Category Archives: Culture

Oct 07 2012
2 Comments
Culture, Endorsements, Music

Unsolicited Endorsements XXXIX

Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness

Journalism: Nitsuh Abebe on Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear is a Brooklyn-based indie band (aren’t they all?) that makes critically acclaimed music, gets namechecked by Jay-Z, sells thousands of albums — and doesn’t really make all that much money.

So here’s an interesting piece about the mechanics of being an indie band, popular, but on the fringes of mainstream, successful, but only in the perceptions of a small niche. This, I think, is where the story lacks a little bit. I wish Abebe would have spent a little more time on what the Internet (and fragmentation of pop culture) has done to how we experience art, and more specifically, music and sports and other stuff.

This is an incomplete thought, of course. But… OK, indie rock isn’t that lucrative. It’s a grind. Cool.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Oct 01 2012
Leave a comment
Culture, Music

#MusicMonday: Jason Lytle

Every Monday morning. Music so good, it must be shared. 

This week: “Dept. of Disappearance” — Jason Lytle, former frontman of ‘Grandaddy‘, off his 2012  album of the same name

[via All Songs’ fall music preview]

Tagged , ,
Sep 30 2012
3 Comments
Culture, Humor

Scenes from Lawrence: Hipster vengeance on the bathroom wall … and a short rebuttal

Living in a college town means you see things like this on a daily basis. This one caught my eye on Saturday night at the Ringo Deathstarr show in Lawrence. Fight the power, hipster. Fight like you’ve never fought before.

Sep 28 2012
1 Comment
Culture, Endorsements, Humor, Music

Unsolicited Endorsements XXXVIII

Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness

Music writing: Ann Powers on Mumford & Sons

Mumford & Sons released its second album this week, “Babel”, the follow-up to the out-of-nowhere buzz album, “Sigh No More”, and a perfectly fine and ordinary record that sounds more or less exactly like its predecessor.

The Mumford & Sons dichotomy has long fascinated me. Marcus Mumford and his friends make what is essentially bluegrass pop—big and layered songs that always seem to start slow and end with booming crescendos. It is music that is seemingly loved by a rather substantial chunk of folks between the ages of 16 and 35. Young professional urbanites. Frat boys. Suburban teenagers. Feminist careerists. (OK. That last one is a major assumption. Deal with it.)

But this is also a buzzband that is, by and large, loathed by critics and hipster tastemakers like Vice and Pitchfork—a band that treads in the same “bigger-than-thou” territory that U2 occupied in the late 80s; the same overly sentimental plot of land that Dave Matthews claimed in the mid to late 90s.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , ,
Sep 28 2012
Leave a comment
Culture, Humor

On politics, peanut butter sandwiches and the cardinal sin of pickup basketball

It is now, without a doubt, election season, that ridiculous, messy, and chaotic daily churn of news, and polls, and soundbites, and punditry—sometimes honest, sometimes not.

It’s broad and sweeping—and sometimes hard to ignore. I’ve spent the last week on the road, the last four days on vacation from work, and this has given me some time to sort through some of the noise and focus on the utterly preposterous. The truly egregious. The most insanely incendiary thoughts I’ve heard during this presidential campaign.

So here they are. One: Mitt Romney says his “guity pleasure” is “peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk”. Two: Barack Obama reportedly takes charges in pickup basketball games. (Yep. These scandals run deep.)

Continue reading →

Aug 17 2012
Leave a comment
Culture, Endorsements, Movies, Music

Unsolicited Endorsements XXXIII

Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.

Book: Brian Porto’s The Supreme Court and The NCAA

Let’s get this out of the way first: The Supreme Court and The NCAA is a “law” book. It is not a leisurely, let me sip a Miami Vice on this barcalounger while listening to New Edition, summer-time read. But summer is over. At least up here in Pennsylvania. It was sixty degrees this morning.

And as the temperatures get cooler, serious non-fiction becomes more appealing. I began reading this book as background for work but wanted to finish it because the author Brian Porto presents detailed portrayals of two landmark decisions that changed big-time college athletics, as well as what I consider the best argument for fixing the industry it has become.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , ,
Aug 13 2012
Leave a comment
Culture, Music

#MusicMonday: Mumford & Sons

Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.

This week: “I Will Wait” — Mumford & Sons, off their new, yet-to-be released album, “Babel”.

***

Well, Mumford & Sons, the British folk/roots/stringy quartet, is just about six weeks away from releasing its sophomore album in America, and last week they revved up the hype machine by releasing this rollicking, “Let’s Go Run in a Field!” track that immediately generated all sorts of feedback in certain pockets of the internet.

On first listen, the song hits all the right spots.

And maybe that’s the thing: If I had to imagine what a new Mumford & Sons song would sound like, “I’ll Will Wait” would be more or less the exact song that I invented in my head. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

This is hardly an original thought, of course, but it feels true. The song is everything you want, from the banjo-filled everything, to the crescendo-building chorus, to the tent-revival lyrics.

But there’s also the feeling that you’re being sold something you already bought. Some folks have already proved that it’s pretty easy to rip off (and commercialize) this sound — yea, Phillip, you… — and maybe this just adds to the feeling that Mumford, for all its imagery about running and moving and criss-crossing the country via train, is having a pretty tough time figuring where to go. — Rustin Dodd

Tagged , , ,
Aug 06 2012
Leave a comment
Culture, Movies, Music

#MusicMonday: Arcade Fire

Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.

This week: “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” — Arcade Fire, covering Cyndi Lauper

(And when you’re done with the video, stay for the entire, ridiculous playlist, including some scenes (!!!) from the 80s movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Jonathan Silverman and Shannen Doherty.)

Tagged , , ,
Aug 04 2012
2 Comments
Culture, Endorsements, Music

Unsolicited Endorsements XXXII

Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.

Summer Band: Tarkio

For what it’s worth, I’ve spent most of my 20s as a devoted Decemberists-head, coming in right around the release of Picaresque, staying for the genius The Crane Wife, working through the more difficult The Hazards of Love (“The Wanting Comes in Waves” is still epic) and experiencing that feeling of musical euphoria over The King is Dead, maybe the best album of 2011.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , ,
Jul 30 2012
1 Comment
Culture, Essay

One last song in Kansas City

It was the last week of classes, maybe a Wednesday, a warm spring morning in Lawrence, Kansas. I had a week left of college — well, technically, a couple days of classes and then finals — and I had promised my editor at the school paper that I’d file a farewell column that afternoon.

I can’t exactly remember what else I had going on that day. That night would be a party for our last night of production at the student newspaper, and I felt like maybe I had something else to do as well. In any event, I wanted to sit down and write that column. I had an idea of what I wanted to write, and I had already pieced it together in my head, but I needed a solid chunk of time. Maybe two hours or so. That should do it, I told myself.

I also had a class that morning at 9 a.m. … Journalism Ethics.

Too bad, I thought. I went to the library and started writing.

Continue reading →

Tagged , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →