Some Monday morning housekeeping. If you’re not already following the blog on Twitter, you can do us a solid and follow us https://twitter.com/BrewHouseblog (@BrewHouseblog). It’s this blog — in tweet-form. Do it. … Do it.
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Writing for Writing's Sake
#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
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.
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.
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.)
A Mile Away From Ordinary
I felt kinda scared when I arrived at the track that night, dressed suavely in the guise of darkness, a plain white t-shirt, and a scrummy pair of shorts Clorox can’t save. Because I have paranoia levels befitting a mother of suburban teenagers, I feared the cops could arrive, administer punishment via nightstick and then haul us to county jail. I feared I might faint or die.
OK, I really didn’t think that. That would be overdramatic. But I did anticipate excruciating pain, excruciating but voluntary pain for choosing to participate in an endurance test of sanity better known as the Beer Mile. Continue reading
#MusicMonday: The Mountain Goats
Every Monday morning. Music so good, it must be shared.
This week: “Harlem Roulette” — The Mountain Goats, off their 2012 album, “Transcendental Youth”
The latest album from the prolific John Darnielle (“The Mountain Goats”) includes a song that is apparently about Frankie Lymon, best known for the 1950s classic, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” And here’s where I show my age. For years, WDFFIL has been one of my juke-box go-tos. No matter the crowd, the bar, the drink special, WDFFIL always wins the night. It’s just that good.
So, yea, I had no idea that Lymon was just 13 years old when the song came out; no idea that he was lead singer of a group called The Teenagers, which released WDFFIL. And no idea that, by age 25, Lymon would drop dead, succumbing, like so many other child stars, to a drug overdose. This is, Darnielle says, what the song is about. It’s sad, and a shame, and tragic all at one. And damn, is it a good song. – RD
Unsolicited Endorsements XXXVII
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
Album: Black Up by Shabazz Palaces
Sitting across from Nicki Minaj at the opposite end of the hip-hop spectrum is this weaving, dark, low-key set of ten tracks from Seattle-based Shabazz Palaces. Think of Shabazz Palaces like a hip-hop version of Broken Social Scene: various voices and influences from around the indie world, cobbled together to create something that’s all over the map – pleasantly unsteady and off-kilter enough to stay interesting on repeated listens.
Black Up can be a bit dense at times, and by the final couple of tracks, you’re almost ready to move onto something a bit more buttoned-up. But then the last song hits and pulls it all back together with a big, booming groove of a beat that sounds like a delightful four-minute chorus.
Unsolicited Endorsements XXXVI
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.
Hipster Hop: G-Eazy’s “Runaround Sue”
A few weeks ago, my friend Danny called me about a show. He lives in New Orleans, and I’d planned to go down there the last week of September. So he told me that Hoodie Allen, the Ivy League educated (and former Google-ite) independent rapper was playing in New Orleans that week. Cool, I said.
Well, it turns out that Hoodie will actually be in Lawrence before that — at the Granada on Saturday — and he’s sharing the tour with G-Eazy, the Oakland native who made YouTube waves last year with his underground hit, “Runaround Sue” a sample of Dion’s *all-time hit/underrated party song. (Earlier this week, my old college friend Jess interviewed G-Eazy about the upcoming show and his new material.)
#MusicMonday: The Hold Steady
Every Monday morning. Music so good, it must be shared.
This week: “Stuck Between Stations” — The Hold Steady, off its 2006 album, “Boys and Girls in America.”
There’s been a lot of cool stuff coming out of Minnesota in the last week. This piece by Vikings punter/raging wordsmith Chris Kluwe. This rare interview with Al Franken. (The funniest member of the Senate is so invisible these days… I forgot he was in the Senate for like 18 months.) And then there’s Craig Finn, front man for the Hold Steady, Twins fan at heart. Game, Blouses.
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