Editorās Note:Ā Please welcome new Knox Road contributor, Art Tavana. Art is based in L.A. and will be writing long-form, short-form and everything in between. Enjoy his first piece about our favorite kind of people. [Image via Lovato Design, photo by Joslyn Baker.]
Music snobbery is rooted in the blind pursuit of a transient experience; a temporary fix predicated on unearthing new music during the incubation phase of an artist’s career. But unless you’re Lester Bangs discovering Astral Weeks for the first time, it usually amounts to wasted hours on SoundCloud listening to bands that sound like shit Robin Pecknold wrote during a moonshine-induced bath in the backwoods of some mountainous terrain in the Pacific Northwest. While the archeologist (i.e. Indiana Jones) is rewarded with recognition in ’80s adventure movies and gooey diary entries from starry-eyed college girls who have a thing for bull-whips — the music snob is fulfilled with the momentary experience of listening to a band with 12 ‘Likes’ on Facebook that some tattooed baristas might find ‘interesting.’ It’s the experience of downloading a mixtape by a rapper named Jonwayne, who takes you back to a Brian Eno record during a daytime nap, followed by wondering why you’re listening to Beethoven’s Ninth, drunk, and writing about a band that sounds like the Savages, but looks like the Bangles. Coffee with condensed milk and a side of KCRW’s Morning Become Eclectic is routine. The need to break through the doors of perception and find something different becomes habitual.
Continue reading Podcast Painkillers →
DĆ©jĆ vu! We’ve partneredĀ for a second time with our good friends over at exfm, as well as dreambearĀ (the music/video production company I recently discussed), to present a fantastic night of music at Pianos, April 17Ā in New York City. Featuring the likes of Black Light Dinner Party, New Myths, Cultfever, and AM to AM, […]
Well, I held back on this for a bit so there wouldn’t be much bias in posting, but now it’s time for show and tell. Consider it a special Sunday night post. Black Light Dinner Party, whom I’ve previously written aboutĀ in a mysterious way, recently released their new song “We Are Golden.” And […]
As has become tradition, we asked Knox Road writers to provide their Top Albums of 2012 and we got a potpourri of responses. Have a happy holiday season, and thanks for sticking with us for another year.
Continue reading Knox Road’s Top Albums of 2012 →
[Read Part 1 | Illustration by Jen May]
5. Cher Lloyd – āWant U Backā
Are people stupid? Are people getting stupider? Is that a real thing thatās happening? Is the Internet ruining our brains? Do babies have iPhones? What is the world like? Is Cher Lloyd because of climate change?
Cher Lloyd is very thin and very young. She was born when I was eight. Whenever I hear of a celebrity being born in the early nineties I imagine my child self cradling said celebrity as a newborn baby in my child arms, and then I resent them for making more money than I do.
“Want U Back” is upsetting. It begins with Cher expelling a guttural monkey sound: sheās MAD. Oh my god sheās so mad. She wants him back so bad!!!!! But then she giggles moments later. Sheās confused. She doesnāt know how she feels! The narrative begins with Cher breaking up with a dude because he didnāt āhave much game,ā but then he starts dating another girl, she sees them āwalking all over town,ā eating at ārestaurants,ā and now sheās jealous- she wants him back. Sheās irrationally convincing herself that his relationship with the other girl is all a ploy to get her attention, but I donāt really think thatās true about him. Cher is crazy; sheās vindictive. Sheās saying that the new girl wears ugly jeans. Now a rapper named Astro who appears to be eight years old is backing up her stupid point in a rap. Both Astro and Cher Lloyd, Iāve learned, were contestants on the TV show The X Factor. The song ends with Cher making a bzzzzzz noise with her lips and breaking the fourth wall, asking her audience, āDo I sound like a helicopter?ā
Bzzzzzzzzz. Do we live in a Dystopia?
Continue reading The Ten Most Beloved Songs I Hate [Part 2] →
[Read Part 2 | Illustration by Jen May]
As far as my ears are concerned, itās 1967. I very rarely listen to music made after 1970, and I almost never listen to music made after 1982 (the year Combat Rock by the Clash was released). I have only the vaguest understanding of what contemporary popular music sounds like; as Iāve always seen it, whatās the point of going out of my way to listen to music I donāt like when I can listen to music I love whenever I want?
