a place that is lost: the geographical visions of Martha and the Muffins
I’ve been drawn instinctively toward the music, aesthetics and story of Martha and the Muffins since I heard their debut album some 30 years ago. In my teenage years I would have ranked their 1983 album Danseparc one of my desert island discs (I still might, come to think of it). My tastes evolved toward the...
utopia sound: Todd Rundgren’s Woodstock
Awhile back, I argued that Woodstock—at once a place, a culture/nostalgia industry, and a sensibility—exerts a tremendous hold on geographical self-imaginary of the surrounding Hudson River Valley in which it’s located (and where I live). To pry back the myth of Woodstock a bit, I’ll occasionally share some historical research on Woodstock’s musical geography. In this...
are you really going to listen to their new album?
I’ll admit, I got excited after seeing the announcement that Echo & the Bunnymen are performing their first two albums, Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here, in their entirety on an upcoming North American tour. Ocean Rain is fine; they played that whole album on tour awhile ago anyway. For my money, though, the gloomy garage rock—“Going Up,” “Over The...