The Ides of March / A Lighter Fare

New York sprung alive this weekend with the scent of spring. Public parks buzzed, brunchers dined on patios, and sunglasses dominated the landscape. Ah, if only it wasn’t but a brief illusion! A momentary reprise!

They say of the month of March that it comes “in like a lion and out like a lamb,” but those in the state of New York know better. In reality, March is “in like a polar bear, then sort of like a seal for a little while—where it’s still pretty cold, but you bake on a warm rock in the sun—then like a stuffed rabbit riding a caribou, then a robin flying back north, then, finally, out like a warm plate of veal.”

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Springtime Grab Bag

This week, in no particular order: tracks from Splash by Jeremy Jay, Make You Mine by Best Coast, Looking for Some Action by Bare Wires, Travellers in Space and Time by Apples in Stereo, and Hologram Jams by Jaguar Love.

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HERE’S TO WEEKENDS / GOLD ZEBRA

Usually, I’m sort of ready for the weekend to end. Let me be clear: this is NOT because I want to go back to work. Usually I’m ready for the weekend to end because I need to recalibrate my being. Like, you know, stop drinking.

I spoke to a friend of mine this weekend that I consider a life-guru—one of those people who has an infinite reserve of energy and is naturally good at anything they get their hands into. We drank red wine out of empty beer glasses and I voiced my concerns about the “working for the weekend” lifestyle. Like, isn’t there more to life than this?

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PARTY, NOLA, & CHAT ROULETTE SOUNDTRACK

Hey everyone. A few things today:
1) I missed last week’s post because I was down in the Big Easy showing my breasts for plastic beads shaped like pot leaves. Much props to N’Orleans for its drive-thru daiquiris, crawfish etouffee, and street-corner brass bands. But mostly, thank you for all the beautiful hip-hop of the Dirty [...]

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February Party at Royal Oak

Thanks for coming out, everyone.  Royal Oak was so crowded they had to call in the owner and an extra bartender to keep everything under control.  We all had a great time DJing and seeing you, and I’m pretty sure that the police showed up at least once.  Here’s to doing it again in March.
As a [...]

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YellowFever: Yellow Fever

This isn’t really a new release, per se. It’s a collection of songs that were originally released on EPs and singles over the past few years, all of them strangely overlooked during the late-mid aughts despite the singer/guitarist’s Voxtrot pedigree. As far as I can discern, these songs have been unearthed because the band has decided it wants to make a more serious go of things, touring nationally with Woods last summer and signing with the panache booking agency according to myspace.

But you know, if Mission of Burma, Polvo, and all the rest have taught us anything, it’s that there ARE second acts in showbiz, and YellowFever (one word, apparently) fully deserve theirs, courtesy of this disc.

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Night Control: Life Control

Night Control (or Christopher Curtis Smith, the name he likely uses when making airline reservations) has just released a second LP, Life Control, on Kill Shaman. Considering that Smith’s well-received 2009 full length, Death Control, trimmed down a decade’s worth of self-recorded sound experiments to a 19-track “greatest hits” album, the year that Smith spent on Life Control speaks of conversion to a comparatively brutal efficiency.

In case you were waiting with baited breath: Life Control defies any assumption that newfound acclaim and revised recording methods have led Smith towards rapprochement with the Other Music “in” section.

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ARCADE FIRE WIN THE SUPERBOWL!!!

Dear Superbowl XLIV,
You were the best Superbowl ever because you played my favorite Canadian indie-rock band, Arcade Fire, like twenty times. Also, Superbowl, you announced the rejuvenation of New Orleans—the comeback story of the decade. Does this mean George Bush finally cares about black people?
As if all of this Arcade Fire didn’t have me stoked [...]

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Harlem: Hippies

The key to Harlem is that they’re a straight-ahead rock band: they don’t traffic in difficult production values, math-rock time signatures, or vocals that “need to grow on you.”

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Holden Caulfield’s Comfort Music

It was a pretty tragic week for bookworms across the world. On Wednesday we lost history buff, WWII veteran, and all-around genius Howard Zinn. Then reports surfaced that the reclusive and highly influential fiction writer J.D. Salinger had also passed. Double-whammy.
After work on Friday, the teachers from my school congregated for happy hour. Being the [...]

