industry) stereo skyline by alexa fay (graphpic design) junip by bryan berlin (media studies)

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m t a h th i y e n b tri g e als s of a so m r m ak e ing s e a a co c ve r ra e l d The Flaming Lips playing at Bonnaroo has become as regular an occurrence as the State of the Union. This year, the Lips threw a little extra confetti into the mix when they announced that, with the help of tour mates Star Death & White Dwarfs, they were going to be performing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety.

Accomplishing a successful cover album is such a daunting task that I'm surprised we've had as many attempts as we have. The Lips' take on

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Dark Side gained such mixed reviews that few critics would dub it a commercial success.

So what does make a successful cover album? A single song is an easy task but doing an entire album is often a recipe for disaster. Many established and successful bands have ended entire careers on illreceived cover albums. Rage Against the Machine and A Perfect Circle have each only played a handful of shows since the bands went on hiatus following their respective cover albums, but there have been plenty of submissions to the cover album archives in 2010. Some are successes and some not so much, but hopefully none of them will do these bands in.

John Legend and The Roots recently released a soulful collection of songs from the 60s and 70s, dubbed Wake Up after the Arcade Fire song, to a great amount of critical acclaim. On Wake Up, The Roots and Legend seldom take extreme departures from the original songs. In fact, it would be accurate to describe them as modern updates on these still-relevant soul tunes.

Roots drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson told Billboard, "I wanted to choose songs that wouldn't overshadow the project." In that respect, Wake Up's success can be attributed to changing songs that the public was not too attached to from the start.

In a similar vein, The Bird and the Bee released a Hall and Oates cover album earlier this year called Interpreting the Masters, Vol. 1: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates. The LA duo masterfully

take the 70s and 80s pop of Hall and Oates and combine it with their own indie-synthpop sound.

Interpreting the Masters has garnered much respect among critics and fans alike. Online album reviews even scored the covers higher than they typically scored their original works.

More often than not, cover albums can offend.

In February of this year Peter Gabriel released an ambitious two-part cover project. The first, titled Scratch My Back, had Gabriel covering an exciting array of artists including Bon Iver, Radiohead, Elbow, David Bowie, Paul Simon, and more by turning each artist's song into an eerily open, orchestral arrangement. Part two was to be titled I'll Scratch Yours and would feature the same list of artists reciprocating by covering one of Gabriel's songs. The rumor, as reported

by Gabriel himself, was that the companion album is not coming together as envisioned after Thom Yorke heard Gabriel's mostly spoken word cover of "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" and pulled Radiohead out of the project.

Beck has probably the most interesting take on the cover project, inviting musical friends over to spend a day to record an entire album for what he calls The Record Club. The list of musicians involved is too vast to detail but includes the likes of Sonic Youth, MGMT, Wilco, and Feist.

What makes this approach so unique is best expressed in Beck's own words on the Record Club web page: "There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens," writes Beck.

For this reason, the Record Club seems to be a success even when it doesn't necessarily sound good. It is music being honest and real.

That is what listeners best respond to in a cover.

Peter Gabriel's album shows how cover albums can force songs to be something they are not and how that can fall apart.

Some sound advice for artists looking to do their own covers album? If you can't do it raw like Beck then take a cue from ?uestlove and pick songs people won't care about.

KEEPING

SCORE

written by colin peters (journalism) art by chris eddins (graphic design)

Composer John Williams has created some of the most memorable movie scores of all time: Star Wars, Jaws, Superman, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List and Harry Potter (don’t act like you’re too cool). He rules. Recently, Hans Zimmer has been stealing some glory with movies like The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, Angels & Demons and The Dark Knight. He rules too.

Between them, they have forty-eight Academy Award nominations, thirty-one Golden Globe nominations and forty-eight Grammy nods. If you were to ask fictional racecar driver Ricky Bobby, he’d tell you these guys definitely “wake up in the morning and piss excellence.”

That’s just how it is.

They are composer heavyweights and in the company of many more.

However, there also seems to be a recent trend of more mainstream and less classically trained artists scoring movies. It’s important to remember that a musical score is different than a soundtrack.

A score is music composed specifically for a film whereas soundtracks typically consist of composition albums featuring several artists. For example: one of my favorite soundtracks is Garden State and one of my favorite scores is Purple Rain by Prince and the Revolution. Yes, that actually counts because the music was intended for the movie of the same name. Here is a look at some recent movies that have been scored by excellent artists.

TRON LEGACY

Get ready for some seriously epic “Robot Rock.” Daft Punk hasn’t released any new material since 2005’s Human After All and fans are salivating at the idea of the French duo scoring this movie. It seems like it was meant to be. Seriously, could there be a better project for Daft Punk? No. According to the L.A. Times, the electro tag-team also makes a cameo in the movie. Surprise anyone? Me neither. Daft Punk could have written the movie; it’d probably be better than whatever Disney dreamed up.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

While listed on iTunes as the motion picture soundtrack to the movie, this album is more or less a musical score. It consists of several instrumental tracks that can be heard throughout the movie as well as upbeat tracks featuring kids choirs (my favorite) and catchy choruses. The album was written and released for the movie and therefore counts as a musical score (in my book at least).

Karen O, lead singer of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, created this fun musical arrangement and is credited on the album as Karen O and the Kids.

GREENBERG

Between entertaining “Drunk Girls” and hosting a Daft Punk show at his house, LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy created original music for Greenberg, an independent movie starring Ben Stiller. The album is very eclectic; each song seems to have a different style or sound. However, the overall mood seems to be melancholic. There are soft and simple electronics, acoustic arrangements and a piano piece, among other imaginings. The album didn’t receive much attention or great reviews, but I would recommend giving it a listen.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Jonny Greenwood, lead guitarist of Radiohead, composed the musical score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. His work captures the mood and period of the film and can be appreciated best in the context of the film. His

effort stands out in this group because the album is very traditional in regards to a film score: it is grand and quite orchestral. However, it also walks the fine line when trying to define a score. The music for There Will Be Blood was mostly written for the movie, however it also features a healthy portion (20 minutes) of material he had previously composed, a suite called “Popcorn Superhet Receiver.”

Some don’t see it as a completely original score and it was excluded from award categories for this reason.

SOCIAL NETWORK

Trent Reznor Edit My Profile Trent Reznor (front man of Nine Inch Nails) and his producer Atticus Ross created an excellent score to the incredibly hyped and rather impressive The Social Network. It’s dark, full of suspense and slightly unsettling. It’s also perfect for this movie.

The music completely embodies the mood of the characters and the relationships between them.

It was a perfect backdrop to the movie and it delicately elevated and strengthened the drama.

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n a c i r e m A h t i W m e l b The Pro s d r a w A c i s Mu on written by runy

Weep Not for the Weepies written by emily batt (physics) In spite of their melancholy name, the Weepies have a very happy story Deb Talan and Steve Tannen, the duo behind the Weepies’ infectious folk-pop, met in 2001 at Club Passim in Cambridge. Fast-forward nearly a decade: they are married, scattered across the Billboard charts and making appearances in film and television. Now in the throes of their first tour since 2006, the Weepies caught up withTastemakers shortly before their performance at the Royale. It was clear that their bright and refreshing music is just a reflection of the couple’s genial demeanor and glowing sense of humor.

Before they met, Deb and Steve had been fans of each other’s music. Now California residents, the Weepies still credit the Boston music scene with their auspicious first meeting. “I was living in Cambridge at the time,” says Deb, “and Passim was surrounded by such a rich songwriter scene.” Steve, noting that Passim’s vibrant atmosphere was “responsible for encouraging our favorite musicians,” introduced himself to Deb after one of her shows. It wasn’t long before the two began playing music together and they quickly formed a deep bond, which has since produced ten years of musical accolades, four studio albums and two young sons. On sharing the creative responsibilities, Steve says making music together “is just like a marriage: you start out one way and when we have trouble we do it another way, and if we have trouble then, we drink and make babies.”

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But it’s clear the two thrive on each other’s creativity, and together they form a musical powerhouse that produced a prospective seventy songs for their latest album, Be My Thrill.

“We both have an obsessive mania for writing,” Steve laughed, “so we’re working constantly.

And they say that writing means killing your darling—well, so does recording.”

“We started recording all of the songs; we just jumped in. Then we narrowed it down to thirty and thought, ‘Yeah, we can approach these.’ Then some get our focus, some were put on the back burner. The process is very organic,” says Deb. More bluntly, Steve explains, “A song gets finished if it can keep our attention.”

