music blog 116 items | updated Apr 5 2010

Green Day used their obligatory slot on last night's Grammys to premiere and promote American Idiot, the rock opera based on their songs that moves to Broadway starting in April. It's an interesting strategy all around: Make a musical based on a multi-platinum-selling album. Record and release a hybrid cast-plus-band single  after the show's regional debut (at Berkeley Rep), but just in time to sell tickets to previews in New York. I don't particularly object to such a smart, savvy approach from a band still willing to tell Wal-Mart to suck it rather than censor or label their albums.

The performance of "21 Guns" on the Grammys telecast (see above) was big and bold and lush and melodic, though actually only about half as interesting as the stage version I saw in October. The show (which includes all the songs off "American Idiot," a couple of b-sides and a few tracks, like "21 Guns," off "21st Century Breakdown") is a stridently, undeniably political critique of American culture at the end of the millennium, to borrow a phrase from Rent, the musical this show most borrows from itself. The Bush Administration and the US military-industrial complex are equally the villains of the piece, colluding with the mainstream media to create an atmosphere of terminal hopelessness. And "21 Guns" isn't a sweet song about celebrating military prowess or even memorializing dead vets so much as it's a demand for disarmament.

It seems the band is betting on some combination of "oh is that what it's about?" and its major mainstream fame—"American Idiot" has sold some 14 million albums—to overcome any middle America squeamishness about its subject matter. (I'm betting the band's suburban fans will drag Mom and Pop to the show during family vacations to New York City.) And if it's focusing on the soft, sweet bond between its punk rock dads and youthful cast (see below) in order to get off the ground, that's OK by me.



More rock opera at the blog:

+ Return of the concept album

Congratulations to Imogen Heap, who took home a Grammy for engineering her album, "Ellipse"!

Her wifi-enabled dress (check the collar) and signal boosting-parasol may not have been quite as jaw-dropping as Lady Gaga's outfits, but they were eminently more functional.

Current Music is very proud to have five Embedded artists representing in this year's Grammys. We'll be tweeting and blogging about the show tonight, but here's your handy cheat sheet of our home team picks:

+ Silversun Pickups for Best New Artist!

+ Mos Def and Common are both up for Best Rap Album. Mos also has a nod for Best Rap Solo Performance for "Casa Bey," and Common's nommed for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "Make Her Say" with Kid Cudi and Kanye West.

+ Imogen Heap has already scored the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical (she engineered "Ellipse" herself!). She's also up for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for "The Fire."

+ Death Cab for Cutie's EP "The Open Door" is up for Best Alternative Music Album.

Follow us at twitter.com/current_music and here at the blog for more on the show and awards.

Four of our eight featured Embedded artists are in big competition categories at the Grammys—more on each of them this week leading up to the telecast on Sunday—but we're also seeing some interesting coverage of how the Recording Academy is using social media in ways that, while not entirely groundbreaking, are a big step for such a bohemoth of the industry.

From Mashable:

The Academy has always tried to manage and keep very careful control over its message and brand. By embracing social media, that means giving up that control. Because while the Academy can connect directly with fans, fans can also connect back. That means accepting criticism and engaging in a discussion in a public way, something that just isn’t the norm for the Academy.

One of the connective tissues is WereAllFans.com, which features the tribute mash-ups that are being used in TV and print ads—more about the Lady Gaga one here—as well as other real-time data visualization. (Again, not exactly groundbreaking, especially at Current. But: cool. Very cool.)

Go in and poke around some to see how much online noise there is about an artist. Here's a screen shot from when I watched tweets about Silversun Pickups (along with Embedded's Imogen Heap and Common, they are among a short list of artists highlighted on this page).



I added one, using the built-in, unalterable hash-tag, and it hovers for a bit before disappearing into the ether. You can also watch streams of YouTube and Flickr submissions. It was all a bit slow, though—I hope on Sunday night it's working at a power that can keep up with fan commentary online.

Then there's the streaming video and, you know, actual show to contend with. Ratings may have been up last year, and the performance list for this year is strong. But will people really tune in to watch?

From NewTeeVee:

For a full 72 hours leading up to the show, live events and behind-the-scenes footage will be featured [on MySpace]. This includes the Sunday afternoon three-hour pre-telecast awards, the Grammys red carpet, and the after party. “It’s the longest stream any awards show has ever done,” said chief marketing officer Evan Greene, with whom I spoke via phone. However, the actual awards will only be viewable on CBS Sunday night — during the broadcast, past Grammy moments and some behind-the-scenes footage will be shown online instead.