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Wetdog

While Wetdog aren’t the best band I’ve ever heard in my life, they make for a pretty solid start to the decade. Basically, they’re a cheeky trio of Brits with a rumbling low end and a strident set of pipes up top. I imagine them dancing around their rooms at a younger age to Talulah Gosh and the Slits before getting drunk on Laser at some sidestreet punk-rock flat off the Cowley road. ‘Ello, Guvner!

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Conan’s Best Musical Guests

No doubt you’ve kept abreast of the late night shake-up unfolding over the past couple weeks. I have to admit, I myself feel a bit guilty about Conan’s sudden change in fortunes (relatively speaking). I’m sure many of my demographic feel similarly—for it was us that fueled the success of NBC’s lanky, wire-framed longshot. Conan [...]

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Slept-On in 2009

Let’s devote one last post to “guten times 2009.” Specifically, a couple of bands whose work I slept on last year: Screaming Females’ Power Move and Christmas Island’s 7″ on Captured Tracks and full length, Blackout Summer, on In The Red.

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Morris Day and the Time

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or artist) each week-
Not too long ago I met up with some friends for drinks at one of my favorite Brooklyn bars called Moe’s. Moe’s is great for a number of reasons—it’s rather unpretentious, it draws an eclectic crowd, it’s located in the underrated neighborhood of Fort Greene, it [...]

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Days In The Wake

There’s a new Beach House album out but, lah-dee-dah, it sounds exactly like every other Beach House album that’s ever been released. The real excitement here in Morgantown is the Beach Fossils album being prepped for release in March, which I somehow neglected to include in last week’s list of most-anticipated 2010 releases.

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Solving the Lady Gaga Mystery

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or human) each week-
There are many longstanding mysteries on our vast planet: the Great Pyramids, Stone Henge, crop circles, the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. But during the last two years a new mystery has materialized that has scientists and [...]

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2009

My look back at the year that was. Plus a delicious chili recipe…

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2009, I Sort of, Liked It.

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or year) each week-
In spite of my strong efforts to remain a curmudgeon, I have to admit that 2009 was a good year for music. I haven’t felt this strongly about mainstream pop, hip-hop, indie-rock, or indie-indie rock, in like, forever. I think it can be attributed to the [...]

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The Formative Years, A Review (2007-2008)

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or decade) each week-
What follows is part 3 of my 3 part series on the albums that defined the last ten years. In case you’re just tuning in:
The Formative Years (2000-2003)
The Formative Years (2004-2006)
Today, I wrap up a decade of oddness. Starting with y2k and 9/11 and hurtling towards [...]

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Julian Koster

Color me merry, kids: my apartment was chosen last week to be the site for one of Julian Koster’s caroling sessions. I’ve loved Koster from the moment I first encountered his hot banjo, bass, musical saw, accordian, and synth licks on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and I’ve loved Christmas ever since the first night that I chewed on my stuffed Santa’s yellow hat, listening for reindeer hoofs out the window.

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The Formative Years, A Review (2004-2006)

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or decade) each week-
This week is a continuation of my decade-end reflection on the albums that meant something to me—and likely—a good portion of our “generation.” In case you missed the first one:
The Formative Years (2000-2003)
So this week I would like to share the albums that I fell in [...]

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The Formative Years, A Review (2000-2003)

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or decade) each week-
If you read my column, you know that it’s built on a foundation of reminiscence. I peddle nostalgia. Why? I guess in part it’s because I’m prematurely becoming a grumpy old man when it comes to music—heralding “the good ole’ days” and rebuking a number of [...]

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Thanksgiving Edition

I am thankful for the nameless couple that danced, alone, to all of the following indie pop songs, which to me (and apparently only me) are way dancier than anything by Jay-Z.

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Partied Out…

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or party) each week-

We was up in the club so hard this weekend I’m having a hard time finding the strength to type. Hope y’all made it for GlassesGlasses’s inaugural bash at Royal Oak. As you can see from these pictures, it ‘twas off da hook/chain. So I’m just [...]

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Hush Arbors

These are classic songs, very consistently written and recorded. As always, there’s a death-hippie Laurel Canyon feel that I think maybe Devendra Banhart also strives for but never quite achieves. For Hush Arbors, the vibe seems to come effortlessly, like an uncalculated way of life.

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Crazy Rhythms

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or album) a week-

Now I claim to know a thing or two about music, but a great man—I believe, perhaps, Mr. Miyagi—once said, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.” During my life I’ve discovered that these words ring clear, these words ring true—cuz I [...]

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Digital Leather

Digital Leather makes hard, catchy, synth-based rock music, of the sort that Jay Reatard used to make pre-Matador, through his Lost Sounds and the aforementioned Terror Visions projects.

