New York

New York is a 1989 album by Lou Reed. It was received very warmly as a return to the style of The Velvet Underground, the group which Reed founded in the 1960s and whose legacy had grown in stature during the 1980s as it was carried on by any number of alternative rock acts. Reed's straightforward, rock and roll sound on this album was unusual for the time and along with other releases such as Graham Parker's The Mona Lisa's Sister presaged a back-to-basics turn in mainstream rock music. On the other hand, the lyrics through the 14 songs are profuse and carefully woven, making New York Reed's most overtly conceptual album since the early 1970s. His polemical liner notes direct the listener to hear the 57-minute album in one sitting, "as though it were a book or a movie." The lyrics vent anger at many public figures in the news at the time. Reed mentions by name the Virgin Mary, the NRA, Rudy Giuliani, "the President", the "Statue of Bigotry", Buddha, Mike Tyson, Bernard Goetz, Mr. Waldheim, "the Pontiff", Jesse Jackson, (Jimi) Hendrix, and (Jimmy) Swaggart.

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Last night I met a man in a bar who really likes Morrissey. There are bands that I really like – for example: by a combination of accident and desire, I’ve seen loveable scamps Art Brut a moderately unhealthy seven or eight times. Which, it turns out, is nothing. This man has managed to take the concept of ‘to like’, folded it like the most intricate origami you...
  (Photo: Sarah Cass) The Bundles are a supergroup for the low-brow indie set, anchored in the friendship of former Moldy Peach/Juno soundtracker Kimya Dawson and New York anti-folk luminary/comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis. Lewis and Dawson initially started working on music together in 2001, though years of path-crossing never resulted in anything more than a handful of unrecorded...
This is a misleading title (that one up there ^) because I’m actually a beginner. I’m guiding myself so it’s of little use to youze out there. Besides you’ve all been at least twice and I’ve NEVER BEEN so stop showing off yeah?! So my idea is to try to listen to all the bands in one letter category every time I post about Sxsw. So here goes A in REAL TIME. Aa (...
Link: http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2010/03/05/1mm-if-there-was-ever-any-doubt-that-animal-collectives-our-grateful-dead-the-following-fan-photos-just-proved-us-all-wrong/ After Animal Collective’s art show at the Guggenheim, the Alt Report tracked ‘how it was covered’ by internet outlets. While most internet outlets have mastered how they will cover Animal Collective...
Continuing my selfish self-reference guide to finding some actually good music to watch at SxSW continues with THE BEST LETTER OF THE ALPHABET. Why is ‘B’ the best? Well coz it’s curvy, has the best sound (BUH! for B!) and my initials consist of two of the fuckers. So, it’s with some excitement that I delve into SxSW’s current list of B’s who have been pretty...
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Anna from London popsters My Tiger My Timing has taken time off from exercising her vocal chords to give the Devil’s blog an insight into her influences, the strangest place the band have played and her tips for saving money. The Devil: Why My Tiger My Timing? What other names did you ponder before deciding on this? Anna: ‘My Tiger, My Timing’ is a song by the New York...
I’m feeling rather inspired tonight so I thought I’d write a post on one of my favourite bands of all time you’ve probably never heard of. I’m not trying to come off as a “massive hipster” when I say that, and you probably know frontman Aaron Scott’s latter bands and projects if you’re in to decent punk rock anyway, but what you may not know is the...
Taken By Trees does Guns N’ Roses Victoria Bergsman just released one of the most beautiful albums of 2009 so it’s no surprise that this cover of Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ is equally as stunning. She released the song last year on 7″ vinyl. Bergsman is no stranger to recording covers, her previous band The Concretes recorded excellent...
Ride The Frightening   Grooms (née Muggabears) from Brooklyn create the kind of hedonistic fantasy grunge that Sonic Youth and Pavement did in their heyday, combining powerful, churning guitar lines and intelligent basslines merging blissfully in a mélange of shimmering, powdery drums and whiny adolescent vocals. ‘Dreamsucker’ is an immediate favourite, with its...
We’ve recently run a few exclusives from Viva Radio’s Me + You program, all of them as intimate as lingerie, and on Tuesday, the show released The Best Of Me + You, a pseudo-Greatest Hits comp with interviews and performances from Amazing Baby, Growing, Sebastien Tellier, and many others. This is Andrew W.K.’s contribution–a brief, mildly funny, obviously off-the-dome and...
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New York Reviews

Laneway Festival February 1, 2010 Britomart Square, Auckland Last week our Melbourne friends told us that the Laneway Festival is one of the least respected festivals in Australia, we were surprised, but it meant we entered the first Auckland Laneway festival with a hint of scepticism. We’d been told stories of forty minute-queues to see bands, poor facilities and an even poorer...
EDITORS NOTE: About once a month the writers of the RSL get together and look through new projects, drink the finest of wines and shoot our mouths off about music and politics. (And have a pretty damn decent time, I must say!) We recently hosted a debate about the new album from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. What follows is the review of our own Nick Parker…. He defends the dramatic shift in sound...
Dumfries boy Calvin Harris was one of the first on the Saturday mainstage, as the sunshine began to burst out from behind the clouds that had been looming overhead. I’ve seen a lot of Calvin around festivals and gigs, and sadly it wasn’t all that interesting. Maybe it was the lack of lights, or the lack of drive that was there in the early performances – at the cusp of success...
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