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| Slanted and enchanted. |
It's been an eventful several weeks, not that you'd know it by my recent posting around here. Since Des Moines' own
80/35 Music Festival on July 4 weekend, I've been to Chicago twice, first for the Pitchfork Music Festival and then this past weekend for Lollapalooza (which I'd actually never been to before).
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| What direction should we choose? |
At Pitchfork, I wrote a quick little thing about
tUnE-YarDs, but the real highlight for me was Deerhunter, who, OK, I'm definitely a huge
fanboy for, but the way they'd just string maybe three of their songs together and then stretch them out into space-rock jams, confident the crowd would go along with them but not totally oblivious to audience reaction like the ultra-boring Animal Collective a night earlier, well, it was just fantastic, and singer/guitarist Bradford Cox didn't really say much, but at one point I remember him complaining about those "fucking crypto-fascists," which was already hilarious and the kind of thing you want your noise-rock icons to say, but then he followed it by adding, "I don't know what that means; I was just trying to sound smart." Fleet Foxes, who headlined the second night, were also awesome, every bit as amazing as on record-- such gorgeous harmonies, and it felt like every song they picked was one I liked more than the last. "Oh, man, I don't think it's going to get better than that. Oh, wait, THIS song? I love this song!"
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| La cocaina no es buena para su salud. |
At Lollapalooza, I was there as a member of the press, covering the event with the hard-working, very cool team from
SPIN magazine. They'd all done this together before at Bonnaroo, but were kind enough to welcome me into the fold. Skin-reddening sun, wallet-destroying rain, Pete Wentz: I saw it all. For SPIN.com, I wrote about
Kid Cudi,
Arctic Monkeys,
the Cars,
Lia Ices,
Titus Andronicus,
Lykke Li,
Beirut,
Local Natives,
Mayer Hawthorne,
Friendly Fires,
Disappears,
Ratatat,
A Perfect Circle,
White Lies,
Foster the People,
Naked and Famous,
Ryan Leslie, and
Crystal Castles. (I guess I'd especially recommend the posts on
Beirut,
Local Natives,
Crystal Castles,
Titus Andronicus,
Foster the People, and
Lykke Li, in that order.)
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| Sweat drips from your pores like the falls of Niagara. |
As of today, I can also share an
online radio station that eMusic has allowed me to put together. The genre is nominally "indie rock," but they've kindly let me take a pretty expansive view of that genre, encompassing electronic music, hip-hop, and some local favorites along with archetypal indie bands. There was other stuff I might've included, because not every label is in eMusic's catalogue these days, but I think there's still a lot here to enjoy. The songs are on shuffle, but you can see the full selection after the jump:
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