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Would You Rather?

I am spectacularly indifferent towards this week’s new releases, newly hyped releases, and highly anticipated upcoming releases.

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A Minha Menina

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

As I progress in my semi-professional-totally-unprofessional DJing career, I have begun to learn the woes of the “request.” During my first few gigs I loved requests. I relished the opportunity to please the crowd while filling up a few minutes of my set. I didn’t understand [...]

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JEFF The Brotherhood

These guys are actually brothers who look like they just stepped out of a shag carpeted, hot-boxed van parked somewhere in the mid-70s (the decade, not the lower portion of Carnegie Hill). Basically, these southern gents are what Kings of Leon would aspire to be if they had a soul.

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CMJ 2009

The chance to see bands who are still relatively unknown, geographically distant, or primarily studio projects is what makes CMJ worthwhile. I can’t think of any artists I’m desperate to see this year but I’ve posted a few shows I’m keen on here.

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Shine Blockas

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

Does anyone else feel like this week needs a little injection of life-juice? Yes? Well, leave it to Big Boi.
Way back whenwhoknows I wrote a column about my entry point into the world of hip-hop. The story went something like this: I was melting in the back seat [...]

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The Raveonettes

The Raveonettes are a band much more in than out of control on this release, though it’s those occasional latter moments that provide most of the album’s appeal. Indeed, the band is consistent here to the point that there’s something middle of the road about this workmanlike effort, despite its occasional moments of exuberance and spontaneity.

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Spike Jonze Makes a Movie; People Freak.

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or human) a week-

 
Everyone is having a baby over the upcoming release of Where The Wild Things Are. Some are having twins. I myself am a victim of this excitement. In fact, if I loved Karen O, this film would be the ultimate culmination of all the mainstream art [...]

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A Place To Bury Strangers

This album is fantastically, astoundingly hooky. It’s a propulsive, clanking, semi-industrial dance album in the spitting image of Joy Division

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Monotonix

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

This one’s easy.
As a much younger man I moved to Brooklyn to become an English teacher. Aye, but it was the bright lights of the city that attracted me westward at each week’s end. Here, I was immersed in sights, sounds, culture, history and adventure. Here, I was [...]

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The Black Heart Procession

The Black Heart Procession has crafted one dark, strangely sexy track that features a rubbery, top-of-the-mix bass line; they sit back and let it convert new fans. Rats sounds vaguely like something Six Finger Satellite or Girls Against Boys might have recorded in their prime (the latter, possibly, as New Wet Kojak) and it leaves the rest of the album in the dust.

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Woody’s New York Jazz

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or filmmaker) a week-

I’m a sucker for Autumn. If you don’t believe me, check out my previous entry about this season. I’m particularly a sucker for Autumn in New York—the crisp air, the lingering sunshine, the changing leaves and the scent of a new year ahead. I was fortunate [...]

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Broadcast

Witch Cults is off the fucking wall. Seriously, it’s an intensely, aggressively strange album. Rehearsing My Choir strange. I should also come clean–it isn’t exactly a Broadcast album.

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Solo Lennon

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or artist) each week-

I have been drinking with my new coworkers on Fridays, and drinking a lot. This is always a dangerous situation. I’m the new guy and it would be smart to play my cards close to my chest. However, I love drinking—and so do they. The result [...]

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Sunny Day Real Estate

Know what? Y’all can keep your Pavement reunion: Sub Pop just released a remastered edition of Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary.

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How bout a lil’ Fleetwood?!

-One freak’s commentary on song (or artist) a week-

Growing up is an interesting phenomenon, and one I think many of us shove into some dusty back corner of our consciousness. A great deal of growing up happens during two incredibly strange years of our lives—of course I’m referring to middle school.
We all lived it, but [...]

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Health

On the off chance that anyone was wondering, there aren’t any huge stylistic shifts on this album. Health hasn’t recorded 9 tracks of lo fi, Beach-Boys-influenced haze, or a collection of reggaeton hits, or a concept album about robots. In many respects, they re-recorded their last album, which isn’t a terrible strategy. But I was hoping for more.

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Who Did It Best?

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

Welcome to something a bit different from freakbook this week, y’all. Allow me to present to you a brand new, semi-regular theme for this column, entitled: “Who Did It Best?” Aren’t you just tingling with excitement?! I know I am!
The idea is quite simple. Several songs [...]

