Monday, February 21, 2011

Who Are...Fergus & Geronimo

Feature
eMusic
January 2011
Link


Who Are...Fergus & Geronimo












File under: '60s garage-pop laced with slacker irony
For fans of: The Fresh & Onlysthe BeetsHarlemBox EldersStrange BoysEat Skullthe Dead Milkmenthe Troggs
Personae: Jason Kelly and Andrew Savage (vocals, guitars, bass, drums, organ), with guests Elyse Schrock (vocal), Casey Carpenter (flute), Monet Robbins (saxophone)
From: Denton, Texas; now living in Brooklyn

"The rock 'n' roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse," Frank Zappa once told a bemused interviewer. Fergus & Geronimo started with the premise of "Motown by way of Mothers of Invention," and the Texas-bred, Brooklyn-based duo clearly shares Zappa's mischievously sardonic outlook. Unlearn, the band's full-length debut for the Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art, is at once more musically polished and more lyrically caustic than the group's promising run of singles on well-regarded indies Woodsist, Transparent and Tic Tac Totally!. Right before Kelly and Savage left their apartment to pick up a new four-track machine Savage had just bought off Craigslist, they spoke with eMusic's Marc Hogan about Top 40 production values, a Super Bowl bet gone wrong and why networking is really, really important.


Fergus & Geronimo - Unlearn

Album Review
eMusic
January 2011
Link

Unlearn











Legend has it quintessential punk-rock prototypes the Troggs took their name from an unkempt tribe of British kids who stripped off their clothes and lived in caves. That idea would probably suit Fergus & Geronimo just fine. The Brooklyn-via-Texas duo's debut is a painstakingly sloppy, hilariously deadpan exercise in juvenile regression from wiseacres who love their Motown as much as their Mothers of Invention.

Unlearn's schizophrenic adventures in doo-wop, jangly British Invasion pop and '90s-style indie rock cohere thanks to an overall ramshackle looseness. But don't mistake this record for lo-fi: Significantly polished from the band's early singles, the songs here never muffle their attacks on phonies of all stripes. Successfully skewered targets include loveless yuppies, sanctimonious oldsters and, yes, trend-spotting music journalists.

The Shangri-Las-inspired title track best sums up this group's m.o.: "You can unlearn what you know/ You can escape all the lies." And recurring, cinematic sing-song fragment "Could You Deliver" bears bad news for Mom and Dad: "Tell them I ran away to join some damn punk rock band." But it's on "Powerful Lovin'," a soulful breakup belter recalling Captain Beefheart circa Safe as Milk, where Fergus & Geronimo really get back to where the wild things are.

Fergus & Geronimo Unlearn review, courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc., © 2011 eMusic.com

Nasdaq Hack a Warning Signal for Boards

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February 14, 2011
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ISS Urges Apple to Disclose Succession Plan

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February 14, 2011
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Yuck - Yuck

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 15, 2011
Link
8.1


Yuck











A revival of the 1990s, a decade unusually obsessed with postmodern revivals in fashion and culture, was always inevitable. But it isn't exactly overdue. In fact, over the past few years, the return of bands and styles from the Clinton administration has almost become cliché. Pavement, Dinosaur Jr., the Dismemberment Plan, Jawbox, and even Blink-182 have reunited. Guided By Voices reassembled their "classic lineup." And Weezer recently reprised their beloved mid-90s albums in their entirety at live shows. Among younger artists, the college-rock subculture of the 80s and 90s has been resurgent for some time, whether in the Slumberland-streaked indie pop of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart or Best Coast, the artful squall of No Age, the achingly nostalgic paeans of Deerhunter, the ambling guitar epics of Real Estate, or the slacker punk-pop of Wavves.

There's no escaping it: If you've heard anything about Yuck, it's that this London four-piece loves the 90s. The band's members are very clearly products of the web rather than any particular geography; their self-titled debut evinces tastes that run toward fuzzy indie bands from both sides of the pond. Yes, there's a bit of the wah-pedal guitar violence of Dinosaur Jr., and a little of the lackadaisical detachment of Pavement, but there's also the rich tunefulness of Teenage Fanclub and Velocity Girl, and at times the unadorned resignation of Red House Painters or Elliott Smith. However, like so many artists saddled (fairly or not) with the "revival" tag, from post-punk and garage-rock to nu-disco or neo-soul, Yuck are worth hearing not so much because of who they sound like, but what they've done with those sounds: in this case, make a deeply melodic, casually thrilling coming-of-age album for a generation that never saw Nirvana on "120 Minutes".

