There are essentially three phases to the long and twisted career of Julian Cope, the man who merged Iggy Pop and Syd Barrett with his own warped psychedelic punk/pop sensibility. Born in Wales but raised in the small mining town of Tamworth, he undertook the first part of his tale in the druggy saga of…
In the late ’70s, Brian Eno said that, although the Velvet Underground didn’t sell a lot of records, it seemed as if everyone who bought one went out and started a band. In the ’80s and ’90s, it would not have been an exaggeration to say the same about Wire — or specifically, about the…
These folks either wrote reviews that appear on the site or wrote for Trouser Press magazine. If anyone listed below cares to E-mail us with a link you’d like added, just let us know. And ditto if anyone is AWOL from this list. Grant AldenDavid AntrobusJem AswadTroy J. AugustoMichael AzerradCary BakerMichael BakerEmily BeckerSeth BenderJohn BergstromArt…
During the Feelies’ long hiatus, some of the fine bands that arose from their New Jersey strumming circle kept going strong, upholding some version of the same dedication to glimmering guitar-pop beauty. Speed the Plough began as the Trypes, a little-known but continuing band at one point joined by three Feelies (Glenn Mercer, Stan Demeski…
Something like a better-adjusted Feelies with loosened wigs or Yo La Tengo on a coffee rush, New York’s Airlines perforated its brisk, understated rhythm guitar pop with pure, sustained distortion leads. In “10,000 Days,” John Neilson’s guitar work recalls Robert Fripp’s evanescent sound paintings. Singer/guitarist John Tanzer (ex-Ex-Lion Tamers, the Wire cover band containing Jim…
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh writes that music criticism has “lost its edge” – i.e., why the default appraisal of almost everything released these days is positive. But beyond observing that a lot of music criticism these days is namby-pamby twaddle (my words, not his), the essay doesn’t get very far in spelunking the question. Ironically, although he does not seem to know it, Sanneh already had one of the answers, and he wrote about it twenty-one years ago.