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Yo La Tengo

Musically, it’s hard not to enjoy Popular Songs, though there probably isn’t anything on here that will change your mind one way or the other about Yo La Tengo.

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FREAK BOOK: Live Forever

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

You may want to be seated for this news folks… It’s official. Oasis has broken up. A moment, please…
Now I know what your first reaction was: “What? They were still a band?” Apparently so. To most of us, including myself, this news is pretty underwhelming. Oasis [...]

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Sic Alps

San Francisco’s Sic Alps drop two releases this week: a new, 2-song single (L. Mansion) and a double-LP reissue (A Long Way Around to a Shortcut). L. Mansion is the band’s first recording as a 3-piece, with Ty Segall on drums, and it’s also their first release on Slumberland.

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FREAK BOOK: Autumnal Soul

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or in this case, one season) a week-

Perhaps it’s the dog days of August that have spurred within me this premature feeling; or perhaps it’s because that pit has returned to my stomach that tells me I have to go back to teaching in just two weeks; then again, [...]

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Pissed Jeans

Pissed Jeans’ music only anchors its highly ambivalent lyrics, which struggle to express love for simple pleasures while simultaneously attributing to them a violently cathartic element and/or a sickly, queasy sexuality.

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FREAK BOOK: Pump Up the Jam

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

I was looking for an excuse to bring up this song since before I even had the idea to write this column. It’s a song that has haunted me since ESPN’s Jock Jams, Volume 1 and my first ever community-youth-center dance. It’s a song that I can’t help [...]

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Silkworm

In honor of my impending voyage to the second city of big shoulders, the land of stockyards and good times, this week’s post is on Silkworm, beloved band of my early college years and proud emigrants from Montana to Chicago by way of Seattle.

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FREAK BOOK: Waterfalls

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

I’ll be frank—I’m still hung over from our party Saturday. We drank, we danced, and we jumped on couches until the wee hours of the morning. It was so good, I think some people had sex in the hidden corridor like seven feet away from me [...]

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Mount Eerie

Mount Eerie’s work is more ambitious than anything by The Microphones, and is simultaneously louder, with blasts of distorted and fuzzy guitar, and quieter, with periods of folk guitar, layered vocals (as delicate as ever) and an overarching sense of thought and care. The sound is exactly what you’d expect from a man who spent a year in the early 2000s living alone, in a cabin, deep in the Norwegian woods.

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FREAK BOOK: The Soul Children

-One freak’s commentary on one song (or artist) a week-
Have you ever lied, telling someone you were familiar with something, when in actuality, you weren’t? If not, you are a far better person than I and you may in fact be a robot, so fish around in your ear and see if you can take [...]

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Eric’s Trip

There’s a sense of collegiate domesticity here–teakettles whistle and cats meow in an off-campus idyll. To borrow my old boss’ descriptive tics, I’d summarize the Eric’s Trip sound as being “Sebadoh has a child with Skygreen Leopards where Talulah Gosh is the midwife in a room filled with contact mics and wallpapered with back issues of Sassy’s Cute Band Report.”

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FREAK BOOK: That New New

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

I’m gonna keep it short and sweet this week—partially because I was out of town again this weekend (what’s with everyone getting married?) and partially because I feel I’ve been doing a lot of sentimental rambling of late. This week it’s time for some tracks that are newer [...]

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Woodsist Records

Right now, Woodsist is notable for releasing beloved albums by bands of the moment (Kurt Vile, Blank Dogs, Psychedelic Horseshit) and the past 15-30 seconds (Wavves, Woods, Thee Oh Sees, Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls). This week’s guten morgan is about 3 artists whose albums are just now in the Woodsist pipeline: Fergus & Geronimo, Beach Fossils, and Meth Teeth.

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FREAK BOOK: Misunderstood

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-
For those of you who aren’t friends or regular readers, if I haven’t already made it painfully obvious, I hail from the illustrious city of Buffalo, New York. Now I live in Brooklyn, and I really do love it here—a change of scenery was long overdue. But even [...]

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OOPS!

For a few years, every album that I loved came out on Skingraft. Every noisy, nasal, hyper-intelligent, atonal, non-macho-but-over-the-top-aggressive band out there. U.S. Maple, Arab On Radar, Melt Banana, The Flying Luttenbachers, I could go on and on. Free jazz and Japanese experimental, noise and math. Individually each artist had its pluses and minuses: collectively they felt unstoppable.