The Weepies’ fruitful cooperation goes beyond music: all four albums feature artwork by Deb, with input from Steve. “It’s a collaboration in that I watch Deb draw throughout the record and say, ‘Hey! I like that!’ So really, it’s art by Deb and a-nod-of-the-head by Steve,” he jokes.

But their system works; both their songs and their artwork boast a timeless simplicity that is at once emotionally charged and somehow familiar.

This appeal has landed their music in several movies, in Obama’s presidential campaign ads, and in television shows such as Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, and Grey’s Anatomy.

It’s been four years since their last tour, and now with two sons, circumstances are a little different this time around. “We’re up to 2 AM

on our night off with our kids. But fortunately we brought our best friends along for support,” Steve explained. Partway through their 36-city tour, the Weepies call themselves “really lucky and really tired.”

They’re joined on the tour by a backing band they have worked with for years. “They are some of our favorite musicians. We have similar sensibilities, and ever since we started, we’ve played really well together—we just gel into a group. We’re proud to play with them,” says Deb. It is these sensibilities that drive the Weepies’ musical career, and allow them to channel their experiences into song. “I could draw a map of my life just by music,” says Steve.

“Exactly,” Deb adds. “That’s what we both really love about music. It’s like any time I hear Shawn Colvin’s first album /Steady On/, I’m immediately taken to Colorado, when I had just graduated and was having my post-collegiate freak-out about life. I just listened to the tape over and over.”

“Yeah, or like my Springsteen phase when I wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle," Steve adds, laughing. "Music is every moment of our lives.”

The Weepies just concluded the tour promoting their newest album, Be My Thrill. Listen at theweepies.com.

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colie (compute

Each year hundreds of albums are unleashed upon the world, but it’s not until December arrives that their place among their peers begins to be accounted for. As Christmas approaches, critics from a wide-ranging list of publications make their judgments about the pecking order of albums and a relative consensus is eventually approached.

On the other hand, each January or February, the Grammy Awards are supposed to celebrate the best in music. Unsurprisingly, the results are often drastically different.

The 52nd Grammy Awards were held this January in Los Angeles, California. The night’s biggest non-genre specific awards were for Album of the Year, Record of the Year (performer and production team of a single song), and Song of the Year (for the writer of a single song.) The nominees were chosen from a list far removed from the critical lists of positively reviewed albums that are released in the month before. Album of the year, the award most easily comparable to the critical consensus of music publications, went to Taylor Swift, for Fearless, an album that was only decently received by the critical press but absolutely devoured by the paying public.

A few albums from the end of 2008 and the first 9 months of 2009 (see What’s in a Year?) stand out on the end-of-the-year awards from critical publications compiled by review aggregator website metacritic.com. The nearuniversal critical favorite in 2009 was Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, followed by Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, while the best of the last third of 2008

was TV on the Radio’s Dear Science. Only one of these critical favorites, /Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix/, went on to appear on the list of nominees for Grammy awards that they qualified for, but it was for the seldom-mentioned Best Alternative Album award (Phoenix went on to win). None of the Grammy Awards’ Album of the Year nominees appeared anywhere on the 44 “Best Of” lists compiled by Metacritic.

The critical favorites from both years came from the same genre, and it is perhaps understandable that those awards would have a decidedly indie bent: the albums are often designed (consciously or not) to appeal to the critics who rate them so highly – critics who often follow, and sometimes lead, these band’s internet-savvy, hipster fanbase.

This is certainly not a reason to dismiss the critical reception of these albums as pandering to an elitist fan base, for they are truly deserving of accolades.

A comprehension of the function of the Grammys - as awards for the industry, and dominated by the industry - makes their decision to choose nominees like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé understandable. Every artist in the top categories of the Grammys is capable of selling out arenas across the nation, and the awards simply serve as another venue to gain an even larger presence, something record labels are desperate to cultivate.

There is an example that the American industry could follow from across the pond in Britain. Britain has two popular music

awards each year: the industry-dominated Brit awards (their Grammy equivalent) and the Mercury Prize. The Mercury Prize gives only one award, for best album, and it gives its winners and nominees a significant boost in publicity (something that no American critics' awards can manage), while continuing to maintain a respect for musical quality.

Past winners include The xx (2010), The Arctic Monkeys (2006) and Franz Ferdinand (2004), as well as rappers like Dizzee Rascal (2003) and Ms. Dynamite (2002.)

Though the Grammys and music publications claim the same goal – to celebrate the best in music over a year - they do so in very different ways, by very different means, and with very different results. Critics and their music blog savvy readers tend to like the experimental and the interesting, for in a marketplace that is constantly flooded with music it takes a strong hand to stand out. The Grammy awards are granted instead to the popular, and the safe, an honor to an artist’s appeal (perhaps even more than their music).

It looks like they’re destined to live in a kind of anxious, peaceful harmony, different values and all.

What’s in a Year?

The Grammy Award nomination period is usually from one September to the next, allowing winners like Taylor Swift at the 2010 awards, despite the release of her album in November of 2008 (and, confusingly, Lady Gaga, whose album was released in August 2008,) which compounds confusion in comparing critical winners to Grammy winners.

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What constitutes a one-hit indie wonder then?

A one-hit indie wonder is a song that came from some form of media from our world today, and it’s a song from the ‘indie’ genre that an ordinary media absorber would know if they heard it, but wouldn’t know the song name or even who it was by. Here are some examples from different media forms:

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You love your indie music. You love discovering new artists through different outlets. You have a love hate relationship with commercials with catchy songs.

Okay, maybe I can’t speak for everyone but I am completely behind those statements I just made. There is no question about the power that pop culture has on music today. Increasingly, producers are spending more time on music placement in commercials, movie trailers, and TV shows. There have even been websites created specifically to document what songs were played in what medium. Today, a strategically placed song can turn an artist into the next big thing.

There are huge numbers of people who are passionate about finding music (I assume you are since you are reading this lovely music magazine). These are the people who hear a song in a commercial or a TV show and power up their laptop to search the reaches of the internet for the title and artist of that song. When they find it, they obtain the full CD and, just like that, they have a new band to love.

But what happens to everyone else? What about the person who hears the song and loves it, but doesn’t take the time to find it online? What about the girl who finds she is singing along to that Kindle commercial for the twentieth time but still hasn’t thought to look up the song? For these people, these songs have become one-hit indie wonders.

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This is obviously the biggest medium for one hit indie wonders. Commercials have 15 or 30 seconds to get across a message and sell you an item, so they enlist the use of catchy music to help nail home that point. The most famous example of this lately is the song “1901” by Phoenix in Cadillac commercials. Not only is it a catchy song, but there are also a lot of Cadillac commercials on television. It’s quite overwhelming. This repetition has made “1901” a household song, yet many people wouldn’t know Phoenix has four studio albums or that they have been around for ten years.

Other examples: Matt and Kim – “Daylight” (Bacardi Mojito commercial), Shins – “Sleeping Lessons” (Zune commercial), The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger (Amstel Light)

Yes, I know these are also commercials, but Apple commercials have developed a personality of their own so much so that when the Droid phone came out, the first half of their commercial was a catchy indie song that made everyone know who they were poking fun at. It seems that each new Apple commercial leads to the next big indie sensation. The two most famous examples of Apple’s one hit indie wonders are Jet’s “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” and Feist’s “1,2,3,4.”

Apple over-advertised both songs in commercials and they became quintessential examples of indie one-hit wonders.

Other examples: The Ting Tings – “Shut Up And Let Me Go” (iPod), Coldplay – “Viva La Vida” (iPod and iTunes)

Like commercials, movie trailers have a small amount of time to get a certain story idea across to its audience so they go out and see the movie.

Indie movies love using indie music in their trailers (Babies used Sufjan Steven’s “Perpetual Self” and It’s Kind of a Funny Story used Ida Marie’s “Oh My God”), but big hits have also looked to capitalize on indie music fame. The most notable example in the past year has been Where The Wild Things Are using “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire for both their teaser and theatrical trailer, making it a staple for someone watching the trailers to any movie during that release time.

While music in TV shows tends to take a back seat to actual dialogue and story, certain shows have put a lot of effort into crafting montages with well-placed songs for added effects. “The OC” did this so much that “SNL” even spoofed the scene where they used Imogen Heap’s “Hide and Seek” during the season 2 finale. “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scrubs,” and “Chuck” have also all put a lot of effort into music selection for their episodes. Both “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scrubs” have websites telling you what songs are featured in episodes, and Josh Schwartz, who created “The OC,” also created “Chuck”.

