February 2011
116 posts
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:.. Under The Radar ..:Yann Tiersen at the Luckman... →
Yann Tiersen at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex Photo Gallery
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:.. Pet Shop Boys | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Listening to any of the endless dance-floor-oriented hits from Pet Shop Boys in their 13-year-long career, you would think the duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have nothing but disco balls on their mind. But the two, who have just released their tenth studio album, Yes, have a lot more running through their brains. Starting their musical career in the mid-’80s, Pet Shop Boys have been...
January 2011
94 posts
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:.. Destroyer: Kaputt (Merge) | Under The Radar... →
Destroyer frontman Dan Bejar sings “I write poetry for myself” during Kaputt’s “Blue Eyes,” and it reads like a modus operandi for his adventurous will over the past decade.
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:.. Marion Cotillard | Under The Radar... →
Breathtaking is a word that usually is not used literally, but go to a screening of La Vie en Rose, writer-director Olivier Dahan’s chronicle of the life of French singer and icon Édith Piaf, and listen to the folks seated near you at the end of the film. You will hear sniffling and slow gasps as actress Marion Cotillard illuminates the film’s final frames. Cotillard’s portrayal—which encompasses...
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:.. Crispin Glover | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Crispin Hellion Glover is also known as George McFly, Willard, Andy Warhol, Cousin “I’m making my lunch!” Dell, Rubin, the guy who went crazy on Letterman, the Thin Man, and, imminently, Grendel. Crispin Glover has been the epitome of the cult actor since the mid-’80s, when his star-making turn as Marty McFly’s dad in Back to the Future charmed audiences and his portrayal of Layne in River’s...
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:.. John Waters | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
As a true legend of outsider films, it should surprise no one that director John Waters also has a taste for the obscure and eccentric in music. Following 2004’s compilation CD A John Waters Christmas, his second set is a celebration of Valentine’s Day entitled A Date with John Waters, with a similarly unconventional set of songs designed to seduce you into submission. “All of these songs, I...
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:.. Wasted on the Youth Guest Blog: Azure Ray’s... →
Ever since I can remember I have been an investigator. I always feel that people are “up to something” and can’t sleep at night until I get to the bottom of it. Sometimes I think it could be categorized as paranoia, but I like to attribute it to having good intuition and an understanding that all people are weird. Anyway, as a young girl my case studies were limited to mostly family; my parents to...
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:.. Emma Pollock on Tears For Fears' The Hurting ... →
When I was in my early teens, just starting high school, I was a huge fan of music, but listening mainly to chart music—Nik Kershaw, Duran Duran etc. I would sit religiously at the side of the radio every Sunday afternoon engrossed in the Top 40 chart rundown, singing along to the hits with the aid of inaccurate lyrics published by one of the popular teen magazines.
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:.. Marion Cotillard | Under The Radar... →
Breathtaking is a word that usually is not used literally, but go to a screening of La Vie en Rose, writer-director Olivier Dahan’s chronicle of the life of French singer and icon Édith Piaf, and listen to the folks seated near you at the end of the film. You will hear sniffling and slow gasps as actress Marion Cotillard illuminates the film’s final frames. Cotillard’s portrayal—which encompasses...
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:.. Top 50 TV Shows of 2010 | Under The Radar... →
Under the Radar’s Best of 2010 Issue, which is on stands now, features our picks for the Top 50 TV shows of 2010, meaning any show that broadcast new episodes sometime from January to December 2010. Here we present an expanded list, one that includes our thoughts on each of the shows in our Top 15.
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:.. Conor Oberst | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
“In the kind of world where everything is readily available to everyone, information-wise, I think there’s something nice about a little bit of mystery,” says Conor Oberst, describing the hype or lack thereof surrounding his new, eponymous solo album.
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:.. Working for a Nuclear Free City: Encouraging... →
While three-and-a-half years have passed since the Manchester band Working for a Nuclear Free City released their second album, 2007’sBusinessmen & Ghosts (which was really just an expanded version of their self-titled debut), theirs has hardly been a case of idle hands.