As with their best peers in the Fat Possum stable, Yuck distinguish themselves by knowing their way around around a catchy, emotionally evocative song. Sometimes these can be bright and optimistic, almost twee, as in the peppy boy-girl endearments of "Georgia", or the midtempo acoustic yearning of "Shook Down". Elsewhere, they can be gritty and urgent: Screeches of feedback occasionally drown out drowsy vocals on "Holing Out", nicely suiting lyrics about communication problems; likewise, the distortion-blistered repetitions of "The Wall" suggest the Sisyphean efforts they describe. Then there are the heartfelt mopers: the stripped-down comfort offer "Suicide Policeman", the Galaxie 500-meets-"Nightswimming" "Stutter", or the lonely post-breakup jangler "Sunday". Seven-minute closer "Rubber" is the type of gorgeously incantatory slow burner veterans like Yo La Tengo still make (see "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven", from 2009's underrated Popular Songs)-- not to mention Mogwai, who've remixed it-- but too few bands successfully emulate. Add up these different types of tracks, and you have an unusually coherent album-length experience.

If you've heard anything else about Yuck, it might be that two of the band members, singer/guitarist Daniel Blumberg and guitarist Max Bloom, used to play in Cajun Dance Party: ambitious and typically spazzy post-Arctic Monkeys NME faves who issued a Bernard Butler-produced debut album, The Colourful Life, in 2008 on XL. As with that former band, Yuck are occasionally guilty of some awkward lyrics-- the seemingly gratuitous "crucifixion"/"benediction"/"addiction" rhymes on note-bending love ballad "Suck" come to mind-- and it's hard to guess how long they can keep this particular sound going (a Yu[c]k side project offers intriguing hints). But together Blumberg, Bloom, drummer Jonny Rogoff, and bass player Mariko Doi, joined on certain tracks by part-time backing singer Ilana Blumberg, have taken a giant step forward. As Daniel Blumberg sang with his old band, the one he started as a 15-year-old, "This is now and that was then." Or as he sings now, on instantly searing album opener "Get Away": "I can't get this feeling off my mind." Whether they remember the 90s or not, more than a few people could end up saying something similar about Yuck.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Jonathan Richman - O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth

Album Review
Pitchfork
February 14, 2011
Link
7.8


O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth











Jonathan Richman's big affectation, if that's even the right word, is the idea that we can escape our affectations. And not just the ones we use to fit in. The things we affect to stand out, too. So as frontman for legendary proto-punks the Modern Lovers, sure, Richman took the nihilistic clang of the Velvet Underground. But he applied it to songs about sobriety ("I'm Straight"), hometown Americana ("Roadrunner"), and old-fashioned courtship ("Girl Friend"). As a cult-beloved solo artist, he has praised his heroes for the same simple reasons a child-- or a wise old man-- might: a crazy sound ("Velvet Underground"), all those pretty colors ("Vincent Van Gogh"), nice dreams ("Salvador Dali"). His live performances, at once puritanically austere and shamelessly entertaining, suggest an especially gifted street musician.

Released last November without much fanfare, the 59-year-old New England native's latest extends an increasingly remarkable series of low-key, mostly acoustic albums for Neil Young's Vapor imprint over the decade-plus since Richman's closest brush with fame (as the twee singer guy in 1998 Farrelly Brothers slapstick There's Something About Mary). This fruitful phase has brought a mature gravity that translates, improbably, as lightness-- Richman takes his fun pretty seriously. On 2004's Not So Much to Be Loved as to Love, a late-career highlight, he reminded us not to spoil the good things in life by talking them to death. On 2008's sporadically sublime Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild, he showed how to experience the bad things in life to their fullest, too. Though a little less thematically unified, O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth continues Richman's doomed but noble attempt to dig beneath the surfaces of modern existence, flaunting its relatively few imperfections-- mic sounds, a rushed phrase or two-- as signs of life.