While many of these artists may have made it in the traditional sense without a strategically placed commercial, looking to break out through commercials is actually becoming the norm.

Who cares if your song doesn’t make it to a million people? If it makes a big enough impact that 1,000 people are scouring the Internet for the song, it’s only a matter of time before they tell their friends, it branches out, and your band becomes an underground sensation.

Jared Gutstadt is the CEO and co-founder of Jingle Punks, which is one of many companies that has turned the idea of success through commercials and trailers into a business.

Jingle Punks is the Match.com for music and commercials. They allow any user to upload a song onto a database. Once this happens, networks and production companies looking for catchy music to back up their ads can go into

the database library and search thousands of songs, looking to find the perfect song to fit their commercial.

I interviewed Jared in order to get a better idea of his thought process behind Jingle Punks and matching music with commercials: “We realized there are so many musicians out there in a world of a shrinking music industry where labels and publishing companies aren’t signing people. You can count on one hand the number of relevant names coming out of a record company in one year.” Instead of a band spending all their time trying to get a record deal, they can upload an entire album’s worth of songs to the Jingle Punk's database, and wait for someone to sync their song in their commercial or trailer.

While it may seem like an incredibly unconventional way of breaking into the business, it’s quickly becoming the norm. These bands are banking on the fact that their music will get caught in viewers’ heads just enough so that they’ll download the song and become a fan. It’s even the case for bands to become relevant again.

Train was all but forgotten, and then along came “Soul Sister” in every Blackberry commercial and they were a huge hit again. As Jared puts it, “it just makes people think about their music career differently; don’t think about it in terms of the tour, don’t think about it in terms of selling a million records. Just think about it as building a fan base by getting it in front of as many people as humanly possible.”

The formula actually is successful. A Jingle Punk band, I Love Monsters, got a placement in an episode of Entourage, and is building success off of that. Mike Del Rio ended up rebranding the History Channel with his cover of Buddy Holly’s “Everyday.” Mac Demy’s placement in a Disney video has given him what Jared believes is potential to be the next Justin Timberlake.

Sure, these indie one-hit wonders may just be a catchy tune for someone to whistle on the train ride home. But with the power music placement has in the media today, it would be stupid to write off this outlet as a way of artists gaining recognition. It may just be the next big judge of stardom: ‘Forget Platinum, I’ve been in six Apple commercials!’

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the rise and fall and rise of

Julian Casablancas

written by nick hugon (international affairs)

When Julian Casablancas and his band The Strokes blew up in 2001, they were a juggernaut of swagger that swept the New York City music scene off its feet. The Strokes were the embodiment of "cool" in its purest form. They sauntered about in leather jackets with smoldering cigarettes, reveling in the carelessness that success afforded, and this was all before their first album, Is This It, even dropped. At the helm of this garage rock rebirth was Casablancas.

As The Strokes gained steam with the release of Is This It (named NME's most important album of the decade) Casablancas found himself and his controversial alcoholism in the media spotlight.

In an interview with The Guardian that described The Strokes as "the world's most fashionable rock band," journalist Neil Strauss was able to extract a mantra of sorts concerning Casablancas' priorities: "Your girlfriend can leave you and your mother will yell at you, but when you start feeling like [drinking] is hurting the music, then it's a bad mistake."

For the time being, it definitely wasn't hurting the music. Is This It peaked at number two in the UK and it seemed that Casablancas' romance with alcohol was helping him maintain his image.

One needs not look further than Casablancas' lyrics over the first three albums with The Strokes to understand the recklessness that typified his existence. 2003's "Reptilia" features Casablancas pleading "please don't slow me down if I'm going too fast" and the 2006 hit entitled "You Only Live Once" sums up The Strokes' wild lifestyle.

Beyond lyrical evidence, Casablancas maintained the consistency of this image in his idea of the band's whole ambience, as he recently told The Chicago Tribune: "The Strokes have their sound.

It's messed up, casual, like everyone is drunkenly stumbling around the room."

Eventually, however, things began to unravel for Casablancas. His performances suffered and he couldn't keep the other members committed to the band as they became interested in solo projects.

Casablancas described being in a perpetual hangover and it was clear that alcohol was one of the main contributors to his decline.

In 2006, after an underperforming third album, the band went their separate ways, and it seemed as though The Strokes' trendiness had largely faded away. In this weakened state, Julian Casablancas displayed an incredible amount of honesty and self-awareness and stuck by the creed he'd outlined to The Guardian years before.

Casablancas reexamined himself and emerged a changed man in 2009.

His new solo record, Phrazes for the Young, features a complete departure from his work with The Strokes in style and content. The Strokes had always stuck to a classic and unadventurous rock

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THE NEW DANGER

Alternative Music Blogs written by dinorah wilson (journalism) art by charlie doucette (graphic design)

and roll format. Phrazes features Casablancas using keyboards and synthesizers to produce an album that seems more akin to dance rock than to The Strokes' garage rock. This is all part of a conscious rebirth of Casablancas, who told The Chicago Tribune "I wanted to do something outside that", referring to the familiar sound of The Strokes.

Thematically, there also exists a stark departure from The Strokes' riotousness. In the music video for "11th Dimension" from Phrazes, Casablancas scrawls various messages upon walls to keep himself in check. He writes, "anger is weakness, patience is strength"; "sin is honoring desire above what you know is right"; and "every positive action has a reward" during the video. Considering Casablancas" past, these are very wholesome

Hide your wife, hide your kids and hide your husbands, too: because indie blogs are influencing everybody out here.

It’s the year 2010 and you don’t need to be a Graphic Design major to jumpstart your own Tumblr for your cousin’s lo-fi/psych-folk/shoegaze band. Free of charge and easy to create, internet blogs have become an indispensable tool to meet others with the same ideas and discuss culture, music and fashion. With space for unlimited content and instant availability, they have taken the sharing of music news to an entirely different level, but, as we all know, the good must also come with the bad and the ugly.

Now, yuppies and freegans alike have found their own personalized platform to spread new trends to alternative communities around the world through the use of blogs.

For better or worse, alternative blogs have been attracting mainstream attention for their off-the-wall commentary and their up-to-date coverage of the latest songs, albums and remixes. Bands that would never garner national attention in mainstream media are given their chance to shine on websites such as Gorilla vs.

Bear and large music blog aggregators like The Hype Machine. More followers for these blogs not only generate popularity, but also generate buzz for the bands featured in daily posts and can potentially lead to worldwide notoriety for both parties.

Is it a good thing that these blogs have so much influence? I’m not too sure. Alternative blogs have power to sway public opinion about bands; a review from a popular blog can make or break a band and plays an essential part in their success or failure. Don’t believe it? Just take a look at what the blogs have to say about MGMT’s Congratulations.

The most unfortunate aspect about all of this is that alternative blogs are becoming less

concerned with their original purpose: to provide information on independent artists and let their audience decide how relevant these bands are for themselves. Constantly in search of what’s new and hot, these blogs take less time to cultivate great music and spend more energy on rehashing hits. Due to the shift in priorities for alternative blogs, these blogs are more concerned with taking less risks and “staying relevant” than capturing the satirical, quirky essence that made them so popular and enjoyable in the first place.

“Following trends?

I’d say that’s pretty

mainstream.”

Personally, I’m not a big fan of blogs. It’s not a matter of their creators “selling out.” In my opinion, it has much more to do with the destruction of the very thing that alternative culture prides itself on: individuality. However, the blogs aren’t the only villains here. We, the readers, have played a part in giving these sites power over our tastes in music, clothing and culture. Maybe, if we all took a little break from browsing “Missed Connections” for the next hilariously sad post, we could discover what’s interesting in the alternative community ahead of the mainstream wave.

messages. But considering recent developments in Casablancas life, such an outlook should not be surprising. The new Casablancas is, among other things, a father, and it can be assumed that this new arrival has had a profound impact upon the way he carries himself.

Following the release of Phrazes, it became known that The Strokes would reunite for a fourth album. Expected in early 2011, the new album is the subject of widespread speculation, primarily due to the evolution of Julian Casablancas and his music. One thing, however, is certain: following the success of Phrazes, he still carries as much cultural significance as ever. Now that he's back, all there is to do is wait, and hope that The Strokes can rekindle their old magic and reinvent garage rock once again.

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end of Under the Boards- “I can’t stay this way.

I have to change.” So Daybreak, the final part of the trilogy, is about putting all of the pieces back together. I want to be in love with my life because it’s the most beautiful life I could ever have asked for. So in order to appreciate my life I had to first get to the bottom of all of that pain and all of that hurting. So there you go: we get the trilogy.

