Andrew Whiteman, lead guitarist of Broken Social Scene is a smart man. I don’t know this for a fact. For all I know, the guy could be the Ralph Wiggum of Toronto. But I do know that at the very least, Whiteman was very savvy to pick the stage name, Apostle of Hustle. Why? Because […]

In the past year, as seemingly every blogger and music journalist rushed to anoint Ghostface the greatest thing since Jello Pudding Pops (myself, being particularly guilty), they’ve overlooked the fact he might not even be the most consistent rhymer in the Wu. Sure, in terms of sheer charisma and personality, Ghost arguably trumps any MC […]

Silverlake is trendy. This obvious thought rang through my head loud and clear on a windy Monday night as I stood in a line that snaked arond the block, outside of Spaceland, waiting to catch new Merge signees, The Broken West, in the midst of their monthlong January residency. And it wasn’t just the bone-chilling […]

Subtle are catnip for music critics. The actual band that fulfills the oft-spoken, rarely true cliche: they make “future music.” Indeed, the Oakland-based hip-hop/rock/electro six-piece makes music so forward-thinking it’s effectively genre-less. Just when an earth-shaking electro-bass groove reels you in, Dose One spits a tongue-twisting rap verse reminiscent of his Scribble Jam freestyle competition […]

Austin’s Red Hunter, the man behind Peter and the Wolf, has a reputation for being a weird dude. Chalk it up to his penchant for chartering sailboats to gig up and down the East Coast or his predilection for playing unlikely venues like cemeteries, abandoned buses and islands only accessible via canoe. Not to mention […]

There’s a rarely discussed but subliminal understanding between music obsessives, the types that listen to dozens of records each year, the types that spend all their discretionary income on Ticketmaster-inflated concert tickets, the types that waste vast chunks of their time writing blogs for the similarly musically obsessed. And that understanding is that for all […]