As for post-show, there are some familiar, less groundbreaking challenges to getting the whole thing (or even parts of it) online:

The Recording Academy owns the rights to the actual broadcast material, so archiving and distributing live performances for the web isn’t an instantaneous thing, due to the many rights issues involved. “It’s tough to point to a performance prior to the show and say it’ll be available,” Greene claimed. For one thing, even if the record label approves the song for online distribution, the artist might not be happy with how they performed and will thus not allow it to be distributed. And when artists with different record labels and different representation perform together, such as last year when the Jonas Brothers and Stevie Wonder dueted, that only doubles the complications.

We get a lot of questions about why Current hasn't covered more live music, more festivals, more award shows—the short version is a similar "It's complicated." So in that trickle down intellectual property way, we're completely in favor of major organizations that both benefit artists and are responsible to them pushing boundaries on interactivity and real-time social media implementation.

Of course, come Monday morning it's all likely to get overshadowed by whoever scores the water cooler moment of the night.

More nominees:

+ Watch this now: Fanvids become Grammy ad

+ Silversun Pickups land Best New Artist Grammy nod

Sometimes you really luck out during a shoot and a band is willing to let you peek inside their creative process. When we were Embedded with Cold War Kids, they were still in the very important noodling around phase of wrapping up production of their third album, with some leftover material they weren't sure how to handle (see the clip above, for example).

Some of those songs wound up on the "Behave Yourself" EP, including "Santa Ana Winds," to which we were treated a very acoustic—including kazoo!—rendition. Check out an exclusive performance of the song below.



Watch all of Embedded with Cold War Kids at Current.com.

More from the blog:

+ Notes from the field: Cold War Kids

+ Even rock stars get sick

Chris Roe, who produced, shot and edited tonight's Embedded with Imogen Heap, has made pieces for Current Music about Sole, Sparta and Crispin Glover. He followed Imogen for some early promotion of "Ellipse," online interactions with fans, and the first live performances of her complex electronic songs live.

Most Embedded featured artists were shot by a small team, usually two or three people total. But Chris works alone, so his time with Imogen is almost entirely captured in his work—and some behind the scenes musings he sent over this week:

Everyone calls her Immi but I never did because it felt like a friend thing. When we met up at KCRW—one of the few radio stations in the states that actually played her musi—she had already been followed by cameras for two years during the making of "Ellipse." She was quite used to being on camera. With some artists, it can take a little bit for them to get used to having a camera in their face. I shoot alone, running sound on my hip, so I think that helps people loosen up quickly. There's really no pretentiousness to Imogen. She's an easy person to establish a connection with and it quickly became a goal of mine to portray that in the piece.

Imogen had just learned how to drive before she came to the states. The first day of filming I was trailing her rented black mustang convertible, and while there were a few close calls she did really well. LA is not the kind of place you want to throw a new driver. Later that day it came time to drive out to Sun Valley in search of a screechy instrument called the waterfone. After I had shot enough b-roll of her driving (and singing), she cranked up The Knife so loud it was almost uncomfortable and we drove the rest of the way getting blasted by the sun and "Silent Shout." Having been a fan of her music before the shoot this was a bit of a surreal moment for me.

I love the shot in the piece where she pulls the bow across the waterfone; it makes a terrible sound, there's a pause and she says half to herself "beautiful." If I had to choose one shot in the piece that described her the most that one would be it—strangely I didn't cut it in until my last pass of the waterfone segment; shame on me. We wandered around this place that had thousands of other instruments and it was quickly clear she was in her element.

On our way back, I had about 30 minutes to get my main interview and get her back to the hotel so she could hop on a plane back to England. I had intended on finding a space inside the instrument warehouse, but it just didn't work. We ended up at Griffith park here in LA and found a tree to put her under to escape the heat. While it's a bit bright and contrasty, the interview ended up being in front of this great yellow (i.e. dead) grass. I felt like this was typical Heap, the serendipity that lead us to this spot. It was perfect and i think ended up being unique compared what is the usual interview setup. It only pops up here or there in the piece but when it does it makes a nice statement.

Like our Embedded shoot with Cold War Kids, our "just along for the ride" approach hit a snag when the artist's own health began to show the wear and tear of trave.

