It's a Cruel World
Goths in Ass-Hugging Fishnets Battle Palm Trees and Nostalgia
Gary Numan Brings the Noise
Legendary Siouxsie Sioux Has Lost It
Green and black do not belong together, and the combination of the two brings almost nothing to mind but the queasy specter of sickness and death. It’s the color scheme of the awful alternate jerseys worn by the New York Jets, who are losers; gold cross-bars prudently separate the Jamaican flag’s discordant wedges of verdance and darkness. Summoning a graying army of gloom — clad in funerary black lace, heavy leather, white face-paint, and softer-core varieties of bondage gear — towards the glorious emerald basin behind the Rose Bowl results in a disquieting clash between two different phases of existence. At Cruel World, a one-day music festival held in Pasadena this past May, it felt like an entire mid-sized town’s worth of goths had been banished into a wilderness of blue skies and palm-covered mountains, as if the event were happening in the far background of a medieval depiction of the Last …
Built to Spill's Doug Martsch
13-Year Old Rock Critic Joins ’90s Guitar Legend on Tour Bus
Talks Songwriting, Daniel Johnston
Agree that Dinosaur Jr. Rocks
I first discovered Built to Spill about a year and a half ago, when I was flipping through a stack of records at a local store. I saw their record There's Nothing Wrong With Love, with its ominous cloud and off-white background, and flipped past it. The reason I remember this moment so clearly is because the store was playing “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” a Neil Young song which I have fond memories of. Going home with an Elliott Smith record, I turned to the internet to figure out who this strange band was that reminded me of Neil Young. The first song I listened to from that album was “Big Dipper” and almost immediately after listening I decided it was my new favorite song. Then it was “Car,” then it was “Dystopian Dream Girl,” and then I just decided that the whole album was incredible.
Built to Spill was formed in 1992 in Boise, Idaho, an understated epicenter of music. In the last thirty …
Effie Lou
Five Years Old When the Titanic Sank
Memories of an Elder
“I’ll meet you in the morning by the bright river-side”
She was old all my life; 76 when I was born, 87 when I first met her. When she spoke, it sounded like a swarm of bees hovering over a thick patch of clover. She was blind and feeble and had to be led around by the arm. But there was rarely a Sunday that went by for a hundred years that didn’t find Miss Effie Lou standing in the choir loft carrying the altos on her bony shoulders. She’d lost a husband, a daughter, and two sons, but she never lost her song.
I have always been fascinated with old people. All the things they’ve seen and heard and done. When I was a kid, I would go over to Ludbar, the small assisted living apartments where she lived, and sit for hours listening to her tell stories.
“I was 5 years old when the Titanic sank,” she said. “Daddy was a preacher. We prayed for the families of those that sank frozen into eternity as he told us to make sure we were always ready to meet the …
