Straight up: Life is pretty fabs for the download-positive Sao Paulo dance-punk sextet Cansei de Ser Sexy. By now, the story of CSS’ creation—something to do with six informally trained “musicians” meeting via the Brazilian MySpace and promptly setting about skewering American pop culture—has become the stuff of blogosphere legend. Initially signed to their country’s […]
Tristan Staddon
Posted inMusic
Let’s Rave On
Off the Radar, Danish Duo Rocks On
After kick-starting their career with two star-making albums, the Raveonettes slipped off most tastemakers’ radars after issuing 2005’s largely unheralded, and altogether underrated, Pretty in Black. Easily their most accessible album, it, like those before it, never crossed over, and most people haven’t heard from the band since. But the retro-fixated romantics haven’t exactly been […]
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Here Today, Huge Tomorrow
PB&J: Bells, Whistles, and Bongos
It’s not true that all a Swedish musician needs to win over America is a fun name and a funny accent. Sure, ABBA and Yngwie Malmsteen had both bases covered but, musically, Swedish upstarts Peter Bjorn and John have as much in common with those acts as they do with Borat. And having received approval […]
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Here Comes My Baby
BRMC Births a Brawler
After dallying in left coast Americana and delicate Allen Ginsberg references for the last two years, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club we know best—the faux-British, sunglasses-at-night version that delivered two albums of angsty Anglo-rock—has resurfaced at last. And according to the hyperbolic British press, the fellas were mighty during their spring tour, delivering five or […]
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We’re Not in Omaha Anymore
Cursive Kingpin Crosses Over
It’s no stretch to say that a flair for the dramatic has followed, and often fuelled, the significant events—musical and otherwise—in Tim Kasher’s life. Whether translating painful personal experience into song, breaking Cursive up, only to reunite with its players months later, or imaging Dorothy Gale all grown up in Cursive’s latest yarn, Happy Hollow, […]