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Taylor Kaplan
Good things, small packages
33 1/3, the ultimate record collector's novella series, turns 10
Outside Lands 2014: It’s Yeezy season
Were you there? Were you among the approximately 200,000 human bodies smashed together for warmth at Golden Gate Park this past weekend, because you...
Find some poetry
Sun Kil Moon's Mark Kozelek grapples with life and death on his rawest, most intimate album yet
Pixies 2.0
The alt-rock forefathers forge ahead with new material — and without Kim Deal
The worst music beats the best bomb: A conversation with legendary composer Van Dyke Parks
“Yours falsely!” Van Dyke Parks chimes, as he picks up the phone at home in Pasadena, where the weather is “room temperature.” He...
Year in Music 2013: Taylor Kaplan’s top 10s
Albums1. My Bloody Valentine: m b v2. Dean Blunt: The Redeemer3. Julia Holter: Loud City Song4. No Joy: Wait to Pleasure5. Oneohtrix Point Never:...
Blitzkrieg what?
Party captain Andrew W.K. and Marky Ramone carry on the Ramones legacy
Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order altered the course of pop music, go see him live
Three decades after its initial release, New Order's Power, Corruption, & Lies (1982) might sound deceptively ordinary. From the early '90s successes of Happy...
Gary Numan: dark music done right at the Oakland Metro
From Metallica to This Mortal Coil, there's a sense of canned melodrama about most "dark" music that I've long found goofy and unconvincing. On...
Live Review: My Bloody Valentine’s SF show feels like something beamed in from another decade
Swirling guitars… cooing vocals… that all-engulfing wall of noise. It's difficult to describe My Bloody Valentine's sound without veering into borderline erotica, and understandably...
mbv4-ever
Two decades after its landmark album, My Bloody Valentine returns to SF
Outside Lands 2013 winners (Paul McCartney, Chic, Bombino) and losers
Hall & Oates, or Trombone Shorty? Willie Nelson, or Vampire Weekend? This year's Outside Lands presented its 65,000 attendees with some perplexing choices, resulting...
Soul-savers
Australia's Hiatus Kaiyote gets some love from Erykah Badu, Q-Tip, and Questlove
So fresh, so clean
Is laptop-produced, hi-fi music the punk rock of the Internet age?
Philip Glass at 75: an intoxicating series, live scores to ‘La Belle et la Bête’ and more
Last June, legendary composer Philip Glass treated our fair city to a one-off collaborative performance with indie-folk visionary Joanna Newsom. Just two months ago,...
Yo La Tengo plays the hits at the Fillmore, covers Black Flag
The last time I saw Yo La Tengo, on its fabulously gimmicky Spinning Wheel tour, the trio delivered an abrasive, garage-y opening set under...
TNGHT whips the Mezzanine’s 420 crowd into a frenzy
Like a microcosm of our ever-morphing music culture, electronic duo TNGHT stands squarely between the traditions of EDM and hip-hop, reaping the benefits of...
Snap Sounds: Justin Timberlake
JUSTIN TIMBERLAKETHE 20/20 EXPERIENCE (RCA)It's 10 songs, seven minutes apiece. A quick look at the track-listing to Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience reveals a...
Unexplored terrain
Composer Steve Reich draws out Radiohead's melodic fragments for new work, 'Radio Rewrite'
Noise Pop 2013: Califone, ‘Scene Unseen,’ and DIIV
Will 2013 be the year that Noise Pop began downsizing? Or, is the festival simply adjusting its focus towards smaller, rising acts? Either way,...
Fanboy ruminations on the new My Bloody Valentine
Here I am, listening to m b v for the umpteenth time since Saturday night, and I still can’t believe it exists. Up until...
Live Shots: Jessie Ware at the Rickshaw Stop
It’s only a matter of time before British R&B-pop sensation Jessie Ware outgrows the small, cozy Rickshaw Stops of the music world. Last Thursday,...
YEAR IN MUSIC 2012: Digital scraps and analog curiosities
Hype Williams and the Internet wild
Snap Sounds: Scott Walker
SCOTT WALKERBISH BOSCH (4AD)When pop crooner Scott Walker plunged into the abyss on 1995’s Tilt, he initiated one of the most radical transformations in...