Curse you, the Wild Flags! Of course you will live in the shadow of Sleater-Kinney for your entire existence. Fans have all accepted that and sort of understand that the band has come to terms with it too, but what positively irks me is that Wild Flag released a damned...
Sex. As W.C. Fields once said, “Some things are better than sex and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.” It's true – sex has tremendous power; after that fateful first time, the perpetual desire common to every person on Earth...
Ever heard a song and known on the first play that it was going to mean something, be important and/or be the one that people point to and talk about years later? Records like that do exist and, at least occasionally, it is possible to know them when they arrive...
Domino is excited to announce Dirty Projectors highly anticipated sixth album, Swing Lo Magellan on July 10th (North America) / July 9th (rest of the world). With Swing Lo Magellan, David Longstreth shows he really doesn't know how to do the...
Awright, here's one for alla da punks,Well, not jus' da punks junky – don' worry, I ain't gonna spike my hair on ya or nuttin' – but dis week's SWAG Report owes a lot ta dat sound an' spiky personality, dat's fer shoor. Right...
As tends to be the case around every big holiday, the countdown to Record Store Day 2012 has officially begun. Since its foundation in 2007 (and maybe longer), the third Saturday of April has been marked by the music fans of all stripes but especially those who...
Can you listen to a familiar artist without evoking their previous work in your mind? Even if it is an artist you have not listened to in quite a while? Or maybe especially if it is an artist you have not heard in a while? These two recent releases forced me to...
I have often professed my love of cover songs. There are various reasons for this. One is what they reveal about an artist’s influences and tastes but another, more important reason may seem like a contradiction: I love cover songs because I love originality....
As Hunter Thompson once said, at a certain point in one's career, it's imperative to have fun with what you're doing and occasionally shake things up if you want to keep doing it. As one listens to Scrappy Happiness, it would be easy to assume that Joel...
Everyone has an opinion of anger. Mahatma Gandhi called anger “the enemy of understanding” while Albert Einstein opined that “anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.” Go back a little further in time, and Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato...