All Soft And Free

When news of The Big Pink-a band supposedly combining the best of 4AD London roughneck sounds (wind tunnel guitar explosions, raw edges and morose sneer) with Factory (love, love, synths, love)-first reached my ears, I immediately hunted down their debut album A Brief History Of Love, fittingly enough released on 4AD. What I found was an addicting, lush but deceptively upfront collection of songs about sex and heartbreak and...well, what else is there, really?

Click to read more ...

Homophobia, double standards and Adam Lambert by Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley is an Atlanta-based journalist, acclaimed poet and novelist. Upon reading his insightful and intelligent tweets and Facebook messages regarding the American Music Awards/Adam Lambert controversy, I contacted him asking him to pen his thoughts, long form, for soldout. He graciously obliged. For further information, backstory and video performance regarding Adam Lambert and the AMAs controversy, Examiner has thoroughly compiled links.

Homophobia, double standards and Adam Lambert

By Collin Kelley

American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert was coy about his sexuality until after the competition ended, although there were photos floating around the internet of Lambert making out with a boyfriend and wearing enough make up to give any drag queen a run for her money. Everyone knew Lambert was gay (okay, maybe some tweens and 45 year old women with 14 cats didn’t catch on), and when he "officially" outed himself in the pages of Rolling Stone there was a collective "Duh."  

Lambert's vocal acrobatics and glam rock persona made him the most exciting stage performer Idol had seen in its eight seasons. But he was also controlled by the producers and sang "safe" covers of classic and modern rock that appealed to all demographics and wouldn't shock the 8 p.m. viewing audience. So, Lambert's performance on Sunday night's American Music Awards left many of his fans, Christian conservative wing nuts and parents who'd let their young children stay up until nearly 11 p.m. on a school night in absolute OUTRAGE!

Click to read more ...

I'll Find A Way To Cover

Tegan and Sara: Don’t Rush mp3 (click)

Amanda Palmer recently called the new Tegan and Sara album Sainthood a “grower”, and I’m never one to disagree with AFP, but Sainthood grabbed me immediately.

Ok, no immediately, but from the first time I heard “Don’t Rush”-the second song on the record. What appears at first shine to be a standard poppy love song with a harder edge is actually the sort of raw and wry half-plea/half-kissoff (basically an “I fucked up, and I’ll cover it up, wait don’t run away” song) that Bono perfected so well on Achtung, Baby. In fact, the entire album is like that-even though the production’s up to the caliber of some of the most polished moments on The Con, the emotions here run red and deep and raw and hurt. The lyrics run themselves in confused circles that mask hurt and anger with faux-sincerity until eventually the whole thing drops and you feel what’s been lost. This is an ideal winter-weather post-breakup record even though musically it’s the loudest thing T&S have ever done. The full plug-in can’t compete with the sound of bitten tongues firmly planeted in cheeks, and that’s what’s going to make Sainthood an album I return to again and again over the next few months.

Click to read more ...

The Night Is Young, The Drinks Is Cold

The Kanye West/Spike Jonez short film “We Were Once A Fairytale” is a painful, incredible and essential viewing experience into one of the most important, talented minds in his field. And no, I don’t mean Jonze.

Released at the perfect time, “We Were Once A Fairytale” follows a drunk-off-his-ass, obnoxious Yeezy through a hallucinogenic wonderland of those flashing (flashing) lights (lights lights lights), culminating in a surrealist exorcism of the ego and the ID.

As always, Kanye is pefectly self-aware and pefectly self-serving. Again I say: the Dave Eggers of rap? Indeed**.

**See also: my forthcoming biography on Kanye West, “Art With A Capital ‘I’”

Click to read more ...

Melissa Auf Der Mar, The Knitting Factory

I’m not one prone to moments of flat-out schoolgirl-like fandom at rock shows. I have songs I adore and that I’ll lose my shit to when played live, and I’ll scream for those if it seems appropriate (so, basically not at a Patti Smith show). But, really, unless it’s Tori Amos, I’m not going to use every fiber of my being (and every fiber in my larynx-do larynxes have fibers? Probably) to shred my voice with incessant “I love you”s to rock stars onstage at concerts. They’re fucking rock stars, remember-we pay them to love us. In the old days, that was called prostitution.

Click to read more ...