If the Internet reinvented the idea of the overnight sensation, Voxtrot were some of its first guinea pigs—a bunch of kids in their late teens and early 20s who suddenly found themselves digital darlings off the strength of a couple self-produced, self-released EPs recorded in the sweltering heat of a Texas summer, home on break […]

“Cinematic” is the operative cliche that will be thrown about to describe Wax Tailor’s sophomore effort, Hope and Sorrow, but sometimes cliches are cliches for good reason. The record feels tailor-made (pun unintended) to soundtrack a hip-hop tinged re-make of the drug-addled Jack the Ripper flick, From Hell. The kind of thing to throw on […]

On the National’s first two records, lead singer Matt Berninger and the brothers Devendorf and Dessner were middle-weight pugilists trying to move up in the game, fighting on under-cards in undersized venues. Released on their own Brassland label, few people heard The National or Sad Songs for Dirty Lover, but those that did found a […]

The ’80s seem almost archaic in the instant-orgasm Internet age, where everyone has a Netflix account to watch Bulgarian independent DVDs and iPods with enough horse-power to feed a Nepalese family of four for four years. But back in those black and white and fluorescent days when VHS rental shops and frozen yogurt were all […]

As Passion of the Weiss Chief Hippie Correspondent, Ace Cowboy points out at his Hidden Track hempfest, today is the 30th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s 5/08/77 show at Cornell University, often regarded by Deadheads as the best show in the band’s 30 year existence. Picking the “best” Dead show is like picking out the […]

I imagine most of the people reading this have read Ian Cohen’s rarely updated Sexy Results blog at one time or another. And if you’re like me, you probably miss those halcyon days when Ian wasn’t taking over Hollywood and instead was focused on the infinitely less lucrative, but infinitely more valuable task of providing […]

It’s baseball season so its high time that talk turned to souvenirs. After all, as the title of this post declares everyone likes souvenirs. Do you remember being 8-years old going to a game for the first time and wanting a souvenir? I certainly do. And if you hate Souvenir, you’re basically saying that you […]

From day one, Red has understood something that Hunter S. Thompson once knew: he would always be a far more interesting character than anyone he was writing about. So when you listen to a Redman album, you don’t expect the character sketches of Ghostface, the faux-West Coast gangster mythologizing of the Game, the bleak prophecies […]

There’s a moment on “The Overly Dramatic Truth,” the ninth track of El-P’s brilliant sophomore effort, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead , when the Brooklyn-born Jaime Meline doesn’t sound like any of the writerly influences critics typically pigeon-hole him with. It doesn’t remind me of Philip K. Dick. Or George Orwell. Or Aldous Huxley. Or […]

I blame Kanye West and his unprecedented success in climbing out from behind the boards to become America’s ten-times platinum darling, Time magazine cover boy and multiple Grammy Award winner. All this in spite of a torpid flow and mealy-mouthed voice stuck somewhere between Puffy and Ma$e. Now, Scott Storch, for instance, has deluded himself […]