playing catch-up: sxsw, she & him, owen pallett & more

Sorry I have been M.I.A. lately! I need to get better at keeping up with this. I’ve been pretty busy — went to Austin for my first year of SXSW, have been going to a sick amount of shows lately, and the whole full-time job thing is sort of time-consuming (but I’m loving pretty much every second of it).

That being said, if you want to follow some of the stuff I’m doing, add 17 Dots to your Google Reader/RSS feeds! It’s eMusic’s staff blog and I write a bunch of stuff on there. Of course you can also follow me on Twitter, too. So, uh, here are some links to stuff.

SXSW! I finally went to South By Southwest for the first time! Yes, it deserves lots of exclamation points!! My friend Dominick describes SXSW as a field trip for all the New York music people, and it totally is, although I also got to hang out with some awesome people from other states who I don’t get to see often or hadn’t met in person before.

Stuff I wrote that week:

DAY 1
17 Dots recap (Broken Bells, Warpaint, Basia Bulat, Washed Out, Rose Elinor Dougall)

DAY 2
17 Dots recap (Man/Miracle, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Sharon Jones, Peasant)
Those Darlins on Spinner.com (ridiculous!)
Sharon Van Etten and Sarah Jaffe on Spinner.com (They will blow your mind! Especially in a church.)

DAY 3
17 Dots recap (Standard Fare, Local Natives, the Antlers, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Mayer Hawthorne)
The Antlers on Spinner.com (Amazing! But that’s nothing new)

DAY 4
17 Dots recap (Slow Club, Titus Andronicus, Peasant, the Antlers, Estelle)
Slow Club on Spinner.com

A couple of stories on Spinner.com:

Anaïs Mitchell on her folk opera, Hadestown

Dead Meadow on their concert film

A bunch of show writeups with LOTS of photos (all on 17 Dots):

Clogs (members of the National, w/ Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Sufjan Stevens) at the Bell House, March 24

Miike Snow and Delorean at Bowery Ballroom, March 28

She & Him and the Living Sisters at Bowery Ballroom, March 29

Micachu & the Shapes at Le Poisson Rouge, March 31

The Low Anthem at Bowery Ballroom, April 14

Kaki King at Music Hall of Williamsburg, April 15

Owen Pallett at Webster Hall, April 22

Anaïs Mitchell at Joe’s Pub, April 23

Aaaand, a few record reviews while I’m at it [EDIT: I learned that if you don't have an eMusic account, you probably can't see these reviews; I'll be posting them on here probably in the near future!]:

Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown on Critical Mob

White Hinterland’s Kairos on Critical Mob

Tori Amos’s From the Choirgirl Hotel on eMusic

The Morning Benders’ Big Echo on eMusic

Dr. Dog’s Shame, Shame on eMusic

Sarah Jaffe’s Suburban Nature on eMusic

Nathaniel Rateliff’s In Memory of Loss on eMusic

New job, new writing, etc.

I’ve been totally slacking on posting new stuff but with good reason: I was home visiting family & friends in Michigan last week (which was FANTASTIC) and yesterday I started a new job! I’m now working full-time as a production editor at eMusic, the digital music/audiobook seller. I’ll be doing some behind-the-scenes Web stuff and also writing for eMusic.com and the staff’s 17 Dots blog. Loving it already. I’m still allowed to freelance for Billboard, Spinner, etc., but after I finish the assignments I already have, I’m going to at least take a break for a little while so I can get situated in the new gig!

Anyway, here’s some new (and extremely old but recently posted) stuff:

Review of Laura Marling’s Feb. 12 show at Le Poisson Rouge on Spinner.com (full post on this—with photos—coming eventually…)
Andrew WK’s Q&A forum at Santos Party House on Spinner.com (probably a full post on this too…)
Neko Case profile at Critical Mob
Fanfarlo feature on UnderTheRadarMag.com
Reeeally old review of Florence & the Machine’s Oct. 27 show at Bowery on UnderTheRadarMag.com
Reeeally old review of Camera Obscura’s Nov. 22 show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on UnderTheRadarMag.com

New album reviews: Mumford & Sons, Los Campesinos!, Holly Miranda

I’m turning back into the record-reviewing machine I was at some point last year and it’s definitely keeping me on my toes…

Some recent reviews for Critical Mob:

Mumford & Sons – Sigh No More (out Feb. 16 on Glassnote Records): These guys were one of my favorite bands during CMJ and their debut LP is beautiful. They also play with Laura Marling, who I adore and am seeing on Friday. Mumford & Sons’ MySpace

Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring (out now on Arts & Crafts): I love this band and I think they’re so much fun, but wasn’t totally feeling the new record, at least not to the extent of their first two. Los Campesinos’ MySpace

Holly Miranda – The Magician’s Private Library (out Feb. 23 on XL Recordings): I saw her during CMJ and then a few days later opening for Florence & the Machine (where she sang a few songs with Nada Surf!), and she was great live, I love her voice and she’s really talented, but I didn’t necessarily think it was anything totally new and exciting. The record is a lot more impressive though. Holly Miranda’s MySpace

I also wrote a profile on Owen Pallett and fixed up an older version of my review of Great Lake Swimmers’ excellent 2009 release Lost Channels.

New album reviews: Owen Pallett, Cold War Kids, Mayer Hawthorne (+ best of 2009/Pazz & Jop)

I love and hate the feeling of listening to an artist I’ve always meant to check out but never got around to, and then falling in love with their music. For the past two weeks I have been kicking myself for not listening to Owen Pallett (formerly known as Final Fantasy) sooner, while at the same time just drowning myself in his records. Pallett has done string arrangements for artists including, oh, you know, Arcade Fire, Beirut, and Grizzly Bear (and a million others), and his own music is equally amazing. Heartland (album cover above) is my favorite record so far this year, and it’s going to be a tough one to beat.

Anyway, here are some new reviews:

Review of Owen Pallett’s Heartland on CriticalMob.com (+ Owen Pallett’s MySpace)
Review of Cold War Kids’ Behave Yourself EP on CriticalMob.com (+ Cold War Kids’ MySpace)
Review of Mayer Hawthorne’s A Strange Arrangement on CriticalMob.com (+ Mayer Hawthorne’s MySpace) — I know I’ve blogged about this album a bunch but hadn’t formally reviewed it…

Also, my best of 2009 list and commentary for CriticalMob.com.

AND! My first Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll ballot!

Whew! Lot to get out there. A bunch of posts this week, and more to come.

My new job + new album reviews (Julie Doiron, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, more)

Exciting news: I have a new part-time job! It’s for a really awesome new music and culture site called Critical Mob, and I’ll be uploading/managing content and photos, as well as doing a lot of writing. Please check out the site and let me know what you think! It launched pretty quietly but the guys who run it (who are fantastic, and I’m so excited to be working for/with them) have some great stuff in the works.

Below are some recent reviews I’ve written for the site. A couple of them are rewrites of pieces of mine that originally appeared on the East Village Radio blog last year (the CM guys used to provide the content for the EVR blog), and some are totally new. They’re not necessarily new records though; some are part of our Top 25 of 2009 and others are on my own personal best-of list (not on the site yet).

Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Yo La Tengo’s Popular Songs
Dark was The Night compilation
Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ It’s Blitz!
Julie Doiron’s I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day
Discovery’s LP

And between this and my other writing gigs, I am thrilled to say that I am actually freelancing full-time now–like, actually supporting myself completely off of music writing/Web-related work and not a combination of that + my savings–and I couldn’t be happier!

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