I listened to Heems/Himanshu Suri's new album, Eat Pray Thug, via streaming this week. I had previously heard things off of his mix tapes and thought they were very good. I actually couldn't tell why Heems hadn't been on El-P's last solo record for a verse - it seemed like they were headed in that direction? Now more than ever I'm questioning where that assertion came from.

I want to put it first and foremost that Heems has things to say that are worth hearing. Everyone should listen to Flag Shopping for his (as Anthony Fantano has said)…

Arguably Smashing Pumpkins should have quit the first time Jimmy left. Historically someone with his abilities and his problems leaving has ended bigger bands. But, as Billy reminded us, Smashing Pumpkins started out as being himself, D'Arcy and a drum machine. Thus, Adore.

Adore was a few steps backwards in terms of the shape of SP's sound, but it worked. All of those 80s synth groups that they covered in the Aeroplane era were strongly represented. It was as if their Lost Highway chestnut Eye were the blueprint. The gothier images had always been a part of SP's work,…

Things Autolux is not doing; a poem

by me

Autolux is not making a Harlem Shake video.
Autolux is not live tweeting the playoffs.
Autolux is not in a Silverlake record store at 3AM arguing with the hipster behind the counter about what parts of the Stones Throw Records catalog are the least essential.
Autolux is not taking selfies with MC Ride, shirtless and screw-facing for the camera.

Autolux is not bitching about how rude the staff was at In-n-Out Burger and calling for a boycott.
Autolux is not writing a song for the World Cup.
Autolux is not leaving…

Remember Purple Pills, aka Purple Hills? If not that's fine, all you need to know is that the original song was full of drug references, and for the radio edits they changed them all to sex references. In my opinion, the edit was dirtier than the original. I remember hearing it on the radio and wondering if the so-called censors considered this. There are all manner of weird double standards about what is acceptable in media like this.

It happened a few weeks ago now, but I finally saw my first hip hop show, where it shall be defined as a show where predominantly hip hop is performed/played and/or the headliner is a hip hop act.

I found it shockingly disappointing. There were no less than three opening acts, and by the time the headliner came out, he proceeded to do his entire album… in its original order. I couldn't believe it. If that's all the show is going to be, why bother with touring? He had a live-ish band, and they did some embellishment, but

The first…

1. How did you get into 31?

A boy recommended it to me. We were bored and in need of entertainment. It fit that bill.
The other 31 is tied into the same boy, but I was the one who turned him onto it.
I think I heard one of their songs as part of the Current Song of the Day and instantly fell in love.

2. What was the first song you ever heard by 22?

As it is a podcast, this is not really applicable.

3. What’s your favourite lyric by 41?

I have no 41s and a…

1.
If Lana Del Rey has committed a sin, reinventing herself was not it. Artists and bands create personae, appear and perform en masque and release material under different names all of the time. Lots of acts have started out with one kind of image only to go back, retool that image, and then return successful. Garth Brooks got an emo hair cut and sang pop, RZA was originally a ladies' man rapper, and Madonna has been at least three or four different people in her career. It is as if we choose not to remember these things, and focus…

This is a response to this interview, in which Jimmy Urine confirms that the rest of the world/the music industry has indeed caught up with MSI. Either that, I think to myself, or MSI slowed down and let the rest of the world/music industry catch up with it. I don't think that they are nearly as relentless and difficult as in the Tight and Frankenstein Girls days, but I think that they would disagree with me and my connecting their precipitous lack of innovation with their slightly-larger-label debut (Metropolis Records is big…. in an offhand manner of speaking). I liked…

When it comes to music criticism, there's a lot to argue or quibble about, and a lot of it doesn't matter. Inspired by the Slate Culture Podcast, I would like to discuss the continued non-acceptance of hip hop in the cultural commons. It would seem that for the past three decades people have been treating hip hop and rap as a fad, people have been decrying its worst elements for at least as long as it has existed in the mainstream, and hip hop has been declared "dead" by various people for at least a decade. The situation exceeds ridiculousness…

It's been a week, but I still haven't gotten satisfaction on this point, and so I'm going to write this journal entry.

I was at a Wye Oak/Explosions in the Sky last week and there were a couple of men standing behind me at the sold-out show having a discussion about Soul Coughing. I am a big fan of Soul Coughing from my latter high school days, and the place was packed, so it was hard not to listen in. The person doing most of the talking was commenting on an ad for Mike Doughty's next…