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:.. Michel Gondry | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
French director Michel Gondry is internationally renowned for his award-winning commercials, music videos, and feature films. After studying graphics at a French art school, he began shooting videos in 1987 for his band Oui Oui, for which he played drums. Gondry gained notoriety in 1993, when he directed the music video for Björk’s “Human Behavior,” which depicted the singer being hunted by a bear...
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:.. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals: III/IV (Pax Am) |... →
Ryan Adams catches so much shit for being unable to define a cohesive artistic vision, but it’s time for people to acknowledge that a big part of Adams’ appeal is never knowing what you’re gonna get.
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:.. Vivian Girls | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
For Cassie, Katy, and Ali of Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls, being in a band began as a fun extension of a life filled with other pursuits. When the band started in March 2007, Cassie was studying illustration at Pratt Institute, Katy was finishing degrees in physics and education at Rutgers University, and Ali, also at Rutgers, was majoring in German. However, after three 7” singles and a...
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:.. Fleet Foxes | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Imagine you’re 22 years old, and you’re standing on stage in front of a sold-out crowd in Berlin. Your band-which only has two EPs and a few tours under its belt-is performing the first of three encores in a city you didn’t even know had ever heard of you. Four months earlier you had no label and were self-releasing your music; two months before that, you were still a supporting...
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:.. My Morning Jacket | Under The Radar... →
Like similarly inartful musical identifiers “pop” and “rock,”“soul” is a term that elicits an intuitive response but that, in reality, has been denuded of any real meaning for modern listeners. Was it really created by Ray Charles in the early 1950s when he translated the energy of gospel music into a secular context? If James Brown is the “Godfather of Soul,” are his songs the template? What...
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:.. Portishead | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Ten years. It’s not much more than a blip on the timeline of recorded history, but it’s a lifetime for the typical musical act. In the ten years since Portishead last had a new release, the music industry—if not the world—has changed several times over. Back then, peer-to-peer downloading and the iPod had yet to change the way we listen to music, Britney Spears was still the girl next door, and...
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:.. Spiritualized | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Jason Pierce was in a good mood until I asked him about the Coachella festival. It’s only three days after he played the finale in a succession of “acoustic mainlines” shows, the widely acclaimed concert series where Pierce reinvented the Spiritualized canon with a string section and backing vocalists, and he’s still frustrated over how badly the set went. “It was a shame,” he says candidly. “We...
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:.. Goldfrapp | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
For any songwriter who spends hours slaving over chord progressions and notebooks full of crossed-out scribbles and half-baked ideas, the thought of an artist who is so prolific that even dreams give birth to new creations is an infuriating concept. Consider “Yesterday,” arguably Paul McCartney’s crowning achievement as a pop balladeer, a song whose melody was composed while Sir Paul slept. Or...
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:.. Beirut | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
He was a kid from New Mexico living in New York, playing Balkan music under the moniker of a Middle Eastern city. And when you heard his music, it all made sense. But for Zach Condon, the days before the release of Beirut’s 2006 debut album Gulag Orkestar were the beginning of an unimaginable transformation, one where in the span of a few weeks, he would go from being an anonymous kid who was...
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:.. Grizzly Bear | Under The Radar ..: →
“You haven’t made it until you’re in the Winchester Daily Gazette,” says Ed Droste. The 27-year-old singer/guitarist and founding member of Brooklyn-based Grizzly Bear is explaining what fame is, according to his parents. Despite the band having been written about in some of the world’s biggest music publications, which have taken notice of Grizzly Bear’s experimental and elegiac folk, Droste’s...
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:.. Camera Obscura | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
If you’re in a Scottish band and the gray, miserable weather of Glasgow in late Fall bums you out, there are few options for feeling better. If you’re Stuart Murdoch, you fill notebooks with stories of funny little frogs and goateed baseball catchers until the sun comes out again. If you’re Mogwai, you turn your amps up until your ears bleed and you can’t feel much of anything.
But if you’re...