TMM: With the completion of the album and being about to start this tour with Say Anything and Motion City Soundtrack, do you feel like you’re moving forward?

CC: Oh yeah. It really is a fresh start and that’s why it’s called Daybreak. The sun is up. It’s a new beginning. It’s time to go. So I’m so excited. I’m so excited about life and I’m so excited to be playing music and I’m so proud of our fan base for being the most inspiring bunch of people I’ve ever met.

I just feel really lucky. Everything feels really good and I’m feeling really thankful for the entire process of transformation. I feel like I’ve come back to life.

putting the pieces back together

"Everything feels really good and I’m feeling really thankful for the entire process of transformation.

I feel like I’ve come back to life."

an interview with chris conley of saves the day written by katie price (music industry/journalism) photography by anne latini (graphic design) and katie price (music industry/journalism)

Since 1997, Saves The Day has been iconic for any teen that had a punk stage. The band’s latest album, Daybreak, is due out in the new year and the band is gearing up for the release with an epic tour alongside Say Anything and Motion City Soundtrack. Tastemakers Magazine got the chance to check in with Chris Conley, the core of the project, and talk about where he’s at during this pivotal stage in not only his career, but also his life.

Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): A lot of your old fans are returning to see you on this upcoming tour. How does it feel to be playing for the same crowds from the early 2000s but now all grown up? Does playing the same songs feel nostalgic?

Chris Conley (CC): I think it’s great. I think it’s a blessing that we can maintain the same audience. People can grow with us. I think that it’s really important that we’re making music that’s sincere and not trying to be a successful form of music. I think it’s really neat that people can connect with that honesty at a time in their life when they’re coming into maturity and later on

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they can still follow the band and feel the same kind of connection over the years. In terms of the music, it just feels like Saves The Day music. The songs were always so honest that it doesn’t feel contrived to sing them. There’s so much truth to them and that truth remains because it was exactly what I was feeling at the time.

TMM: Has having a revolving band, people coming in and out, ever affected your output as a songwriter?

CC: Well, I mean I’m still doing it, so I guess not.

It was the established trend in Saves The Day from the word “go”. I’ve been the only one who’s been consistent the entire time. I’m the only one who’s been here the entire time. The songs have always been my songs and I write the lyrics and everything. I think more and more people will start to understand that Saves the Day is just the outlet for the songs that I write and whoever’s in the band colors and shapes those songs with me. But the creative output has always come from the same source, which is my heart and mind.

TMM: So your new album’s coming out next year and it’s part three of the concept albums. What can you tell us about the concept and how it’s developed and what we can expect?

CC: I started doing the trilogy because I wanted to try to come back to life a little bit. I had become really negative and I was having a really hard time just being content in this world. Everyone dies and in the meantime everyone’s judging one another and you have to fit certain standards to be accepted. Man, that just really wore me down.

So when I started to kind of explore all of the dark scary thoughts that were inside, I thought, “This is going to take a long time. This is like 25 years of pain that needs to be processed.” So the first thing I did was the first album, Sound The Alarm which was all about the exactly what I was feeling inside. What I found was a lot of anger, a lot of fear and a lot of insecurity. The album’s almost a paranoid, delusional exorcism, dragging all of those painful experiences up from the dark and exposing them. And then the next album, Under The Boards, deals with consequences of living a life of pain and hurting. There’s a realization at the

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Sorostitute Facebook Photo Album Drunk Ke$ha- "Tik Tok"

A Comprehensive Drinking Guide written by kyle risley (marketing) art by jessie contour (digital arts) When I was young, drinking seemed fairly straightforward. It was something adults did at bars, sporting events and commemorative American holidays. But now, the gentle slope of age and the guiding hand of Northeastern University have shown me every shade of inebriation. Here's a helpful song recommendation for any drinking occasion, whether it's entirely appropriate or not.

Every weekend, without fail, my Facebook feed is dominated by hundreds of photos of a herds of BFFs donning tiny black dresses or North Face fleeces (depending on the weather) posing in a kitchen or on a street corner. Nothing encapsulates this faux-celebrity lifestyle and penchant for poor spelling like Ke$ha's party anthem, "Tik Tok," so go ahead and take another shot.

After all, tonight is totally, like, the most fun everrrr!

Wine Drunk

I'M A FRESHMAN AND I LOVE IT HERE Drunk

The National- "All the Wine"

Dropkick Murphys- "Shipping Up To Boston"

There's something timeless about wine. Enjoyed by the ancient Greeks and Romans, officially licensed as the Blood of Christ by the Catholics, and the simplest way to instantly gain the intellectual upper hand at any party (at least at Northeastern), wine is always a great drink of choice. Plus, let's not overlook the unbeatable convenience of the boxed version. Sad, yet elegant and sincere, The National captures the fuzzy inspiration wine provides in a way few bands can.

Just ask Matthew Berninger (Vocals, The National), who never appears on stage without a glass‌ or four.

Skankin' Drunk Reel Big Fish- "Beer" A much brighter take on heartbreak than Elliott Smith ever penned, "Beer" reminds us that sometimes the best remedy for heartbreak is to just get tipsy and dance, or in this case, skank. Let's face it, most of us need a few drinks before our fists get balled up and legs start kicking. Oi!

It's your first weekend at Northeastern. You just waited 30 minutes in the grill line at Stetson East, called your roommate's friend's brother to score you a bottle of Rubinoff, and now you're six shots deep and walking up to the mythical Matthews Arena. Inside, the opening banjo notes blast out of the speakers as you guzzle down the rest of your "Sprite." You jump out of your seat as the Huskies take the ice, enthusiastically belting the refrain to "Shipping Up To Boston." Next semester, you will hate this song.

Nostalgic Drunk

Singalong Drunk

Brand New- "Soco Amaretto Lime"

Chumbawumba- "Tub Thumping"

Nothing sums up the trials and tribulations of adolescence quite like Brand New's album Your Favorite Weapon. The closing track, "Soco Amaretto Lime," details the feeling of being on the cusp of adulthood with your feet planted firmly on the ground and your middle finger in the air, in defiance of everyone but your friends.

It harkens back to a time when the future wasn't a burden; your town, no matter what, was a hellhole, and every moment was just as exciting as it was terrifying. Cheers.

Truly a thing that needs to be seen to be believed, anarcho-punk legend Chumbawumba's ode to forgetting the pressures of The Man achieves legendary levels of participation when its raucous chorus kicks in. More than an essential cut on Jock Jams Volume 4, "Tubthumping" came to resonate with millions of people who felt shortchanged by the cold mechanics of politics. Or maybe it's just really easy to remember the words to it. Whatever.

I'm Worried About You Drunk

Drunk With Your Dad

Elliot Smith- "Baby Britain" Suffocated by depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction, Elliott Smith left behind a vivid catalog of songs that quietly soak into the listener, much like the drinks he would so often reference. While a night with a bottle of whiskey and Elliott Smith records may seem like the prescription for your woes, repeated doses probably aren't the best idea. Maybe record stores should start keeping them in a safe in the back room‌

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Beat Your Girlfriend Drunk Glassjaw- "Pretty Lush" If there were two things Daryl Palumbo (vocals, Glassjaw) was in high school, they were sober and pissed off at his girlfriend. So if "talking it out" isn't your thing, cue up Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence, grab a case, and start smashing picture frames and torching letters. Just don't earn yourself a restraining order.

George Thorogood - "House Rent Boogie/One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" (Rudy Tombs Cover) Sure, moms can be hilarious when they're drunk, but nothing beats knocking a few back with dear ol' Dad. Born from distaste for nagging landlords, cantankerous wives, and lousy girlfriends, "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" is required listening for any father/son bonding experience. Plus, unless he can stomach hip-hop, this is about as close as it gets to "turning your swag on" with Pops.

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written by patrick duane (english)

photos by zach brittingham (behavioral neuroscience / music industry)

As hip–hop has grown more massive, its materialism has followed suit. The main components of hiphop as a culture are: DJ, MC, b-boy or b-girl (break dancers), graffiti and beat boxing.

Another ever-present force in hip–hop is the use of substances, especially alcohol. Since its emergence in the early 1980s, rap music has championed indulging in alcoholic beverages.

The trend largely began with beer, specifically malt liquor, and catapulted into rappers earning endorsement deals for companies such as St. Ides.

The 1990s saw a widespread increase in rappers mentioning a variety of liquors, especially Hennessy and various iterations of Cognac.

