Note: As I alluded to in my Favorite Albums journal entry, in college I wrote a number of essays touching upon the subject of popular music. Every essay included in these journals was written between 2007 and 2009 and in the MLA format, so please excuse the at-times somewhat forced academic subtext of these essays.

Wrote this brief write-up of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, easily one of the best albums of the Aughts, during my junior year of college. This paper deviates somewhat from my previous entries in this category, since it is not written "academically" and contains…

This is absurd. I've listened to one fucking band 3,995 times—and that's only counting the plays that Last.fm began scrobbling from my junior year on.

That notwithstanding, Interpol is an incredible, important band as far as my personal history as a music lover goes, for a number of reasons. My favorite song when I was graduating high school? "Evil." My most played song of all time? "PDA." The first song that I put on my first mp3 player? "Evil." My all-time most played album? Turn on the Bright Lights. The first song that blew my mind when I heard it,…

The lead singer/guitarist/visionary of Cloud Nothings is twenty-years old. His band’s latest album, Attack on Memory, is superficially posed as a “mature” record. I’ve sensed over the past year or two that I’ve become an adult, or at least one of some sort, I suppose, so why the fuck is this blatant attempt at posturing as something that a twenty-year old, in this day and age, cannot comprehensibly be, resonating so deeply with me?

I’ve realized: the strength of the Cloud Nothings—whose record I am only on the second listen of—is in their very youth and lack of true, authentic…

I should've grown up in the 1970's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ptrc2cWRxU&feature=related

Sly & the Family Stone

A decade after Interpol recorded the grandest re-imagining of an ancestral alternative music scene/the most shameless exercise of musical graverobbery of the 21st century, am I listening to the Men perform the exact same spectacle?

Seriously, I am listening to tracks that sound like the dominant gene-inheriting love-children of Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, the Replacements, and the Pixies.

Is this album really arriving pretty much a decade after Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights delivered unto the world the best collection of Television, Joy Division, and Echo and the Bunnymen-inspired Post-Punk gateway drugs known to man?

Wait–the Men aren't…

Starting a new section of journal entries, where I review newly released tracks that are of such high quality that I am left with no other choice but to advocate for their dominance like a 9th grader expressing his unequivocal love for the babe in Honors English who, as he is about to become all too aware, only sees him as a friend…nevermind, let's move on.

I love it when modern Indie Rock bands embark on unprompted ass-kicking crusades. I especially love it when, in accomplishing this task, said bands cover specific subject matter in a way that causes me…

Note: As I alluded to in my Favorite Albums journal entry, in college I wrote a number of essays touching upon the subject of popular music. Every essay included in these journals was written between 2007 and 2009 and in the MLA format, so please excuse the at-times somewhat forced academic subtext of these essays.

Written during the Fall of my junior year of college, this essay covers what to this day remains one of my all-time personal favorite tracks: "When Doves Cry." Prince might be one of the only artists that is impossible to overrate, if only because of…

2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Wu-Tang Clan's rise to Hip-Hop prominence. Consistently the most underrated modern act in popular music, the Wu-Tang's legacy is absolutely stunning in magnitude. Talk about game-changing, the Wu resemble the Beatles of Hip-Hop, except better. Or maybe, the Clash of Rap music, since the Clan at present might be called the only group that matters. Perhaps most appropriately, the Wu represent the Hip-Hop Rolling Stones. The group that outlasted all other classic rap outfits that it did not already completely outshine. Twenty years strong and still standing. A group whose legend only grows…

15. Shadowboxin.’ GZA. Liquid Swords. 1996.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwjILuYiBuY
Featuring: Method Man, the GZA

The GZA and the Meth. The most introverted, cerebral member of the Clan spending three-minutes in the lab with the most extroverted, listener-friendly member of the Wu-Tang crew. At their disposal: an unstoppable piece of Eastern Martial Arts-infused funk courtesy of the RZA. The product: the most-accessible three-minutes on Liquid Swords, during which not a voice is raised, not a chorus spake. It’s just unbelievable, really, the way Meth and GZA own this track and elevate themselves over all other pretender emcees by way of low-key menace (Meth:…

10. Baby C’mon. Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Return to the 36 Chambers. 1995.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-5INisp6k
Featuring: Ol' Dirty Bastard

“There aint no father to his style,” was the rationale given for the surname of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Try to deny the appropriateness of this alias, and prepare to be met with the unprecedented, unhinged genius of “Baby C’mon.” O.D.B.’s craziness shines throughout his vocals on this track. By the time the beat drops and O.D.B. announces his reputation for getting “riggy-riggy raw” on the mic, the listener cannot help but find himself at the emcee’s complete mercy. If “Baby C’mon” was the…