The 2011 edition of Da Capo's annual anthology Best Music Writing which this year was guest edited by The New Yorker classical writer and The Rest Is Noise author Alex Ross; Daphne Carr has been the series editor since 2006contains 32 essays and is augmented by a a jumbo-sized "Other N ... More >>
In the music section of this week's Village Voice, available all around the New York metropolitan area: Rich Juzwiak gives the once-over to Lady Gaga's Born This Way and Kate Bush's Director's Cut; Theon Weber looks at the hazy world of EMA's Past Life Martyred Saints; and Mikael Wood talks t ... More >>
Weezer in simpler times, or maybe not In this week's Village Voice, Mike Powell hails the reissue of Weezer's Pinkerton, Theon Weber reviews Taylor Swift's sneakily great Speak Now, and Tad Hendrickson chronicles the belated emergence of the Mali-Cuba connection finally captured on AfroCubism ... More >>
In this week's Village Voice, a (literally) bleeding-heart story: Julia Amparo-Alvarado, an illegal Guatemalan immigrant who escaped her country's internal strife for a better life, isn't well. The figurative nature of enlarged and battered heart manifested in the physical form. And now, beca ... More >>
Courtesy Def-Jam Records In this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla marvels at the brilliant stupidity of r&b lothario The-Dream. Theon Weber examines the calculated rebellion of Miley Cyrus. Jesse Serwer reports on the Great Dancehall Freeze-Out of 2010, during which many of Jamaica's biggest act ... More >>
MGMT. You're wearing two different socks, dude. Photo by Josh CheuseIn this week's Village Voice, Rob Harvilla on the gleeful self-sabotage of MGMT, Francis Davis looks back on the work of jazz's Paul Motian, and Theon Weber reviews David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's Here Lies Love tribute to Imel ... More >>
Photo by Cary Conover. What were the Obies like? We noticed mainly free drinks. James Hannaham saw a lot of winners of color ("Black is definitely the new black"), and many other details. List of laureates here; slideshow here. Michael Feingold starts his Obie meditation by talking about depart ... More >>
For 25 years, May May has been dishing out Chinese food to the people of East New York, charming them with "Shut up" and other witticisms, and occasionally mopping up the blood from shootings on his Euclid Avenue sidewalk. Emily Brady salutes a neighborhood institution. Everyone loves the Yeah Yeah ... More >>
Remember the epidemic years of AIDS, when infected New Yorkers fought to get into untested drug trials? People fought to get infected babies into those trials, too. Some of them, because of the nature of the trials, were given placebo drugs. Some made it, some didn't. Not much has been written abo ... More >>
Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan In this week's Village Voice Music Section, Rob Harvilla on the gleeful, disarming, inscrutable dissonance of Micachu & the Shapes. Raquel Cepeda talks to teens grappling with Rihanna vs. Chris Brown. Theon Weber on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Blitz, a record finally worthy of ... More >>
How politics changed how we thought about music, if we thought about music at all
Random obsessions and vexations, born of both young tyros and inexplicably still-rocking old people