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FREAK BOOK: Too Through

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-

It’s kind of a bummer when you’re a talented singer and the thing you’re most remembered for are two early-90’s electronic dance jams by groups in neon spandex that sampled your voice. For me, I wouldn’t mind being immortalized that way—but I love neon spandex and awful 90’s [...]

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Unnatural Helpers

On some level, this band sounds like the Catheters and every stereotype of the Mudhoney-influenced “Seattle Sound” (yelped vocals, swinging backbeats, and tuneful, traditional garage riffs). But lurking underneath is a strain of weirdness.

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FREAK BOOK: It’s Summer

-One freak’s commentary on one song (in this case, one season) a week-
After the rainiest month in the history of rain, summer has finally, fully, assuredly arrived—and it is glorious.
As a perma-Northeasterner (New York via Buffalo) the summer has always held a special place in my heart. When I spent two months in sunny San [...]

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The Dutchess and The Duke

Coastal drives in an old station wagon, burned hot dogs, and dirty keds with no socks. The Dutchess and The Duke are the sound of summer, or at least a bygone version of summer shot un-ironically in super 8 film.

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FREAK BOOK: Maybe Tomorrow

-One freak’s commentary on one song (in this case, one artist) a week-
So, it’s like inevitable, we’ve gotta talk about Michael Jackson.
I signed up on Twitter about a month ago to see what all the hubbub was about. Frankly, I haven’t been very impressed. To me, it seems like just another excuse for us to [...]

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Jeremy Jay

Jeremy Jay is on K records, and presents somewhat of a twee, faux naive personna, but his obsessions are more Clientele and Aislers Set than Beat Happening. Melancholy, rainy days and pea coats spent dancing to 45s in a chalet, not picnicking with your best girl by the car.

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FREAK BOOK: Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy

-One freak’s commentary on one song a week-
I am unmarried, I have no children, my job’s kinda meh, I eat a lot of spaghetti, and my landlord won’t let me have a dog. Sure, I’m young and I’m good at having fun, but I have to create much of the excitement in my life—thus the [...]

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FREAK BOOK: Can It Be All So Simple

- One freak’s commentary on one song a week -
Ok. So this one’s kind of a two-for-one. And in the end, I guess it’s kind of like a seven-for-one. But that’s aight. No rules.
So when I wrote about Outkast’s Aquemeni a couple of weeks ago I forgot to mention that I am not only the [...]

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Low

An overview of Low’s career.

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Sparks

An overview of Sparks’ career.

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FREAK BOOK: You Can’t Hurry Love

Diana Ross & The Supremes dominated Top 40 radio for the majority of the 1960’s. The Motor-City trio delivered 12 number one singles and their voices and images were staples of American culture. They were the darlings of the once-invincible hit-writing machine Holland-Dozeir-Holland, who landed ten number one hits writing for them. They had style, [...]

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The Ladybug Transistor

The Ladybug Transistor: Can’t Wait Another Day

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FREAK BOOK: Spottieottiedopaliscous

- One freak’s commentary on one song a week -
Generically enough, I fell in love with hip-hop in the back seat of tinted Chevy Suburban, stoned out of my gourd. It was one high school summer or another, and I was just starting to get into weed. We drank some beers by a fire near [...]

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The Lucksmiths

An overview of The Lucksmiths’ career.

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FREAK BOOK: Jimmy Mack

- One freak’s commentary on one song a week… -
Martha and the Vandellas scored their last Top Ten Hit in the U.S. with “Jimmy Mack” in 1967, but Laura Nyro absolutely owned the song in 1971. Sped up and punchier, shed of layers and spotlighting Nyro’s sweet voice, the soulful songstress gave the Motown masterpiece [...]

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An Introduction / Polvo

An Introduction to the Guten MORGAN column and an overview of Polvo’s career.

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FREAK BOOK: Only in Dreams

So the song for the very first column is like, whoa, way important.
I knew that for my first entry I wanted to think back; back to the 90’s, back to my most awkward years, back to the first real musical experience I had—that one where I put my headphones on and listened to an album [...]

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FREAK BOOK: Intro

Music was perched at the front of my mind, but music seemed so, I don’t know, obvious. I like to read music columns but I usually kind of secretly hate the people who write them and imagine them as 28-year-old English B.A.’s, with like, a dog and a vegan girlfriend and horn-rimmed glasses and a Neutral Milk Hotel first-press vinyl that cost $85. But alas, what else do I know anything about?

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