Like its recent predecessors, Richman's new album is a pretty faithful representation of his live show. With little distracting studio gloss, it captures Richman's warbling, Boston-accented croon; his nylon-string, flamenco-tinged acoustic guitar; and longtime drummer Tommy Larkins' stripped-down kit, which he plays with jazzy panache. There are backing vocals from a handful of guests, including wife Nicole Montalbano and singer/songwriter Ólöf Arnalds (of Icelandic band Múm), but these all blend comfortably enough to add to the album's feeling of shared intimacy, rather than subtract from it. Foreign-language lyrics, a staple of Richman's Vapor records, crop up now and then, but the songs are evocative enough to work as interludes if, say, your knowledge of French is limited to "Lady Marmalade"-- and anyway on the reprise of "Sa Voix M'Atisse" JoJo helps you with the words. There's even one of those half-spoken Massachusetts geography songs Richman does from time to time, "Winter Afternoon by B.U. in Boston", though this one's percussive repetitions pale beside the wonderfully vivid "Twilight in Boston", from 1992's essential I, Jonathan.

Billed as a "wee small hours" record, O Moon isn't so much melancholy as it is soaked in a sort of implacable longing. There's the quasi-title track's plaintive appeal against light pollution. Or the two takes of "The Sea Was Calling Me Home", a mournful song that sees in the human fear of conformity little more than our standard fear of death. These songs aren't sad, exactly; they're ambivalent, as any honest look at the world probably ought to be. Even the love songs give both sides of the coin: "I Was the One She Came For" is so sweet and pure that you may find yourself wanting to believe the title isn't meant as a pun (in which case it's hilarious); "It Was Time for Me to Be With Her" depicts an otherworldly encounter, like the Modern Lovers' "Astral Plane" with another three or four decades' worth of perspective.

There are breezy moments, too: "These Bodies That Came to Cavort", an uptempo comment on the absurdity of making our bodies sit down all day, or ignoring them when they tell us to drink less wine; "If You Want to Leave Our Party Just Go", a simple rock'n'roll clap-along that promises, "There's no need to be polite and just stay just for appearances"; and most of all "My Affected Accent", a self-effacing romp that isn't far removed from 2008 non-album single "You Can Have a Cell Phone That's OK But Not Me" and contains an immortal lyric, "I should have been bullied more than I was." In apologizing for his 40-years-ago affectations, Richman raises the question whether he-- or any of us-- can truly avoid other affectations, other things "just for appearances," now or ever. We probably can't; as the philosophers say, it's turtles all the way down. Then again, Richman's career is a testament to the beauty of a lost but noble cause. In one of O Moon's last lines, he asks, "What's life without the search for the darkened, the shadowed, the obscure?" If anyone can find it, it's this guy. It's still a thrill listening to him look.

GOP Seeks to ‘Remedy’ Any Dodd-Frank Flaws

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February 7, 2011
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Costco Investors Reject Managers' Pay Vote Frequency

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February 7, 2011
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Apple Board Handling Jobs Illness Correctly: Ex-SEC Chair

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February 7, 2011
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Corporate Tax Code Poses Strange Paradox

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February 7, 2011
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Enron Whistle-Blower Doubts SEC Effectiveness

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February 7, 2011
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CFA Institute Releases CD&A Template

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February 7, 2011
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Monday, February 7, 2011

Live Transmission

Feature
Pitchfork
February 7, 2011
Link



Live Transmission












"But the people as a whole retain their interest in free speech by radio ... It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount."

--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, in 1969, writing for the majority in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission

"Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not."
--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in 1945, writing for the majority in Associated Press v. United States

On October 5, 1998, dozens of unlicensed radio broadcasters marched on Washington, D.C. Their target: the Federal Communications Commission headquarters. But these protesters didn't just carry signs. They hauled puppets. Leading the way was a huge Pinocchio marionette, "Kennardio," named after then-FCC chairman Bill Kennard. And pulling his strings? A TV-headed monster-- the National Association of Broadcasters. "I just chuckled about that, because if anything, I was the NAB's nemesis," says Kennard, now the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, speaking on the phone from Brussels. "I was creating a new radio service that was seen as a threat to the commercial broadcast industry." That radio service was low-power FM, or LPFM, and it's been a long time coming.

