In a world of Auto-Tune and drum machines, where strobe lights are commonplace and smoke machines expected, artists who combine talent and theatrics at concerts are rare. A handful of artists, however, have transcended industrial inertia toward this mediocrity. Last Thursday night at Boston’s Bank of America Pavilion, Florence and the Machine proved themselves to […]
Read More →Justin Vernon has had a good couple of years. Three years ago, when he released For Emma, Forever Ago under the moniker Bon Iver, Vernon was viewed as a wounded soul, a man emerging from a year of solitude spent in the wilderness of Wisconsin. How things have changed. This week saw his second effort […]
Read More →Critics rarely have the opportunity to adorably synthesize their opinion of a film by merely citing the movie’s very title. Yet, The Art of Getting By is, irrefutably, a practice in the art of getting by. Starring Hollywood’s Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts as George and Sally, but also featuring dispassionate acting, stiff dialogue and […]
Read More →In 2008 Death Cab For Cutie released Narrow Stairs, and while it’s undeniably their darkest effort to date, it is also their strongest. Even deceptively jolly sounding songs such as the organ-heavy march “You Can Do Better Than Me” are overwhelmingly pessimistic, starting with the oh-so-cheerful lyrics, “I’m starting to feel, we stay together out […]
Read More →Boston University professor Mitchell Zuckoff will appear as a guest star on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart on Wednesday on Comedy Central to promote his new book. Zuckoff’s book, “Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II,” tells the story of three officers’ […]
Read More →The Wonder Years have followed up their sophomore album The Upsides with another batch of realist pop-punk stories in Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing. The June 14 release of Suburbia is replete with catchy lyrics from frontman Dan “Soupy” Campbell and the other five Philly guys, struggling with growing up and […]
Read More →Following a band closely is an endeavor that requires a type of dedication generally lost on me (this is not the only thing). Some bands make it easy. Tea Leaf Green has always been a band as much about the music as they are about the experience of it; they love to play, and they […]
Read More →When I last saw Portugal. The Man March 19, 2010 at the small Highline Ballroom in Manhattan, they had just released their fifth album, American Ghetto, – an album dripping with electronic-Indie-pop influence – on an independent label. Back then, lead singer John Gourley seemed to have a case of stage fright, wearing a hat […]
Read More →I can’t even remember where my last blog left off but wow, life in Sydney is certainly anything but dull. Last weekend, I decided to sign up for Surf Camp – a two-day surfing adventure at the Seven Mile Beach National Park. ‘Twas an adventure, to be sure. Being the often lazy person that I […]
Read More →Despite his unassuming stature and wispy white hair, Woody Allen is a risk taker. To begin his latest film with a metropolitan montage reminiscent of his renowned Manhattan, followed by quoting Hemingway’s legendary celebration of Paris as a “movable feast,” Allen invites cultured eyes to critique Midnight in Paris. Such a nostalgic wager proves shrewd, […]
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