Because, I guess, Iām curious. I donāt expect myself to like the music Iām about to be exposed to, but Iām a big believer in not knocking things ātil Iāve tried them. If youāre going to knock something, youāve got to knock it with authority.
On the evening of Monday, July 30th, 2012, I cold-listened to the Top Ten most downloaded songs on American iTunes and wrote down how they made me feel. As follows are my findings.
Continue reading The Ten Most Beloved Songs I Hate [Part 1] →
Editorās Note: We are honored to feature a guest post from the one-and-only Laura Jane Faulds of the fantastically fun-filled new music blog, Strawberry Fields Whatever. I assume you just want to jump in after reading the title of this post, and jump you should, but I need to thank my pal Sarahspy for demanding I follow Faulds on Twitter. Because the rest, my friends, was history. [Illustration by Jen May.]
My Take on Kitty Pryde is that I Love Kitty Pryde
by Laura Jane Faulds
This one goes out to all the teenage girls.
There are millions of them, everywhere: locked up in their bedrooms, listening to Lil B, drinking pop rock-flavored vodka, trying to figure out what blow jobs are. Staying up all night talking to their best friends in hushed voices on the rhinestone-studded Hello Kitty iPhones they didnāt work to buy, trash-talking their math teacherās mom-jeans and saying cunt because they can. Their lives are so endearingly pointless, endearingly because they canāt see it- itās all life and death, and yes: they will marry him. Theyāll take everything they can from anyone who has it, offering nothing in return but empty Frappuccino cups and the cloying scent of vanilla.
I would like every teenage girl in the world to assemble in a wide open space- ideally, a field- and I would like Kitty Pryde to stand before them, on a podium, on a stage. I would like her to speak into several microphones, like Geri Halliwell in the video for “Spice Up Your Life.”
She is drinking a Big Gulp, and speaks exclusively in Emojis; somehow, she has made it possible for that to happen. When she opens her mouth, the Emojis fly out: the happy face whose mouth is a heart, blowing a kiss. The Bento box, the dolphin, the koala face. The eggplant, the princess, the ATM machine. Everyone knows exactly what she means. If she must make a sound, itās her eeeee from Orionās Belt, heard first at 1:12 seconds in: a noise simultaneously unbearable and adorable, a noise impossible for any human being over the age of twenty to make.
When she eeeees, the assemblage of teenage girls eeeee back. Itās their emblem, their anthem. They are a cult, and she is their leader. They are a country, a culture, a population, and I am anointing her their king.
Continue reading My Take on Kitty Pryde is that I Love Kitty Pryde →
The rumors are true! Even if you haven’t heard them! On May 11, we are teaming up with exfm for a night of vivid sounds and fierce emotion, all going down at Pianos in good ol’ NYC. This is Knox Road’s first-ever show, so I don’t think I need to say how excited […]
This is not a standard “year-end list,” nor is it a standard “Knox Road year-end list.” See, we decided to do something different this year. I should note that, most importantly, Jamie and I just didn’t have the time to make a post like we’ve done the past couple years (see here and here), and we also didn’t have the time to listen to so many of the great albums out this year. So, we asked our talented writing team to contribute not only with their picks, but with some of their words as well. Thus, this post may seem a bit disorganized, but the content should hold you over. Also, note that Bari’s picks are not, in fact, all albums from 2011; they are the albums she listened to (and connected with) most in 2011.
Oh, and of course I asked the team to pick their ten favorites, but knowing our writers, they did whatever the hell they wanted. And you know what? That’s why we love them.
Continue reading Knox Road’s Top Albums of 2011. With a twist. →
I’ve been hinting at some KR news these past few weeks, and now it’s coming to you live. We at Knox Road have teamed up with a new label, Walk-In Records, and we couldn’t be more excited.
What does this “partnership” mean, exactly? Well, Jamie and I can sit on our laurels and […]
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