Sufjan Stevens

In Defense of fun. and the Sublime Blandness They Do So Well

Hey, man! What are YOU doing Saturday night? Wanna go to Radio City Music Hall with me and watch motherfucking fun.? Wait, where are you going? Dude, why'd you just unfriend me on Facebook? I just tried to email you and it bounced. I thought we were best friends, and now you're acting like you barel ... More >>

Those "Influential" Albums Being Discussed on Facebook? They're Garbage

Influentialalbums.com is a "quiz" one of your Facebook friends might've posted, boasting "Very few people own 70 or more. How many have you got?" and listing 100 albums ranging from the duh (Blonde on Blonde, Pet Sounds) to the hmmm (Gerry Rafferty? Felt??) to the genuinely bizarre (well, see below) ... More >>

The Best Albums Pitchfork Hated This Year

Since Purity Ring, Death Grips and Tame Impala didn't exactly take off this year like Arcade Fire or Animal Collective, Pitchfork's cultural influence might be cooling off, which is bittersweet since their writer stable is probably better now than it ever was (some of us don't miss those novelty rev ... More >>

Which Album Will Pitchfork's Readers Crown As The Best Since 1996?

In an effort to stanch the flow of stale complaining about its "elitism" invite its readership into the magical world of music-publication listmaking, the online-tastemaker behemoth Pitchfork is putting together The Pitchfork List, which purports to count down its readers' favorite albums released b ... More >>

Live: Handing Out Superlatives To Beirut, St. Vincent, And Other Stars Of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry Brooklyn Academy of Music May 3 - May 5 Better than: NBC's Thursday-night comedy, a Friday night in NYC, and Cinco de Mayo, combined. When covering a festival, you're bound to miss most of the festivities. It's a fact of life, and one that I had to accept when attempting to ... More >>

Meshell Ndegeocello Gets Crafty On "Weather"

​"Weather" isn't the first Meshell Ndegeocello single to fall into the category of "freak folk," but the album of the same name (Naive) is her first that can be comfortably filed under that genre. Classical and country elements have often enhanced Ndegeocello's melding of jazz, rock, global fu ... More >>

Gabriel Kahane's Open Arms

The singer's grand, sweeping take on pop

Dispatch From The X Factor Auditions: Makeovers, Preening, And Missing The Machine

​In Seattle on Wednesday, The X Factor was doing its damndest not to be American Idol. Producers had overseen the first round of auditions, and now, in front of an audience of 4,000, the few acts who had passed muster would perform for judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, L.A. Reid, and Nicole Sc ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Stats: On Kanye West's Dominance, And What The Poll Would've Looked Like Without Him

​"If there was any way you could confirm Kanye's inevitable victory early, that'd be a big help art-department-wise." So began Pazz & Jop editor Rob Harvilla's first note to me after voting closed in late December. Inevitability is not a statistical quality, but the magnitude of My Beautiful D ... More >>

Was 2010 The Best Year For Music Ever? Redeeming M.I.A.

Welcome to Sound of the City's year-in-review rock-critic roundtable, an amiable ongoing conversation between five prominent Voice critics: Rob Harvilla, Zach Baron, Sean Fennessey, Maura Johnston, and Rich Juzwiak. We'll be here all week! ​Dear Rob, Sean, Rich, and Maura, I believe, as per ... More >>

The 20 Worst Songs of 2010, #12: Jackyl Featuring DMC, "Just Like A Negro"

​Take a minute and let the words Jackyl and "Just Like A Negro" sink in. It's OK, we'll wait. These are truly magical times, huh? Breathe deeply and be proud, America. We can finally get to have an honest, articulate discourse about race in America with the band that wrote "She Loves My Cock."

The 10 Biggest Music Stories of 2010

Ah M.I.A., it just wasn't your year, was it? Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.​In 2010, Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire both had #1 records. LCD Soundsystem, Spoon, MGMT, the National, M.I.A, and Sufjan Stevens all had albums debut in the top ten. Kanye West joined Twitter. Drake started a riot in New ... More >>

The Reason Why Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Is $3.99 on Amazon Right Now

Behold, the Amazon-pixelated artwork of a man who will stop at nothing to be #1.​Many rap fans probably didn't notice a couple weeks ago when Taylor Swift's Speak Now debuted, selling over a million copies in its first week--the fastest sprint to that number since Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, i ... More >>

Week in Review: Apollo Kids

​In the week one of this blog's authors inspired a short play about juggalo zombies and Lady Gaga, we celebrated by announcing the 2010 Village Voice/Redeye Distribution Day Party, featuring the great Marnie Stern, Hooray For Earth, and a bunch of others, including a wonderful special secret g ... More >>

Week in Review: Quarantine the Past

Later, dude. Photo by Rob Harvilla​In the week we threw up our hands and named all seven days after Pavement, we celebrated at the now-reunited and finally in New York band's first show at the Williamsburg Waterfront, pitied the plight of scalpers trying to get rid of their tickets, hung out w ... More >>

Blog Warfare: Inside The Music Slut's Public Breakup

Happier times​"All love, no hate," goes the unofficial slogan of popular, partially NYC-based blog the Music Slut, which nonetheless has lately suffered some profound internal calamity, leading to the abrupt departure of writer/editor Matt Gross in what he calls an out-of-nowhere hijacking and ... More >>

More On Paste Magazine's Print-Side Demise: "We'd Been Running On Fumes For A Really Long Time, And We Ran Out Of Fumes."