Maybe Embedded is jinxed. The same thing that happened on the Cold War Kids shoot happened to me. Imogen came back to the states to start her tour in California. We were scheduled to shoot the second show of the tour, but by the time she arrived she had gotten very sick and had to cancel a show for one of the first times in her career. So the second show became the first show, and because it was the first time they had put on this stage performance everyone was very tense. She was as gracious as ever but the evening was really building to a crescendo and the shoot became all about that. She spent hours before the show rehearsing in the dark behind the curtain programming and reprogramming her triggers. My goal in that segment was to try and show what it requires to pull these things together and how genuine Imogen was even during what was a very stressful night.

Watch an exclusive sneak peek of the episode over at Spinner.com, then tune in tonight at 11pm EST/8pm PST.

Other behind the scenes blog posts:

+ Notes from the field: Cold War Kids

+ Beyond Embedded: Even rock stars get sick

My favorite day of the year is the day that Coachella releases its lineup. I like it more than the actual concert (because I am an idealist.) Today the lineup was released, and it's making my heart skip a beat. (I also just drank lots of coffee, so that could also be the reason.)

I think this is one of the best lineups I've seen in years. The key to a good billing is simple. You need:

1. Bands you have no interest in seeing.


2. Bands that you want to see in all font sizes.

You don't want to like all the bands. If you want to see every band, you'll end up feeling disappointed because you've missed sets. This also provides an important gap in your schedule. For example, I don't care about Public Image Ltd, which means when they perform, I can buy a churro.

Bands billed at different font sizes means they'll play at different times. So you can actually see them perform. If you really wanted to see Muse and DJ Tiësto you'd probably be out of luck, because they will be going on at the same time.

I am excited to see these bands:

Friday: Jay-Z! The Specials! Grizzly Bear! Sleigh Bells! Calle 13! Wale!

Saturday: MGMT! Hot Chip! Gossip! Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes!

Sunday: Pavement! Thom Yorke! Phoenix! Sly and the Family Stone! Matt & Kim! Rusko!

Who are you looking forward to?

Check out Friday's act Passion Pit, on their Embedded Tour Stop.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Amanda Palmer (aided by fiancé AKA "guest" Neil Gaiman) strips down, then redresses on the red carpet of NBC's afterparty. Photo: Jason Merritt"][/caption]

Following Amanda Palmer's twitters from inside the Golden Globes was like having our own secret counter-culture spy sneak in to the Hollywood glam event. (Her just-announced fiancé, graphic novelist Neil Gaiman, was a nominee for the adaptation of Coraline.)

IN WHICH SHE STATES THE OPEN SECRET OF HOLLYWOOD:
this joint is so fucking weird.

IN WHICH SHE TWITPICS HERSELF IN THE LADIES' ROOM:
bathroom break. security thinks I'm hilarious as i stand here self-twitpiccing. http://twitpic.com/yl211

IN WHICH SHE RISKS ARREST:
this is the TelePrompTer. I almost got my phone taken away for this one. #goldenglobes http://twitpic.com/ylb6j

IN WHICH SHE & NEIL COUNT DOWN HOW MUCH LONGER THEY HAVE LEFT:
gettin bored. @neilhimself, with his brush pen, is starting to tick off how many of these fucking award are left. http://twitpic.com/ylflp

IN WHICH SHE TWITPICS OTHER WOMEN IN THE LADIES' ROOM:
the bowels of the ladies room at the #goldenglobes. total fuckshow. http://twitpic.com/ylnk6

IN WHICH SHE LINKS TO PHOTOS OF HERSELF:
DAMN hot picture of yours truly in dress #6 from #goldenglobes last night. NAKED FTW!!! http://twitpic.com/yki00

IN WHICH SHE BECOMES MORE FAMOUS THAN NOMINATED FIANCE:
oh good god. sorry dear. @amandapalmer & "guest" hit GG parties http://bit.ly/6nPTbh

IN WHICH SHE STANDS HER GROUND:
land in boston to find i've, indeed, hit the bigtime and been Fugged. sweet. http://bit.ly/6me56n i stand by it, always.

Watch Amanda talk about how "useless" record labels and traditional forms of marketing yourself have become, in this outtake from Embedded:



More Amanda Palmer at Current.com:

+ Beyond Embedded: Queen of Twitter

+ Notes from the field: Tour Stop with Amanda Palmer

Memphis' The Commercial Appeal confirms that Jimmy Jay Lindsey, aka Jay Reatard was found dead in his home early this morning.

