Band: Mogwai
Album: Happy Songs for Happy People
Best song: “Hunted by a Freak” is one of the most perfect songs ever put to record.
Worst song: “Golden Porsche” isn’t much.
My actual real world job title is Online Content Producer. I won’t get into my job duties here, but needless to say, I’m widespread across the Web. “Social media” — whatever that is — is a huge part of my job, but moreover, it’s part of my life.
I’m something of a curmudgeon and I’m getting closer and closer to technology irrelevance (age-wise), so I often don’t adopt new social tools as I probably should. I was definitely against Facebook at first — Taft had to convince me to join when we both entered grad school around the same time — and I even wrote around here about my disdain for Twitter.
Read More
Romanian Names
Band: John Vanderslice
Album: Romanian Names
Best song: “C&O Canal” is lovely.
Worst song: The title track is mediocre.
John Vanderslice has been around for a while and has never touched anything but the outlying islands of popular culture. His first few records had some niche interest — “Bill Gates Must Die” was a fun record of almost protest singalong-ness — and his earnestness is laudatory. But, ultimately, the playing field on which he resides is populated by, let’s face it, better artists.
The breakthrough of Justin Vernon was a happy accident in that it coincided with Vanderslice’s calming down. While his earlier records involved more interesting production and voices/character songs, Romanian Names is a bit more of a navel-gazer. It’s soft and easy, lacking the outsized nature of his earlier records.
Read More »