In early January, President Barack Obama signed the 
Local Community Radio Act of 2010, which is expected to create hundreds, possibly thousands, of noncommercial FM stations. The new law brings into effect much of what Kennard's FCC set in motion more than a decade ago. Like the roughly 800 LPFM stations already in existence, these new entries on the dial will be run by nonprofits: churches, schools, unions, local governments, emergency responders, and other community groups. Their signals must be no stronger than 100 watts, the same as an incandescent light bulb, so a typical broadcast range is only about seven miles in diameter. Unlike all but one current LPFM station, the newcomers will be able to apply for licenses in the top 50 U.S. radio markets-- home to 160 million potential listeners. A dollar may not get you very far in New York City or Los Angeles, but even a weak radio signal carries.

Many questions about how the law actually works will not be answered until the FCC issues final rules, expected later this year. And some of the details can get rather technical: For example, the "
contour method," which is a way of measuring potential signal interference. Still, at its most basic, what the Local Community Radio Act does is remove restrictions on LPFM stations that have been in place since the turn of the millennium. And it frees the FCC's hand to issue more licenses for LPFM stations in places where it couldn't before. For some lucky communities-- and the increasingly interconnected independent music world is only one-- the Local Community Radio Act could quietly change the way we think about radio: as an art form, as a medium, and as a public forum.

A Floating NAV May Increase Risk It Purports to Solve: Paper

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Ignites
February 1, 2011
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Apple, Google Test ‘Genius’ Theory of Leadership

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January 31, 2011
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Say on Pay: From Obscurity to Law

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January 31, 2011
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Monsanto Shareholders Back Annual Say on Pay

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January 31, 2011
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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Pazz & Jop Voter Comments: From Kanye West to The Suburbs

Feature
Village Voice
Pazz and Jop
January 19, 2011
Link


When Arcade Fire take aim at the shopping malls (“Sprawl II [Mountains Beyond Mountains]”) while simultaneously mocking bohemian cool-hunting (“Rococo”), they’re engaging in a painfully trite contradiction: After all, what bohemian thinker in the past half-century has celebrated shopping malls? (Warhol, maybe?) And what has the bohemian’s instinctive distrust of commercialism done to commercialism except entrench it? (How many products have to be sold to us as embodying rebellion or nonconformity before we realize that our urge to rebel and not conform is how products are sold?) It’s no big revelation to note that today’s mainstream is yesterday’s cutting edge—it doesn’t matter whether we buy Converse or Nike or Vans or some currently small-time shoemaker with a Big Cartel website. Nirvana or Pavement, chillwave or slutwave—sooner or later everyone else catches up, or else it probably wasn’t worth catching up to in the first place.

Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx - We're New Here

Album Review
SPIN
March 2011
Link 
7/10



Cover Art: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx, 'We're New Here'








Slick sonic upstart meets rawboned proto-rap sage

Hip-hop godfather Gil Scott-Heron was 2010's comeback kid, but his I'm New Here was remarkable for the former Rikers inmate's grizzled reflections more than its eclectically rootsy sonics. London up-and-comers the xx won 2010's Mercury Prize, but their debut seduced primarily through Jamie Smith's skeletal, intimate electronics. So strength meets strength on this unusual album-length remix, as Smith's skittering beats and ghostly soul divas put Scott-Heron right where he belongs: in the future. See especially "My Cloud," a former bonus track turned powerful electro-R&B lullaby.

Shareholder Activism Critiques Have ‘Merit,’ New Database Implies

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January 24, 2011
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Firm Sells Cisco Holdings, Citing Human Rights

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January 24, 2011
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Fraud Risk Changes in Slow Economy, Former IRS Agent Warns

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January 24, 2011
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Delaware Court to Rule on Poison Pill

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January 24, 2011
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Wachtell Lipton Suggests Evaluating Director Pay Hikes

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January 24, 2011
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SEC Adopts Eight New Audit Risk Standards

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January 24, 2011
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