| David Bowie Tribute: Why ‘Ziggy Stardust’ Is The Perfect Rock Album | January 13, 2016 |
Passion of the Weiss takes the week to celebrate the life and mourn the death of David Bowie.
| Young Forever: Rae Sremmurd “SremmLife” | January 20, 2015 |
B. Michael Payne examines Rae Sremmurd's debut album "SremmLife", cause it's the only life they know.
| Rich Forever: Azealia Banks “Broke With Expensive Tastes” | November 11, 2014 |
Azealia Banks' attempt to get rich or get dropped trying.
| Is This It? FKA Twigs “LP 1” | August 13, 2014 |
B. Michael Payne can feel it in the air Style, emotion, and sex form a close nexus around music, but they’re not music itself. Judged on the rich presentation of these concepts, FKA Twigs debut album, LP1, is a clear winner. The timelessness or quality of the music itself is a murkier thing to judge. […]
| She’s a Big Dreamer, So Watch Her Come Up With Something: Kate Tempest Challenges Kendrick and The Streets | June 2, 2014 |
B. Michael Payne motions his maids to bring him toast and eggs Kate Tempest is doing it all backward. There are literal volumes devoted to making the argument that rap = poetry. There are probably exponentially more half-baked term papers linking 2pac-v-Biggie to Wordsworth and Coleridge. When rap does reach a “Lyrical Ballads”-level, as it […]
| Enter the Void of EMA | April 11, 2014 |
B. Michael respects a good pair of Brett Hitman Hart sunglasses Writing about a Record of Ideas is a lot easier than writing about a Record of Emotions, which should make this review of the new EMA album, Future Void, really easy. It is, ostensibly, a Record of Ideas. Look at the cover. That’s EMA […]
| Faces in Reflection: The Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” | October 30, 2013 |
B. Michael Payne stole Win Butler’s basketball. At some point – perhaps after he realized they both raised money for a hurricane-ravaged land, or maybe it was the recognition of a fellow Capital-A Artist’s inner glow of – whatever it was, at some point Win Butler seems to fall under the impression that he was […]
You know when someone derisively describes something as “tumblr rap”? (You’re reading Passion of the Weiss, so of course you do.) What they usually mean is that the music, tumblr rap, is very stylish without actually being good. Earlier this year I might have begrudgingly lumped Spark Master Tape into the tumblr rap category. But […]
| The Corrections: A Defense of Phish | August 15, 2013 |
Brian Michael Payne is a Buddhist prodigy. Throughout this “The Corrections” series, writers have been grappling with the question of slept-on albums. But for my entry, I wanted to share a correction made to my music listening habits that has affected my entire life. It’s a journey I’ve just started on and one of the […]
| You Deserve Some Weed | May 22, 2013 |
No amount of weed could make B Michael Payne find Waterboy jokes funny. The other day I was sitting at my desk wondering if maybe I weren’t missing out on a basic human experience by abstaining from weed. (Yeah, that sounds like the thought process of someone who needs to smoke weed, right?) Synchronicity being […]