Reatard was known for his garage-punk sound, and on-stage antics recently strayed from the conventional album. Instead he created a monthly singles project with Matador Records.

He was featured in a 2008 Current Music piece, as having one of the most memorable stage fights in recent memory.

I passed along on twitter yesterday a piece on NewTeeVee once again lamenting the sad state of record label affairs that block embedding of many music videos. Videos are often also geoblocked, meaning they're not viewable in many non-US countries.

The indie rock band was but a blip on the mainstream music scene until 2006, when it made jaws drop with the viral smash video for Here It Goes Again. Four dudes took eight treadmills and made one of the most joyful and exuberant music videos of the 2000s, and its online success (currently approaching 50 million views on YouTube) created a worldwide audience for the band.

However, last Friday OK Go premiered a stunt-heavy music video for the new single This Too Shall Pass, featuring a cast of 200 — including the Notre Dame marching band — who perform the tune in one take, with some fun surprises along the way. Alas, though, the video has so far only acquired about 10,500 views, which is surely disappointing to the band, yet easily explained: The video is geoblocked by Capitol Records in many international locations, and embedding in all regions has been disabled.

That's, sadly, business as usual for major label releases these days, as we lamented last year in this blog post.

So I'm both amused and encouraged that OK Go's own singer, Damian Kulash, took the time to comment himself on NTV's blog:

We’re incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can’t be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well. The TTSP video will be on vimeo today. This kind of fragmentation means we’ll probably never see the likes of 50 million hits on a single posting ever again, but who cares?

Here it is on Vimeo:



OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

I love this new ad for the Grammys that uses fanvids set to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face." (There's a similarly clever take on the print and online ads at their official site.)

I don't love this just because it's the mark of a great pop song how often it's reinterpreted—this is an amazing example of a major, relatively old-school music institution taking user-created content and transforming it into something that's compelling to watch on its own.

Hmm, sound familiar? Here's an experiment we did with My Morning Jacket to capture a live show using the audience's footage:



Seen any other great examples lately of fan footage being taken to the next level? Drop a comment or an email to shana at current dot com and let me know.

They say:

Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times

The rhythms seem stale, predictable and at times ennervating (slowing to a crawl on "Diplomat's Son," a misguided dalliance with dub reggae); the hooks are much skimpier and less memorable, and bandleader and primary songwriter Ezra Koenig has even less insight to offer while bragging of his groovy globetrotting: His idea of insight into our polyglot culture is to brag of drinking horchata, a milky Mexican concoction made from rice, while wearing a balaclava, a Ukrainian ski mask.

The Independent:

Quite literally, a world of fun.

Stereogum:

Once you start really taking the tracks apart, they start opening up in the hook department and it becomes clear they've gone deeper with the production, and emotion.

Entertainment Weekly:

Contra inevitably lacks the slaphappy dazzle of breakout singles like ''A Punk'' and ''Oxford Comma.'' ... If the lyrics sometimes seem to showboat their 10-carat educations (look, Ma, three continents!), the music remains happily inclusive: somewhere between limbo contest on the lido deck and cocktail hour in Cape Cod.

Rolling Stone:

If Vampire Weekend was Rushmore, Contra is their Royal Tenenbaums: brainy, confident and generally awesome.

You say:

@musictweetmusic The album SMOKES...

@aerogare It's like Franz Ferdinand's second album: rather good in its own right but not as good as the début.

@straightgangsta I haven't even listened to it yet and I know it's good haha.

@andyfortson I think it's meh. The singles are good. The rest sounds like b-sides to the last album.

@JeffD44 I wasn't a fan of their debut, but diggin the new VW Contra, it's less chirpy, and feels a lot more textured and adventurous

I say:

I loved Vampire Weekend's last album before it was all that cool and long after it was declared totally over. I spent a lot of that year traveling back and forth to New York and then up and down the East Coast, and the songs had a great "we've all gone to look for America" modern Simon & Garfunkel vibe, very my-life-is-a-Zach-Braff-movie-soundtrack.