​Yesterday, the tasteful-culture bible Paste abruptly suspended its print edition, the latest music-related publication to shut down in the past few years. The Paste website, on which the display ads for subscriptions lead to an announcement of the print issue's suspension, will continue to l ... More >>

On Treme's (Possibly Redeemable) Annoying Characters And Fraught Quest For "Musical Authenticity"

Don't write Steve Zahn off yet, folks​David Simon's Treme is, as has been mentioned far and wide, clearly not going to be The Wire. Sure, it's dealing with rampant corruption in a major American city and the frustration of human beings forced to deal with that corruption, doing so with an unca ... More >>

Live: Janelle Monáe, Cheerfully Confounding At Highline Ballroom

​ Janelle Monáe Highline Ballroom Thursday, April 8 Bad Sign #1: We are greeted in the Highline Ballroom atrium by a cardboard cutout of Janelle, sci-fi r&b heroine extraordinaire, holding a sign informing us that we must listen to The Archandroid (that's her upcoming album) from beginning ... More >>

The Raw Revelations of Fire in My Bones

A DIY gospel comp offers three discs of ferocious testimony even nonbelievers can believe in

Best of NYC: Brooklyn Rocks!

We shouldn't have to tell you this, but we'll try

Week in Review: The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock

Photo of South Williamsburg's the Woods by Puja Patel​In the week in which everyone went to rock and roll fantasy camp--whether it be the one that takes place inside the Colbert Report studios with the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle or the one that takes place on the disco dance floor with Vin ... More >>

An Oral History of All Tomorrow's Parties

In honor of next weekend's fete upstate, some wistful reminiscences and trash talk

News Roundup: Aerosmith Cancels Tour, Sujfan Nearly On Sale, Sonic Youth on Gossip Girl

​--The rapidly decaying corpse of Aerosmith called the whole thing off today, canceling the rest of the band's AeroForceOne summer tour. Frontman Steven Tyler danced his way right off the stage at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD last week, shattering his shoulder and amusing the entire inter ... More >>

God Is In Welcome Wagon's Living Room

Modest, familial, faithful folkies multiply in Brooklyn

Shearwater and My Brightest Diamond

Delicate indie offshoots deliver lovely, inconvenient truths

Wednesday 4:2

Admit You Want to Marry St. Vincent

Annie Clark's volatile skills can't match her charms, but how could they?

The Scrunchie Invasion

BAM's all-night fête flaunts bands, burlesque, and a 'mid-career Lindsay Lohan retrospective'

Clare & the Reasons' The Movie

An ode to NYC ambience that sounds a bit too ambient

Provincializm: Top 3 Mixtape Songs To Repel or Confuse Recipients

Live: St. Vincent, Scout Niblett at the Bowery Ballroom, 07.17.07

Marathon Men

Eno's Music for Airports at a 26-hour fete; Bright Eyes triumphantly caps a seven-night run

Live: Snow Patrol Really Care About Romantically Frustrated Medical Students

The Unforgettable Fire

Joyously overwrought arena rock often sounds even better in church

Oh My Goth!

Born Under the Sign of Satyrn

Stuff You Need to Know This Week to Avoid Ostracism

Ignoring Sincerity

Atlanta's Roy Owens Jr. just can't click-start

Start Making Sense

On the beauty but hollow humanity of micromanaged Mac rock

High School Musical: The Cult Success of the Year

Alternative Realities

Cosmic commies, Christian rockers, and gay Republicans at the 13th annual NYUFF

Old-Fashioned Amenities

Track after track of sincere classicism, internationalist anarchism, and foiled espionage

Pickers With a Hint of a Grin Take on an Idiosyncratic Ouevre

Dean's List

Turkey Shoot 2005

Fifteen courses you'll be better off skipping at this year's musical overfeed

The Best Indie-Rock Show of the Year

Eddytor's Dozen

Nuke 'Em

Bar serves up TV dinners without shame

Heads, Future and Past

Finally a chance to catch up on all those new bands. Well, maybe not bands exactly . . .

Nutritious!

Unvulgar sham of an acoustic-strummed walk in the woods