Stockholm

Muse - Madison Square Garden - 4/15/13

Better Than: The last two times I've seen the band perform live. With similar amounts of conviction, Muse can weave between whimsical space rockers to heavy metal gods to frenzied, late-'90's alt rockers that dabble in soft doses of dubstep. The transitions are so subtle sometimes that, upon reflec ... More >>

Shout Out Louds - Music Hall of Williamsburg - 3/11/13

Better Than: Blasting "Very Loud" very loud while driving down your old street with all the windows down. It's been three years since the last time Stockholm's Shout Out Louds came through the United States on tour, and about as much time has passed since the release of their last record. Now, the ... More >>

Lyric Reality Illuminates The Playroom

Bob & Carol & Franny & Zooey

Sweden's Niki & the Dove Take Aim at American Success

When Doves Sigh

Mies Julie: South Africa Meets Strindberg

St. Ann's Warehouse brings a noted adaptation to Brooklyn

Closing The Colony: A Visit To Times Square's Shuttering Sheet Music Outpost

In some ways, the Friday before last looked like business as usual at Colony Records, the venerable Theater District music-and-sheet-music retailer that recently announced its impending closing after 64 years of operation. At the counter, Warren Tesoro, an employee for 25 years, asked a middle-aged ... More >>

Live: M. Ward And Yo La Tengo Enjoy The (Relative) Silence At Prospect Park

M. Ward w/Yo La Tengo, Wyatt Cenac Celebrate Brooklyn! at Prospect Park Bandshell Tuesday, August 7 Better than: Having your appendix removed (get well soon, absent Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew). There was a quiet in the air as I approached the Prospect Park Bandshell, home of the Celebrate B ... More >>

Live: The Summerland Tour Lets A Decades-Old Sun Shine In At Roseland

Summerland Tour: Everclear, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Lit, Marcy Playground Roseland Ballroom Wednesday, July 18 Better than: Watching Empire Records on basic cable. We make the "remember the '90s" joke around these parts a fair amount, but this week the alt-rock strain of that decade has been stu ... More >>

Turn Me On, Dammit!

Will Cops Raid The Pirate Bay?

International authorities aren't easing up in their crackdown on file-sharing ops. There was operation Fake Sweep, in which the FBI busted 16 domains, the high-security shakedown of Megaupload's Kim Dotcom -- and now there's talk that Swedish law enforcement plans on raiding The Pirate Bay. Torren ... More >>

D'Angelo Offers Two (Awesome) Peeks At His Long-In-The-Works Third Album

It is hard to not root for D'Angelo, the long-dormant R&B genius who, in the 12-year (!) period between his classic album Voodoo and now, has had run-ins with the law and mean-spirited internet giggles directed his way. But in December, Roots drummer and longtime collaborator ?uestlove told Pitchfor ... More >>

The Struggle: Black Power Mixtape and Bobby Fischer

Which Musical Genre Was South Park Spoofing With "Tween Wave"?

​Last night's South Park was in large part about the fad/scourge of Tween Wave, a new genre that horrified parents and mobilized kids all across the country. Dubbed as such because it would be the Next Big Thing from 2009 through 2012, it made the phrase "this sounds like shit" quite literal; ... More >>

Assange in Court: Sweden Could Mean Guantanamo Bay, or Death

​Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of secret-spilling international organization WikiLeaks, is in court today for the first of a two-day hearing in England, which will decide whether Assange is extradited to Sweden in order face questions about potential rape charges. Assange, wa ... More >>

Democratic Rebels Stage New State Senate Breakaway

​ The new Albany legislative session opens this morning with yet another rebellion in the ranks. This one comes from a quartet of Democratic state senators who announced this morning, with plenty of tough words, that they're moving away from their party's minority to form an "independent caucu ... More >>

Live: Lykke Li Soundtracks Your Personal Makeout Session at Le Poisson Rouge

Lykke Li (Le) Poisson Rouge December 1, 2010 Better Than: Your standard overpraised Swedish pop starlet. The Swedish ingénue-cum-big-deal Lykke Li is a little bit of a thing. No more than five feet tall, she fills a space like someone twice that size. At Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday night she ... More >>

The Girl Whose Story We Cannot Follow in Hornet's Nest

Joseph Sarno, the Chekhov of Softcore

Give Robyn Her Knock Back

A beloved pop star's Body Talk series withers away to treble

Aquavit's Marcus Jernmark, Continued: Scandinavian Food as the Next Big Thing, Keeping Kosher (Around the Wife), and the Woman Who Was Allergic to Everything

Marcus Jernmark​Yesterday, we heard from Marcus Jernmark, the new chef at Aquavit, about the real challenge of going farm-to-table, telling the true story of Scandinavian cuisine, and why he thinks Aquavit was a more pretentious restaurant before he got there. Now, Part 2 of our interview ... ... More >>

'Northern Exposure' Swedish Cinema Series at Walter Reade

Once taboo subjects are now the norm, thanks to extraordinary Swedish cinema

Lawyer: Monserrate, Victim to Get Married

​It has an air of poetic justice, or maybe Stockholm Syndrome: State senator Hiram Monserrate plans to marry Katy Giraldo, the woman whose face he was accused of carving with a broken glass in a trial that recently went his way, his lawyer says. "Apparently, that's their intentions," mouthpiec ... More >>

Peter Pans Head for the Strip in Todd Phillips's The Hangover

Lykke Li on Nearly Getting Mugged in Bushwick

It would be easy to dismiss 23-year old Swedish singer Lykke Li as the latest manufactured pop confection. After all, last year's debut Youth Novels--produced by Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John--yielded several electro bubblegummy hits, songs with hooks that stuck in your head like claws. A ... More >>

SXSW's 2009 Partial Performers List: If You Can Afford to Go, You Must Be Running a Ponzi Scheme

Dark Meat at last year's SXSW, photo by Rebecca Smeyne See, it's totally lame, don't worry, you're not missing a thing South by Southwest just firebombed everybody's inboxes with a partial list of names playing this year's barbecue-and-booze blitz. A quick scan reveals the midsize marquee names to ... More >>

Tabloid Divorce Court: The Murrays and the McGreeveys

SATURDAY | 5.31

SXSW: Kate Nash at the Q Magazine Party

Congestion Pricing Questions

Who's skeptical about the mayor's traffic plan? The companies bidding to run it.

Provincializm #11: Black Kids in Florida

China Up Against the Wall

What can any of us actually do about the Darfur genocide? A new organization knows.

Black Flag Holiday

Celebrate life on the Baltic Sea with the mighty G8

Cutting Wit

The Knife's Lynchian synthpop is otherwordly, terrifying, and totally hilarious

The Sublime Is Us

The terror, the delight, and the unfathomable feelings of being alive

Odd Tangents

Some Parkers, some Brötzmanns, some Atavistics, and two good mainstream sax CDs

Beans From a Marriage: Swede Film Doesn't Amount to a Hill

Next to Godliness

The second coming of Bergmania: Six takes on a Swedish master's spiritual investigations

The Passion of Ulrika

Maidens and Big Balls in Midtown

Music

Voices of the 'B' Hives

Scandinavian Garages and Carburetor Dung

Throw Your Hands in the Air

Ghost Dance

It’s a Bomber, It’s a Bomber, It’s a Bomber

The Kapital Gang

Home, Swede Home

Like, Zoiks!

Past Masters and Possible Worlds

Venetian Finds

The Pompitouses of Love

The Urge To Purge

Tracey Emin's Art Has No Secrets

Border Crossings

Top Guns