Besides doing away with hooks that skewed frat-boy (“So Chill”), what were spitfire thoughtful lines on Sender have become genuinely compelling storytelling. “Lately wanna rage on the daily / Mainly ’cause the pain go away” is the most easily repeatable lyric on “Like Girl, Like Guy,” but it’s far from the most intriguing. The guy’s […]
Matt Carney
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Just Joshin’
Like millions of young suburban teens at the turn of the millennium, Josh Sallee watched rapt as a man in his late 20s with dyed-blond hair, a baggy white T-shirt and a dour expression rapped about his severe emotional confusion on MTV’s Total Request Live. The guy was Eminem, and the album he was promoting, […]
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Charity vehicle
“What’d you pick out there, Curious George?” asked assistant teacher Eli Argot. Benjamin nodded in the affirmative, presenting his very own copy of an installment in the popular children’s series, Curious George Visits the Zoo. The spacious gym echoed the delight of Benjamin and 74 other lucky students who were able to pick out a book and […]
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Hare hear
The 18-year-old from Oklahoma City recently released a full-length debut album through the online music service Soundcloud. Under the name Hare Tracks, Kennedy — now a freshman at the University of California at Santa Barbara — recorded and produced it almost completely by himself, while a student at Heritage Hall. “I tried taking guitar lessons […]
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My name is ____
Magnificent Bird“A few years back, a former bandmate and I were exchanging mix CDs of some of the stranger music we were into, and we were giving the CDs these long, ornate titles, mostly to make each other laugh. I believe I titled one Magnificent Bird: Or How to Fall All the Way Down and […]
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Music Made Me: Cameron Neal
Neil Young, Harvest (1972) Choosing this album was harder than I thought it’d be, since I’m truly in love with almost everything Neil’s put out. Even to this day, he’s able to experiment with his style. This album needs to be regularly spinning for any songwriter — the lyrics are heavy and inspirational. The Beach […]
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Union labors
You’re already familiar with Dan Tyminski whether you realize it or not. Currently Alison Krauss and Union Station’s resident guitar and mandolin picker, Tyminski lent his stark bluegrass tenor to the singing voice of George Clooney’s character in the Coen brothers’ 2000 film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? His performance of “Man of Constant Sorrow” […]
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The Typist — Midwestern High Life
It gets sprayed all over the place, in fact. Matt Moran’s desperate punk hollers; his messy, confessional-to-the-occasional-point-of-embarrassing lyrics; his band’s well-coordinated, super-loud melodic rock arrangements all sound so much like a release, at times vindicating, at others reaching for (and grasping) the anthemic. Every song on the sardonically titled Midwestern High Life, is a rock […]
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Remembering Davy
There was the time they tipped a golf cart at Joe DiMaggio’s charity tournament. There were the times they hung out with fellow Monkee Micky Dolenz, Harry Nilsson and Alice Cooper in Los Angeles. There was the time White’s 1971 Chevy Malibu SS ran out of gas by the San Francisco International Airport, so Jones […]
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Grand Ambassadors
<span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:” times=”” new=”” roman”;color:#222222″=””>Violin sighs give way to a harmonious chorus on “(O Death),” the funniest, shortest song on Ambassadors’ debut album, Litost. The ironically titled tune is so purposely not serious as to toss a lyrical red herring into the middle of a meditation on the afterlife: “O death, show me your teeth / For I’m trained in the art of dentistry!” […]