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:.. Grizzly Bear | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Marked by long-stretching vocal harmonies and monk-like chanting, the music of Grizzly Bear is gentle and pastoral, employing a minimal environment of drums and the occasional banjo, augmented by subtle elements of electronica. What began as a home project for founder Edward Droste in his Brooklyn apartment, has since become a full-fledged band that tours the world. Grizzly Bear released their...
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:.. Goldfrapp | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Alison Goldfrapp is a coy arctic fox of an interview subject. For instance, just check out her lackadaisical words regarding the video for “Train”. Not having seen the video prior to the interview, I had no idea what to expect. Having seen it, I’d like to go back and discuss the complete image reversal that would have placed the video on VH1 sexiest of all time list. Weird. Truth be told, I...
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:.. Tegan and Sara In the Studio | Under The... →
Tegan and Sara plan to master their sixth studio album, Sainthood, at the beginning of August and release it at the end of October. Tegan Quin spoke with Under the Radar this morning to update us with some of the basic details and offer her impressions of the new music.
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:.. Lykke Li Follows Rivers in New Video | Under... →
n new video for Wounded Rhymes cut “I Follow Rivers” Lykke Li follows a man—rather than a river—across a very chilly beach. Watch for the moment when Li kicks off her shoes and runs across the snow barefoot. That girl is tough!
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:.. The Decemberists Hit #1 | Under The Radar... →
Today, The Decemberists charted their first career number one with new album, The King is Dead. Their sixth full-length, The King is Dead finds the band dipping a toe into Americana—and swimmingly mightily.
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:.. Anika: Anika (Stones Throw) | Under The... →
One can’t blame Geoff Barrow (Portishead,BEAK>) for wanting to team with political journalist-turned-singer Annika Henderson. All blonde locks and elongated syllables, she is unquestionably a modern-day Nico.
Thao and Mirah Team Up For Joint Album →
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:.. Doctor Who’s David Tennant: Tall and Scottish ... →
You go into a supermarket and your face is on a cake and underpants. And all that’s very odd. It’s not what you imagine when you go to drama school, that you’ll be commemorated in plastic and icing, and cotton.” Scottish actor David Tennant is very famous in the United Kingdom. Despite his appearance in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Tennant is not that well known...
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:.. Okkervil River | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
Okkervil River singer/guitarist Will Sheff is having more fun these days. Before 2005’s Black Sheep Boy charmed critics, he was seriously contemplating throwing in the towel. “Basically, I was broke,” he says from his home in Brooklyn. “I was totally broke, and I’d been broke for my entire adult life.”
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:.. Peter Murphy of Bauhaus Meets Amanda Palmer of... →
Gothic rock, death rock, darkwave…there are countless labels that attempt to pin down a phenomenon in rock music that leans toward the darker side of human nature-thematically, stylistically, lyrically, and melodically. It peeked out at the world at certain moments in music throughout the ’60s and ’70s with songs like The Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs,”...
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:.. Deerhunter | Under The Radar ..:Classic... →
“Iwish we were the fucking Strokes,” says Bradford Cox defiantly, offering a preemptive strike against those who might take offense at the more approachable tones of Deerhunter’s third full-length release, Microcastle. “People were like, ‘Hey, it sounds like the fucking Strokes,’ and I go, ‘No shit. I like The Strokes. I think they fucking rule,’” he continues, potentially adding another...
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:.. Space City Kicks | Under The Radar ..: →
By now, you know the drill. If you like Robert Pollard, you’ll go out and buy Space City Kicks. If you don’t, this is yet another in a long string of Pollard albums you’ll ignore.
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:.. The King Is Dead | Under The Radar ..: →
The Decemberists have never been shy about their Anglophilia, their early releases often marked by dark, Victorian tales. But if there’s a writer the band has emulated—consciously or otherwise—it’s more Leo Tolstoy than Charles Dickens. Tolstoy, after all, pennedWar and Peace and Anna Karenina—both classics long enough to double as doorstops—but was just as adept at short stories.
