The rise of the artist blog as official mouthpiece in 2008 may have been in part because record labels can’t afford to hire decent PR staff anymore, but hey, you take the good with the bad. And there was a lot of good to come out of artists hitting up Tumblr, MySpace, et al; these blogs were really effective at humanizing the vacuum presented by endless paparazzi shots and press releases, whether through “clarity posts,” in which artists put gossips on blast, or posts explaining what life is like when bands graduate to bigger tours, or just posts about how they liked shoes. After the jump, nine examples of why more artists should make a tour stop in Blogtown. Not only is the trip entertaining, its fruits give people like me great material!
As longtime readers well know, Idolator has an unrivaled commitment to what’s new in indie rock, which is why I’m here today discussing a two-year-old Grizzly Bear video. I don’t much care for the much-blogged-about band, although for much of 2006 I was convinced Yellow House was a grower and I needed to give it more time to let my appreciation of the album as a whole match that of just Ed Droste’s voice. (What else could explain all the acclaim?) But I adore the above video of the band’s a cappella performance of their single “Knife” on the streets of Paris, mainly because it strips “Knife” down and reveals that it’s in actuality a really great doo-wop song.
This will probably get me kicked out of whatever music-blogger clubs haven’t booted me already, but I haven’t really listened to Grizzly Bear that much. More »
MTV discovers weirdo art-rock bands playing smelly punk houses in Brooklyn, and since online news clips are what the kids now have instead of 120 Minutes, here’s hoping this still means the Dirty Projectors will sell a few more records. More »
MTV discovers weirdo art-rock bands playing smelly punk houses in Brooklyn, and since online news clips are what the kids now have instead of 120 Minutes, here’s hoping this still means the Dirty Projectors will sell a few more records. More »
Head honcho Ryan Schreiber returns to Pitchfork reviewing duties to pen a 1,390-word love letter to Grizzly Bear’s EP that’s sealed with a kiss–in the form of a “Best New Music” commendation, natch–but sadly, even though he writes that he’s not afraid of “looking like Grizzly Bear Fan #1” in his… More »