With hip – hop’s enormous influence as a culture comes a spike in consumerism from those who enjoy the music. Music is strongly persuasive, and rap’s constant mentions of different beers or liquors has accounted for specific beverages achieving “iconic status”.

Hip-hop has long since had a conflicting affair with both high-end liquors and bottom-ofthe-barrel beer. In the 1990s, you were likely to hear “Brass Monkey” by the Beastie Boys or “8Ball,” by N.W.A., plus numerous Hennessy and

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St. Ides’ references. By 1996 mentions were becoming progressively more expensive, as 2Pac helped make Alizé famous through his hit-single “Thug Passion”.

Around this time, the identity of hip-hop and its association with mainstream culture begn an awkward assimilation. Images of fantastic wealth and rags-to-riches tales have always been commonplace in rap music. In the early 90s, it was common to hear members of the Wu-Tang Clan rapping about cheap malt liquor brands because they very well could have been palming one while recording in the studio. Rap was a much smaller and more confined genre at the time with a “way out of the hood” connotation attached.

Malt liquor, such as St. Ides, was marketed directly to urban areas with a cheap price point.

Conflicting ideas about this process can be seen in the popular movie, “Boyz in the Hood”, where malt liquor is consumed by undesirable characters and dubbed “St. Dies”. Black urban culture was more veiled from outsiders at that time, and interest characterized by difference fueled its exposure in the media. Remember that hip-hop is a culture, a prevalent movement, and when those living outside urban confines realized

blacks were creating their own societies with specific drinks, food, language and customs they demanded inclusion.

A strange cyclical and reciprocal occurrence came about with St. Ides marketing rappers by way of hip-hop based commercials. These advertisements found famous artists of the time: 2Pac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan and The Geto Boys waxing poetic about their love for St. Ides in a 30-second commercial format. This occurrence could very well be the intersection of hip-hop and America’s commercial interests regarding alcohol.

Hip-hop has always had the influential ability to coerce listener’s tastes. It did not, however, begin utilizing these powers until around the year 2000. The popular conception of rap music has since become much more mainstream, therein creating more commercial aspects of content and presentation. Rap artists have always valued a hyperactive rags to riches notion of the American dream. The Notorious B.I.G. summarizes this sentiment appropriately in his song, “Things Done Changed”. He notes, “The streets is a short stop, either you slingin’ crack rocks or you got a wicked jump shot,” to emphasize the hopelessness of

anyone who wants to conventionally work their way through America’s capitalism.

Liquor, interestingly enough, is another “control” of urban life, dictating one’s ability to “escape” along with athletics and selling drugs, which Biggie pinned as the sole opportunities.

There was a rawness present in hip-hop during this time as rappers reported how troubled their society was to the outside world. People like Biggie, and Prodigy of Mobb Deep narrated life in their neighborhoods honestly. Therefore, artists born and raised on this specific style of rap music were more likely to talk about drinking beer regularly, wishing they had champagne for special occasions. One of the best and most popular examples is The Notorious B.I.G. citing, “birthdays was the worst days, now we sip champagne when we thirsty” on his single, “Juicy”- also from Ready to Die. Biggie wasn’t in the club popping champagne every night, he was out on the streets hustling or in the studio making a living.

An inherent twist within liquor references becoming progressively more expensive and subsequently more commercial is the changing nature of credibility required of artists. For example, Rick Ross is an extremely popular rapper who has gained success in the past 5 years. His moniker of late is, “Rosé,” a play on his name and the expensive high-end champagne. The complication is that Ross admitted he was a former correctional officer, causing him to be dismissed as a faker by many hardcore hip-hop heads. It is widely known that the “boss lifestyle” he paints in all his albums is very much fabricated. Someone such as The Notorious B.I.G., another polarizing rap figure from a separate time period yet celebrated for his “realness”, was more honest about his abilities to sip expensive liquor. Biggie rapped honestly about drinking St. Ides, cheap Jamaican Rum, and other inexpensive, easily available alcoholic drinks from his Brooklyn neighborhood. His champagne mentions are fleeting, and only paired with an idea of “making it,” or “getting out of the ghetto” as noted in “Juicy”.

Somehow hip-hop has managed to become increasingly commercialized while the country experiences economic lows. Many of rap’s new fans that consume music by way of radio only get the popular side of hip-hop music, which is base and largely devoid of culture. The techniques of rhyming a certain amount of bars with a catchy hook to hold the song together are still present, but emotions are lacking. This is attributed to what many hardcore hip-hop heads jokingly refer to as the “shiny suit era”. After Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G.’s deaths, rap music was clamoring for a sense of belonging and inclusion in popular culture.

Biggie’s posthumous release “Mo Money Mo Problems” was especially prominent in this time and set the bar for flashy, unrealistic rap videos.

More and more, fancy imagery was presented to fans as music videos became more commercial and mainstream through MTV, VH1, and BET. Thus, a cycle was catalyzed in which fans became more influenced by references, those references became more popular, and corporations chose to support it or not. The game changed again in 2002 when Busta Rhymes released his hitsingle “Pass the Courvoisier Part II” to loads of mainstream success. Aside from the song’s positive musical reception, Busta earned praise from the corporation’s head honchos, who admitted he helped skyrocket their brand to popularity and revive a once dying entity.

With this occurrence, every rapper in the world believed they could become their own self-promotional tool. Sure, it has been done before in the 90s by enterprising artists/CEOs such as Master P (No Limit Records) and the early 2000s by Bryan “Birdman” Williams of Cash Money Records fame, but never with an item that appealed so directly to the audience.

Alcohol hits the entire hip-hop audience, be it impoverished, middleclass, or wealthy. So long as artists continue marketing brands, the population will retain some subconscious mystique surrounding it, and trends will continue.

Whatever happened to a little bit of artistic honesty, integrity, and modesty? Most “popular” current rappers, and all popular rappers who receive airplay promote solely high-end liquor enjoyment. Every hip-hop video has turned into an advertisement for Ciroc or Conjure, P. Diddy and Ludacris' respective liquor brands.

The shameless advertising has become so absurd that I have even come across rap videos that show a girl pleasuring herself with a bottle of Ciroc. Have our ideas of culture become that confused? Hip-hop has become so pop that even the more underground forms are affected by the need to advertise.

CEOs such as Ludacris have their labels’ rappers showing off bottles of Conjure in every single

music video. Even rappers you would swear have no association with the brand are advertising, showing that the culture has been surpassed in some instances for monetary interests, understandable as it is a form of entertainment and sustainment for performers.

Has cheap liquor become cliché? Do people no longer desire to brood over depressing aspects of their life? It mirrors our culture well, seeing as pop music has been increasingly geared towards a “have fun on the weekend” sentiment and surreal experiences in the club.

It is most common that whomever is consuming pop music will be a typical 9-5 worker or student that works for the weekend, just waiting for that new Young Money song to come on holding a cup of Popov and red bull in the air screaming about flying in G6 planes and drinking Cristal champagne. At least one thing will never change: regardless of how detached from hip-hop culture the pop representation becomes, it will forever influence the masses drinking choices. For all you know, Conjure, Ciroc and St. Ides sponsored this piece.

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Business In The Front, PartyAIn The Back: Tale of Two Genres

a q&a with: matt & kim written by jackson connor (journalism) photos by runyon colie (computer science/ joursalism)

written by jordan munson (music industry) photo by chrissy bulakites (photography and music industry)

If you were to ask someone what they thought of the 1980s, there are a lot of directions they could take it. When you narrow it down to musical opinions, any of the following adjectives do a fine job: synthesized, catchy, poofy-haired, fresh, real, colorful, etc. Two genres of music of the time had very distinct and memorable styles: metal and hip-hop.

It’s no secret that hair metal is considered a blemish on the metal name, but it’s also the most (in)famous type of metal to ever exist. Full of big hair and egregious amounts of debauchery, the majority of the music was about partying (as was the lifestyle).

Around this same time that hair metal was thriving, so was hip-hop. Unlike hair metal, however, hip-hop was in the midst of an identity crisis; the 80s saw the old school and new school fighting for the public ear.

Trends were on the rise, and in a big way.

As for hip-hop, artists like Afrika Bambaataa, KRS-One and Chuck D were at the helm of the socially conscious movements in the early eighties; artists such as Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J led the b-boy movement and later groups like Public Enemy would open the door for the gangsta rap trends of the 90s. The late 80s are largely considered the “golden age” of hip-hop (and rightfully so).