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:.. Ritual | Under The Radar ..: →
At the outset, things may seem easy for a band that sounds an awful lot like other bands—they’re easy to define, people find them without much trouble (You like Interpol? You should try White Lies!), and there’s a track laid out for them. The problem is, a band like White Lies constantly stands next to one of those “You Must Be This Tall to Ride” measuring sticks. White...
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:.. Flight of the Conchords | Under The Radar... →
A country mysterious enough that most Americans don’t even know enough about it to form a dismissive caricature, New Zealand is much more than just the placeThe Lord of the Rings was filmed. Renowned for its stunning geography and abundant natural resources, it’s the farthest outpost of English-speaking society, a country with roughly half as many inhabitants as New York City. But New Zealanders...
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:.. Jenny Lewis | Under The Radar ..:A Classic... →
Type the name “Jenny Lewis” into the YouTube search engine, and buried among music videos and footage of late-night television performances you’ll find a 1991 interview from a television show calledTeen Set. The segment features the 15-year-old Lewis politely and carefully fielding a series of insultingly banal questions, ranging from those about her burgeoning hat collection to those concerning...
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:.. Elliott Smith: Better Off Than Dead | Under... →
“This is the first interview I’ve done in a long time,” mumbles a slouching Elliott Smith. “I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it? It’s a lot easier to tell the truth usually.”
And so it begins…
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Under the Radar Magazine – Group at Last.fm →
Under the Radar magazine’s last.fm user group
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:.. 'Twilight,' 'Sex and the City' Lead Razzie... →
omorrow, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce in a live early-morning broadcast the nominees for the 2010 Academy Awards, the creme de la creme of film awards. But before we acknowledge cinema’s greatest feats in 2010, let’s first recognize where Hollywood went wrong.
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:.. Beach House Play Swedish TV | Under The... →
This week, Swedish television program Klubbland aired an episode with Beach House, who stopped by back in November to perform.
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:.. First Aid Kit Interview | Under The Radar... →
Klara Söderberg of First Aid Kit would like people to know that she and her sister Johanna were an active duo performing shows in Sweden before folks in the U.S. discovered them through their cover of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” on YouTube. “I don’t want them to think we were not making music and then did the Fleet Foxes cover and were like, ‘Oh,...
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:.. Kisses: An Evening’s Romance | Under The... →
Kisses take their name very seriously. The Los Angeles duo Jesse Kivel (vocals) and Zinzi Edmundson (keyboards) spin Baltic-style pop laced with shamelessly sweet lyrics—sung with a conviction that would make Jens Lekman proud. Theirs is a world of martinis served straight up, drives under a starry sky, and retro interiors untouched by hipster hands.
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:.. Two Door Cinema Club: Live from the City of... →
f it seems to you that Irish trio Two Door Cinema Club has been on the road almost constantly since its debut, Tourist History, came out in early 2010, you’d be pretty much right. As guitarist Sam Halliday reports, from the road (surprise) prior to an October gig in Philadelphia, the band can count its days off since the album’s release on one hand. Halliday and his mates,...
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:.. Villagers: One Man Leads a Community | Under... →
Conor J. O’Brien has been making music for years, but for the first time, he’s leaving his Dublin hometown to play around the world. He started Villagers the day after his previous band, The Immediate, dissipated. While O’Brien is used to touring the pubs in Ireland, his stateside tour with Villagers is an entirely new experience for him.
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:.. Happy New Year, Liz Phair! - Revisiting... →
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:.. Andrew Bird at the Largo, Hollywood, CA | ... →
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:.. 2010 Artist Survey Bonus Answers: Cassie... →
For Under the Radar’s 8th annual Artist Survey we emailed some of our favorite artists a few questions relating to 2010. However our printed pages weren’t enough to hold all the great responses we got. Pick up a copy of Under the Radar’s Year End issue for interviews with: The Antlers, Bon Iver, Caribou, Club 8, Delphic, Rose Elinor Dougall, Gayngs, Hot Chip, Lost in the Trees, Love is All, The...