Then this year I discovered fun., who share a certain indie-pop sensibility of quirky, plunky melodies and verbosity. But fun.'s "Aim and Ignite"—definitely in my top 10 for 2009—lacks the pretentious English major issues that keep Vampire Weekend from truly being, well, fun. Last week I was driving along the California coast on a brilliantly warm and sunny winter day, listening to "Aim and Ignite"  (I know, my life is so hard), and I realized, I think fun. has made Vampire Weekend kind of irrelevant to my life. Then I heard "Contra" and couldn't come up with any good way to refute that. It's not a bad album, but I found it pretty boring. I've heard it before. And if I'm going to listen to something I already have, I'm going back to fun.

Here's the video for fun.'s "All the Pretty Girls," one of 10 absurdly enjoyable tracks off their debut album:



Earlier unfounded opinions:

+ Two holiday treats

+ We were there: fun. in LA

Pay attention. There will be a quiz.

1. A section of our new Embedded with Cold War Kids is shot near the Cal Neva resort in Lake Tahoe—a beautiful view also showcased in the Godfather movies:



According to this guide to movies shot in Nevada:

Key Nevada action starts in 1958 as a Corleone child receives his first communion at Tahoe, followed by a celebration at the family's lakeside mansion. The real-life Sam Giancana/Frank Sinatra history at the Cal-Neva Lodge gives Tahoe a historical connection with the mob that made sense to audiences. It's also easy to believe that people with money–dirty or clean–would be drawn to Tahoe's beauty and a compound like the Kaiser Estate. The splendor and peace of Tahoe make a perfect backdrop for a sequence that pits Michael against his brother Fredo in a way that would have horrified their father. The scene in which Fredo goes out on a boat, silhouetted against a darkening, stormy sky, is a classic instance of location melding with action to create unforgettable cinema.

2. While shooting green screen footage for our Make Common's Day video call-out, Common—who appeared in the mob movie Smokin' Aces— taped his five favorite films of all time for the Rotten Tomatoes Show. At number one is, of course:



3. And then there's Washington, DC, where Michael Corelone did time in front of a Congressional inquiry in Part 2. As far as we know, hometown DJs Thievery Corporation never had to actually appear before Congress—but they did suffer a suspiciously timed audit following an anti-war concert they staged in 2003.



Did we miss some other Embedded/Godfather connection? Come up with a serious contender and we'll send you a special gift pack of thanks.

Most Embedded shoots start out with an idea from an artist: Hey, come to Japan! Hey, let's throw a secret show! As much as possible, we're just along for the ride. But what happens when the ride comes to a sudden, screeching halt?

Senior producer Alex Simmons flew up to Reno to join Cold War Kids on a leg of their tour, planning to tag along for most of a week. But the band—which has been touring steadily since approximately 1981, it seems—was unexpectedly derailed. Alex says:

When we went up to Lake Tahoe we were supposed to film that show, then two more days with the band in Sacramento and San Francisco. The morning after the Tahoe show we woke up to find out that [singer] Nate [Willet]'s voice was gone and they were cancelling the next two dates, something that hadn’t done in something like 500 shows. We immediately jumped in our rental car and barely made it back to Reno for a flight back home.

We stayed at the Cal Neva resort, right next to the Crystal Bay Casino where the show was held. The Cal Neva has a crazy history with ties to Sinatra, the Kennedy family and the mafia (you may remember it from The Godfather).

Shooting a band while they're in that post-album, pre-followup period—the band had been touring in support of 2008's "Loyalty to Loyalty"—can sometimes yield unexpected breakthrough moments.

I love that the song "Santa Ana Winds" mentions Joan Didion. When we filmed the session for that song, the guys weren’t sure what they were going to do with it, but in the end they decided to release it as part of their “Behave Yourself” EP.

Check the unconventional teaser trailer for "Behave Yourself," out now on iTunes and on vinyl and CD January 19. Get more info at their official site.

Watch a preview for tonight's show below, then tune in at 11pm EST/8pm PST.

My New Year's resolution was to do a better job of plowing through the publicist pitches, stacks of CDs and word-of-mouth "hey did you hear this it's really fucking awesome" demands that I listen to new music.

Today I bravely made it all the way through new albums from Vampire Weekend, Ke$ha and Butch Walker. (I don't know, those were the three that seemed most likely to at least keep me awake on the first day back?) I'll have more about each this week.

Here's what you want to hear from upcoming releases:

@starbright31 Spoon!!!