As the 1980s ended, hair metal was dying out of the mainstream and so were the more sociallyconscious styles of hip-hop, both in favor of darker and more violent styles. Death metal took over the

metal world but laid dormant in the underground when considering it in the grand scheme of music.

Gangsta rap was on the scene in a big way with artists like The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, Nas and The Wu-Tang Clan. Some of the most lasting and influential albums in rap history come from this era, with The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready To Die and Nas' Illmatic being two of the most timeless records in rap history. As the 90s waned, however, so did hip-hop’s mainstream success.

After a temporary venture underground, hiphop returned in full force as the new millennium arrived, taking the route that hair metal had in the 1980s: producing music about drinking, partying, and debauchery. Artists such as Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins brought crunk music onto the scene in a huge way and artists like Nelly had monstrous mainstream success with more feelgood styles of hip-hop. Metal, on the other hand, was still very much underground at this time, with the exception of nu metal (another short-lived blemish to the metal name, often denounced by metalheads). Near the middle of the decade metal was revitalized and the politically-charged bands from the 80s and 90s were once again the focal point for metal; thrash and death metal were back in a big way, and were as fierce as ever.

But why have the faces of these genres changed so wildly over the last few decades?

Each of the musical trends spawned to fight the previous fads before it. Music often reflects the society around it, and the musical trends before it.

Hair metal rose in rebellion of the depressing music that metal started, as with Black Sabbath; socially conscious hip-hop was born to combat disco music. The nineties came and changed everything.

The nineties were a dark time in which everything was no-nonsense. Metal found its center in the graphic and straight-forward lyrics, hip-hop found its center in stories of the streets (that real gangsta shit). Anything and everything that was covered in these genres in the 80s was boiled down and taken up a few notches on the intensity scale.

After the heavy part of the 90s, hip-hop and metal went in opposite directions. Metal’s focal point was getting more serious to combat the laughing stocks that nu metal and hair metal were (as well as the brutal death metal scene was quickly becoming, with the ludicrously explicit lyrics). Hip-hop decided it had been too grim and serious for too long, and went the route of making party music (the first major happy music trend to come from hip-hop since its inception). Most people unfortunately already know the answer to the question “where to next?”. The music world is currently in the midst of the second ugly love-child of more intense rock music and a hip-hop style: crunkcore. When will the horror end?

If anyone can take a picture of the Brooklyn-based synth punk duo Matt & Kim (Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino, respectively) without the members sporting two toothy, ear-to-ear grins, please email it to tastemakersmag@gmail.com, because I don’t think it can be done. It’s no secret that at any given Matt & Kim show, even among the droves of loud, sweaty fans, the people there having the best time are, well, Matt and Kim. While the band’s latest studio effort, Sidewalks, is not an outright attempt to replicate a live sound, it does capture that same atmosphere of fun, which has made Matt and Kim (the band and the people) so likeable. Tastemakers caught up with Matt to talk about what it takes to write, record and ultimately perform a highly anticipated third record.

Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): Your new album, Sidewalks, just came out November 2nd on FADER Label. Why did you choose that title and how might it contribute to the feel of the record?

Matt Johnson (MJ): What you just said there about the feel – “feel” I think is the key word. Kim and I spent quite some time trying to think of an album title and it ‘aint easy. It’s like trying to come up with a band name, which obviously we had some trouble with and we became Matt & Kim (laughs.) We went through a bunch of different names for this album, but in the end Sidewalks just felt right. That was all. We weren’t trying to be too literal. It was actually a conscious decision not to have a super literal name. We didn’t come up with the name until after we already finished all of the songs. It was all recorded, and then we were just like, ‘what feels right for this album,’ and Sidewalks for some reason just felt right.

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TMM: You guys enjoyed a fair amount of success with your last album Grand, and you were able to go from recording in your parents’ attic in Vermont to recording in a number of professional studios.

What was the jump like for you?

MJ: I mean it was good and bad. We’re more than happy with what we came out with in the end, and that’s all that matters. The good part was that opposed to Grand – which we had recorded ourselves and just figured out what the heck we were doing as we went a long with it – we had people who knew what they were doing recordingwise, so we got to think more about the songs and less about how to technically make an album sound like an album. But then also, you know, Kim and I are really used to working together. We’ve worked on stuff together even before we started playing music together, and just to have other people’s opinions involved is sometimes difficult.

I think it helps, and helps to challenge the whole process in a good way, but also it definitely leads to a little bit of head butting.

TMM: Did that contribute to a change in the writing process at all?

MJ: Not so much. My thing is that the best way to do it is sort of a revision process. You work at something and you keep revising it. You’re like, ‘oh, this part is kind of dead in this song -- let’s pick it up, or it may just need a twist at the end.’ If you work on something over the course of a year rather than just a month or two, you really get that opportunity to keep working with it and letting it evolve.

I feel like with Grand, and also with Sidewalks, we wrote music to be recorded music. We wrote songs to be on an album and then we were going to worry about how we were going to turn those into live songs afterwards, opposed to viceversa, which was kind of how we did it early on.

You know, people get hung up with getting that live energy on an album and what not, but you

can’t make the songs hotter and sweatier on an album, or louder on an album, or drunker on an album (laughs). There are different ways to make something have more energy and that’s something we sort of learned when we did Grand and then we expanded on that into Sidewalks.

TMM: So do you and Kim still live on Grand Street in Brooklyn, even though you’re on to the next album?

MJ: We are still in Brooklyn and we still have our place on Grand Street, we just haven’t been there in a minute because we’ve been on tour (laughs).

We’re just moving off of Grand Street actually when we get back and over to Clinton Hills, which is another neighborhood in Brooklyn, so maybe it’s the end of the era of Grand.

TMM: Does it ever feel like there’s an oversaturation of bands in Brooklyn these days?

MJ: I think the thing is that there’s just so many places and shows to play and what not that we could play constantly, like numerous times a week, and people wouldn’t get burnt out because you’re not depending on the same fan base. There are few places like New York City that have so many people into an indie-music mind set.

TMM: What music has been inspiring you recently?

MJ: I mean we’re T.I fans, Jay-Z fans... I love what Nicki Minaj is doing lately. I’m more into producers, though. I’m way into composition, beat and melody and things like that and producers like Swizz Beatz or the Neptunes or Timbaland. People who do really creative music that still hit the masses; I always find that really impressive.

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As the year winds down and comes to a close, It's time to share things only Tastemakers knows.

Gather 'round children and you shall hear, Our predictions in music for the upcoming year!

We'll also reward what has already been, With music superlatives for 2010!

Predictions for the New Year

Taylor Swift breaks up with Jake Gyllenhaal to pursue Alec Baldwin.

Brand New will release another awful album. It won’t be any good. You’ll still buy it. gFest. ation for dancing on stage during Sprin Colin Peters becomes a YouTube sens Yeasayer will open SpringFest and ask for a 50% share in Whole Foods in their hospitality rider.

Amy Winehouse takes a shower.

ht Live. de of Saturday Nig arance on an episo pe ap t es gu a ke will ma Justin Timberlake

Brett Favre will retire, again, and release a country album devoted to his time playing football. it looks like she is.) e sextuplets (because Mariah Carey will hav

Miley Cyrus will be found to have a sex tape and write an entire album about her coping with that as well as her parents' divorce.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé will hav e 99 problems, but a dia

per ain’t one.

Justin Bieber wins a BET award.

The “NOW! That’s What I Call Music” compilations will skip numbers 40-49 and no one will notice.

Superlatives

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•

Best Tweet of The Year: @50cent: “I love music I listen till it just comes out its a gift. I thank god for music and my dick size. Lol.”

•

Actual GRAMMY Category Your Classmate Is Going To Win One Day: “GRAMMY Award for Best Performance by an Orchestra or Instrumental with Orchestra Primarily Not Jazz or for Dancing”

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Best Selling Country Artist That Your Parents Didn’t Know Was Black: Darius Rucker

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Heaviest Metal Album of the Year: Lincoln Park (in the spirit of Jethro Tull)

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Most Likely To Wear Something Edible (Gross): Lady Gaga

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Most Likely To Wear Something Edible (Tasty): Katy Perry

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Most Likely To Make You Cry on the Dancefloor: LCD Soundsystem

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Best Duet: Cat Stevens and Ozzy Osbourne

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Biggest Collection of Musicians Butchering Their Own Music: Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth

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Best Use of Urine in Bottle: Jugalo fans towards Tila Tequila

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Best Aim: Pigeons That Crapped on Kings of Leon

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Worst Aim: Kid Who Missed Justin Beiber with the Water Bottle

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Most Unwarranted Killing of a Ginger Ever: MIA’s video for “Born Free”

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Best In-Song Couple: Jade and Alexander from Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

•

Best formspring.me Question: “i don't even know who runs this, but you seriously come off as the smuggest, cooler-than-thou-by-playing-it-off-as-thoughyou're-the-victim-of-all-things-hipster kinda cunt. and i kinda like tastemakers as a mag, but the reviews are shit.”

e g n a r t The S Side of Christmas Albums written by kade krichko (journalism) photo by chrissy bulakites (photography and music industry) ‘Tis the season. That’s right, folks, it’s time for another round of Christmas music. Before you throw the usual Christmastime tunes on repeat for the next two months, take a look at these Christmas albums by some artists you may have heard of. Some are good, some are awful and all are incredibly bizarre. Enjoy.

Jim Jones, A Dipset Xmas Jim Jones and his Byrdgang crew must have been in a giving mood in 2006 when they released their ode to the season entitled A Dipset Xmas. He really captures the essence of humility and good will towards men with “We Get Money” and “Ballin on Xmas”. Jones had so much fun with this album that he went ahead and produced another album with fellow Diplomat Juelz Santana in 2008. Jim Jones, jingle-BALLIN. Bob Dylan, Christmas in the Heart Storyteller Bob Dylan took a break from his usual work and lent his iconic chops to a Christmas-themed cover album in 2009. The album was relatively successful, reaching #10 on the Billboard Rock Album charts. When asked why he produced the Christmas album in a Reuters interview he answered, “[Christmas] is so worldwide…everybody can relate to it.”

Twisted Sister, A Twisted Christmas Heavy metal heads fear not, even hard rockers celebrate the holidays, just ask Twisted Sister. The glam metal band released A Twisted Christmas just in time for the holidays in 2007, covering a multitude of Christmas classics and putting their own spin on the festivities with “Heavy Metal Christmas”, a holiday original. It’s hard to picture a band that made rebelling against society their career embracing the holidays, but it seems that holiday cheer really is contagious. Plus, Dee Snider’s makeup kind of looks like Grandma’s makeup, and what’s Christmas without Grandma?

Death Row Records, Christmas on Death Row From the label that brought you “Gin and Juice”, Tupac and the East/West rap battle of the 1990s, comes… a holiday album? Consistently voted as one of the worst Christmas albums ever produced, Christmas on Death Row was released in 1996 as a charity effort. With songs like “Christmas in the Ghetto” and “Party 4 Da Homies”, it’s unclear what their actual motives were, but if you like your eggnog with a dash of Hennessy, this is the album for you. Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg’s “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto” is a Christmas jam.

Pokémon, Pokémon: Christmas Bash Trying to cash in on its whirlwind success, Pokémon released Pokémon: Christmas Bash in 2001. The album features Pokémon cameos throughout as well as rap verses by Brock, Ash and Team Rocket. The title track “Pokémon: Christmas Bash” is one of the (unintentionally) funnier Christmas songs ever produced, but beyond that, it’s eerily similar to an Alvin and the Chipmunks album. Some high notes were just better left unhit.

Bright Eyes, A Christmas Album This album borders on audio contradiction. With the strained vocals that made his group famous, Bright Eyes front man Coner Oberst sings cheery Christmas tunes, and it all seems kind of surreal. Consider it crazy, but Oberst singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” just doesn’t have the same ring for some reason. A noble effort designed to help a Nebraska charity, the album is surely one of the odder Christmas compilations.

Bootsy Collins, Christmas is 4 Ever The funky Bootsy Collins knows how to have a good time, and his Christmas album is no exception. The former Parliament-Funkadelic member uses his deep bass grooves and eclectic style to transform Christmas into his own wild party. Bootsy Collins creates “Winterfunkyland” (his take on “Winter Wonderland”) while teaming up with Snoop Dogg and Charlie Daniels for some original holiday pieces. ‘Tis the season and Bootsy celebrates it the only way he knows how: with some funk.

8-bit Jesus, (Title TBA) The 8-bit movement has covered the likes of Daft Punk, Pink Floyd and Miles Davis, so it just seems natural that artist 8-Bit Jesus threw together a Christmas album. Can’t quite imagine an 8-bit Christmas? Picture Santa Claus running through a Nintendo level. Yeah, it’s intense. All of the tracks are fresh takes on Christmas classics with revamped names like “We Three Konamis” and “Ryu the Red Nosed Reindeer” appearing on the track list.

Star Wars, Christmas in the Stars The Star Wars franchise has reached every corner of the universe over the past few decades and not even the realm of Christmas music was spared. That’s right, in 1980 the Star Wars conglomerate released Christmas in the Stars: a space-themed holiday album and an overall galactic question mark. “What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb)?” is just one of several original tracks on this bizarre compilation. The one shining star is Jon Bon Jovi’s performing debut as the child lead in “R2-D2, We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Right on, Jon.

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[cd]

by sapphire reels (music industry)

REVIEWS If you would like to submit a review to be considered for publishing in print or online, please e-mail: tmreviews@gmail.com

Skrillex Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites Release Date: October 25, 2010 Label: Mau5trap Recordings/Big Beat Genre: Electronic/House/Dubstep

by suzie conway (communication studies)

Steven Page Page One Release Date: October 19, 2010 Label: Anthem Entertainment Genre: Pop/Rock

4.0/5

A nasty band breakup and a cocaine arrest apparently make for good music. Steven Page, who recently departed as lead singer from Barenaked Ladies, is back with his first solo album, Page One. Listen closely and Page shows that you don’t need an acoustic guitar and scraggly beard to talk about emotional subjects. Armed with the same upbeat melodies associated with his past work, Page delves into his thoughts on depression, breakups, drugs and unhealthy relationships under the guises of big-band style instrumentals and distinctively cheerful vocals.

All these elements are evident on “A New Shore,” the album’s opener. Page uses the analogy of being lost at sea (with the faint sound of seagulls in the background) to talk about losing direction in his life. The clear hit of Page One is “Indecision.”

With plenty of oohs, aahs and hand claps, it is the most

by alyssa mastrocco (english)

Andrew Bird Useless Creatures Release Date: October 25, 2010 Label: Fat Possum Records Genre: Indie/Alternative/Instrumental

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4.4/5

Back in January of 2009, Andrew Bird released his fifth studio album, Noble Beast. The deluxe edition of that album included a companion disc of instrumental music called Useless Creatures, which was only available in the pair. But on October 25th it was released as a standalone album from Fat Possum Records.

This isn’t Bird’s first instrumental release. Music of Hair (1996) features instrumental pieces Bird wrote in his early twenties, and a collaborative EP from Bird and his mother, entitled The Ballad of the Red Shoes (2002), is a shorter selection of instrumental violin pieces with a distinctly different sound from his other releases. In Useless Creatures musicians such as Todd Sickafoose and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche contribute on double bass and on percussion, respectively.

Useless Creatures follows suit; it explores many of the techniques Bird used in recording Noble Beast, extending them and finding new ways to weave the sounds together while maintaining his

reminiscent of Page’s BNL days. His clever and sarcastic lyrics coupled with a catchy hook make this the strongest song on the album.

The juxtaposition of upbeat music and somber lyrics is most tangible in “Over Joy,” a throwback to ’60s pop songs but speaking of a bout of depression over a breakup. There is a strange split of emotion between music and lyrics, but ultimately a successful risk he took throughout the album.

The one low point is the out-of-place “Entourage,” which has the means to be epic in scale, but never reaches its potential.

Overall, Page’s work has a very welcome retro feel. His songs are unique from one another, but still make for a very cohesive album. Page One demonstrates his ability to stand on his own as an artist without shunning his Barenaked Ladies past.

Recommended Tracks: Indecision, Leave Her Alone, Over Joy

Skrillex is best known to the music community as none other than Sonny Moore, ex-front man of posthardcore band From First to Last and the soloist ‘Sonny'. Whatever you knew him as before, I’d advise taking a closer look at his newest work. I, for one, thought I would be the last person to ever want to listen to this guy, but with his new persona and unique electronic music, I can’t help but want more.

Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites was released from Deadmau5’s record label Mau5trap and includes nine tracks, six of which are originals and three are remixes. Skrillex finds his niche in the electronic music community somewhere between dubstep and electro-house. His blend of genres, eclectic use of voiceovers, and massive buildups distinguish him from the pack.