@shocktrtmntmgmt ummm... @cars_and_trains new album. http://bit.ly/5F1piX Also hoping to catch the show in PDX on Thursday @ the Doug Fir

@KrisjeLena looking forward to the new Delphic .. very much!

@Alchey Lukas Rossi on itunes w/ two new cds! The Unreleased Demos & The Hope Recordings! They are freakin amazing!! Love them!

@taryninstereo Laura Veirs! Love the tracks "Summer is the Champion" and "Life is Good Blues".

@matthenslee Vampire Weekend - Contra

@SMKA The 808 Experiment: Vol 2....http://bit.ly/59Mrcj (Just ask anyone in Atlanta)

Anyone else?

This Wednesday we've got a special bonus episode of Embedded with the always fiery, sometimes shy indie rockers Cold War Kids. The band performs at a Lake Tahoe casino, battles their own immune systems and shows off their home base studio in Long Beach, California.

Check out these beautiful photos from the Tahoe shoot and the unconventional teaser trailer for their EP, "Behave Yourself," out January 19.

If you were too busy, you know, celebrating New Year's Eve somewhere nowhere near your house, you have a good excuse for not yet having watched the Embedded Tour Stop Specials.

But now there's no excuse at all:







Every day, we'll be highlighting one of the 15 amazing bands featured in these specials, so keep an eye on the blog.

Join Current Music on New Year’s Eve for a marathon of all six parts of Embedded—plus three brand new special episodes where we follow road-weary musicians as they break free from life on tour.

You've seen our Tour Stops before—we staged a secret Tweet-up show with Amanda Palmer, partied on a boat with Passion Pit, shopped for thrift-store scores with Lykke Li and classic hip-hop records with K'Naan, and took miniature photos with Death Cab for Cutie's Nick Harmer—but on Thursday we'll premiere 15 all-new Tour Stops.

+ Embedded Tour Stop Special with Elvis Perkins, Raphael Saadiq, Sebastien Tellier, Emiliana Torrini & Les Savy Fav. Premieres December 31 at 8:30pm EST.

+ Embedded Tour Stop Special with White Rabbits, Black Lips, Jason Isbell, Fucked Up & Amazing Baby. Premieres December 31 at 10pm EST.

+ Embedded Tour Stop Special with Moby, Josh Ritter, Nipsey Hussle, Telepathé & Zee Avi. Premieres December 31 at 11:30pm EST.

Got big plans for NYE? Catch Embedded on New Year’s Day or over the weekend, too!

Here’s when to turn on the TV:

+ Thursday night: 12/31 starting at 7pm EST/4pm PST, then again starting at 12 midnight EST/9pm PST.
+ Friday afternoon: 1/1 starting at 4pm EST/1pm PST
+ Saturday morning: 1/2 starting at 10am EST/7am PST
+ Sunday afternoon: 1/3 starting at 5pm EST/2pm EST

And, of course, once they've aired you'll be able to watch all 15 Tour Stops at current.com/tourstop, plus our channels on Hulu, YouTube and MySpace.

Let me know who you're most excited to see on New Year's Eve and I'll do my best to dig up some behind-the-scenes details from our producers!

From a super-smart piece by Los Angeles Times' music critic (and a personal hero of mine) Ann Powers, about the state of music at the end of the decade:

The most fascinating personalities of this new era would never present themselves as unwashed or genuinely unplugged. They're show people who are able to dance, crack jokes and work all the knobs that power their multimedia extravaganzas. Eminem and Britney Spears, will.i.am and Kanye West, M.I.A. and OutKast, Rihanna and Lil Wayne: In nearly every niche, millennial artists have shown a marked preference for artifice over raw expression, costume and theatrics over plain presentation and foregrounding the tools they use to make music over pretending that it all comes "naturally." ...

Then there's Radiohead. It's impossible to find a more earnest embodiment of that central unit of authentic rock, the band, today. Yet no matter how scruffy the image of Thom Yorke and company, Radiohead's music runs on the illusions and nightmares of the post-millennial world. Using club beats and the fragmented compositional structures of contemporary classical music, Radiohead writes little operas for paranoid androids and mutant fishes in the information stream.

I like the way she constructs "artifice" here as not necessarily an antonym to sincerity, just as another way to present art. What do you think?

More artifice at the blog:

+ Imogen Heap live (and plugged in) in Seattle

+ Tilt-Shift fakes with Nick Harmer

+ Lady Gaga's little shop of horrors