Opener “Rock N Roll (Will Take You to the Mountain),” includes choppy vocals and begins like a simple house song. Later on though, Skrillex drops hard basslines, complete with the familiar by runyon colie (computer science)

Matt and Kim Sidewalks Release Date: November 2, 2010 Label: Fader Genre: Dance Rock

signature whistle. The middle and end of “You Woke Me Up!” features an interesting combination of tremolo over looped pizzicato and chords creating a full sound.

In a 2007 interview with The A.V. Club, Bird said: “I'd bring a tape machine out to my barn and I would record one of these sort of static, ambient loops for every key that's in a scale.” For the tenminute track, “The Barn Tapes,” I can only speculate that we are hearing some of the material he spoke of, and it is indeed ambient.

The fact that Useless Creatures doesn’t rely on his classical training as much as Ballad of the Red Shoes does differentiates between them. This can be said about his more recent non-instrumental releases as well. Both are equally entrancing, only in different ways. It’s better to see an artist’s growth from when you first loved them, than hearing the same tired tunes with each new release.

Cee Lo Green The Lady Killer

Recommended Tracks: You Woke Me Up!, Master Sigh, The Barn Tapes

Release Date: November 9, 2010 Label: Elektra Genre: R&B, Pop

Matt and Kim are back with their third album, Sidewalks. The charming twosome of Matt Johnson and Kim Schifino has again managed to combine accessible melodies with unbridled enthusiasm to create an energetic album. The Brooklyn group broke out on the success of single “Daylight,” from last year’s Grand. Sidewalks should easily cement their popularity as one of the most exciting bands in dance music.

Matt and Kim’s ability to appeal to a number of audiences is obvious from their tours and opening slots with bands as diverse as Against Me!, Cool Kids and Girl Talk. It seems appropriate that Sidewalks begins a campaign to incorporate pretty much every genre possible. Kim’s punk drumming is intact, but experimentation with hip-hop beats on “Block After Block” and trumpets on single “Cameras” serve the band well.

Matt’s lyrics are as plainly optimistic and silly as ever. In “Cameras” he takes issue with capturing

by andrew phan (pharmacy) With a familiar flow made famous by the success of 2006’s “Crazy,” Cee Lo Green has stepped out from the shadow of his collaboration with Danger Mouse and re-emerged on the top 40 radar with probably the most famous “Fuck You” of the century. The soulful, throwback sounds of the lead single produced by Bruno Mars’ writing team, The Smeezingtons, provide an accessible invitation to explore the many sides of Cee Lo Green.

After a rather saucy intro, the album's first song, “Bright Lights Bigger City,” hints a certain resemblance to the pop sounds of the 90s, falling somewhere between N*Sync and Seal. At times, tracks like “I Want You” and “Cry Baby” come off as cookie cutter R&B ballads, but are still carried by Green’s vocal talents. His voice soars through the pleas of “Wildflower” over an elegantly produced string arrangement and understated but dance friendly drum beat. Also, those who are familiar with

”womp womp”ing of dubstep. I dare you to try and contain yourself.

The title track leans toward dubstep, yet Skrillex still echoes the electro-trash style that brought him into the dance music scene here. “Kill Everybody” starts off with a catchy bass line and simple synthinduced sounds. The tune’s lyrics create a haunting vibe that is only broken by a heavy drop at 1:20.

It’s safe to say that Scary Monsters has taken electronic music to the next level. While the EP was first available exclusively on Beatport.com, all of its tracks ranked in the site’s top 15, making Skrillex the first dubstep musician to ever crack the charts on Beatport. I’d suggest you stay ahead of the curve by turning up your bass and checking out Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites as soon as possible.

Recommended Tracks: Kill Everybody (Bare Noize Remix), Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites, All I Ask Of You every moment on film, singing “No time for cameras/ we’ll use our eyes instead.” However, he also shows a heightened level of maturity on the tender “Where You’re Coming From,” one of the duo’s most successful experiments in restraint. He addresses the song’s anonymous subject delicately: “We tore the walls out/ in this old bedroom of your house/ to make room for dreams/ I know where you’re coming from”.

The album’s latter half suffers from a lack of pacing, with the three least noteworthy songs lined up in front of “Ice Melts,” the album’s rousing finish.

The songs themselves are pleasant, but strung together they fail to distinguish themselves. Though Sidewalks could have benefited from a different track order, it nevertheless equals or tops any of the band’s previous work and assures itself a heavy rotation among upbeat dance music.

Recommended Tracks: Block After Block, Cameras, Where You're Coming From, Good For Great

Green’s 2002 single “Closet Freak” will be pleased by his haunting riffing on “Bodies,” produced by The Neptunes’ Chad Hugo.

As a whole, the album is more groovy than peppy, more soulful than stylish. Those looking for more singalongs after hearing “Fuck You” should turn to the luscious horns and oohs and ahhs of “Satisfied,” but for those of us who appreciate the funkadelic sounds coming out of the ATL lately (i.e. Big Boi and Janelle Monae), there are plenty of goodies on this album to keep it hot, including Selah Sue’s appearance on “Please.” Overall, The Ladykiller is another inclusion to the welcome re-emergence of the Motown sounds of the '60s, joining the likes of Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson and Lily Allen on the pop radar.

Recommended Tracks: Fuck You, Bodies, Please

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written by madi daigle (music industry) art by lady lamb the beekeeper

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. . .

F O E T S A J UST A T

ACROSS 1 Chris Brown was paid to write this brand’s slogan into his song, “Forever” 3 Where the Wild Things Are used this song in their trailer 8 Colin Peter’s favorite musical score 10 2Pac made this beverage famous through his hit “Thug Passion” 11 The ugly love-child created by intense rock and hip-hop 12 The Match.com for music and commercials 14 The brand responsible for the new, completely free, recording studio, Rubber Tracks

DOWN 2 This newspaper described the Strokes as “the world’s most fashionable rock band” 4 Steve Tannen of The Weepies says making music with Deb Talan is “just like a ___” 5 Album of the year in the 52nd Grammy Awards 6 Popular large music blog aggregator 7 The song to listen to when you’re in the mood to get skankin’ drunk 8 This artist featured the most famous commercial generated one-hit indie wonder as of lately 9 A short-lived form of metal, often denounced by metalheads 13 “Karen O and the ____”

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as though we are meant to leave Portland in order to find any sort of national success or recognition.”

And it seems that that is just her plan. When Tastemakers caught up with her at TT The Bear’s this past fall she had recently decided that instead of packing up and moving to New York City, as originally planned, she would head to Cambridge with only what could fit in the trunk of her old school 1980’s Cadillac. “I just got rid of all my stuff, all my material possessions,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘I don’t need all this shit’ and got rid of it. I literally had an antique store in my apartment so I just sold it all.”

As of right now her plan is to couch surf until she decides exactly where she wants to land. “When I really sat down and thought about it, I knew that right now I needed to be [in Cambridge]. So my plan is to sleep on friends’ couches and just figure it out. New York is only a bus ride away so my goal is to play a bunch of shows there and just kind of travel back and forth.”

On October 29th Lady Lamb The Beekeeper had her “Farewell For Now” show at the SPACE Gallery in Portland, where she sold the last of her items that were just too sentimental to sell to some random at a yard sale, including her typewriter and the 8-track she used to do all her recording. She wrapped up her new album, which was recorded at Bowdoin College studios in Maine, in November and has since been kicking ass and taking names at shows throughout the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region.

While I know that there are literally thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of musicians who release their inhibitions and feel the rain on their skin… I mean follow their dreams to the Big City every year, I can’t help but think that Lady Lamb The Beekeeper will undoubtedly make an impact on this oversaturated scene, and that Maine will finally experience the glory it deserves.

crossw

ord

what's missing?

With poetic lyricism comparable to indie favorites Neutral Milk Hotel and Death Cab For Cutie, and a voice sounding like a combination of Janis Joplin and Stevie Nicks, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper has depth beyond her years. Her song “Up In The Rafters”, a traditional-styled track that sounds like it’s been sung for hundreds of years, is a perfect example of her old soul feel, whereas “Crane Your Neck” perfectly showcases her impressive lyricism and face-melting skills.

Aly Spaltro, the girl behind the pseudonym, has spent most of her musical life in Portland, Maine, a relatively unknown, but flourishing music scene. In an earlier interview she mentioned that the only downfall to starting her career in Maine was, “the seeming lack of opportunity. Sometimes I feel like the Portland scene is a really well-kept secret. We’re all tucked away creating this music, and we all support each other and are rooting for one another, but no one outside of the community is aware of what is being produced here. It seems

Can you pick out the five differences in these two photos?

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