On our continuing mission to unmask the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, we sought out the secretive electronic musician for a lengthy interview. BMC agreed, under one condition: that we use a text-only method. We interviewed the Cylinder by electronic carrier pigeon. Conor: In the spirit of dorky icebreaker games, I would like to know the following: […]Read This
Hot Take: Run the Jewels, Ska, Life Boy, etc.
Run the Jewels have always performed rabble-rousing rap, so naturally they got Conor and Will arguing--about buddy cops and Christmas movies??Read This
What did typists do to deserve Bon Iver’s new album?
The below review was written by Will Boogert and Conor Fellin as they listened to Bon Iver’s 22, A Million for the first time. They started writing when the album began, and stopped typing when the album ended. Except for grammar (and a few hyperlinks added to explain what the hell we were thinking), the […]Read This
Wilco’s Schmilco, Schmilco’s Schmilco
The below review was written by Will Boogert and Conor Fellin as they listened to Wilco’s Schmilco for the first time. They started writing when the album began, and stopped typing when the album ended. Except for grammar, the review has not been changed since that moment.Read This
Whispering into a Recorder: Chris Gethard’s Beautiful/Anonymous
It was the decorated feature journalist Michael Overall who first introduced me to the idea that awkward silences were an interviewer’s friend. Your subject generally knows what’s interesting about their story, he told the handful of student journalists that had shown up to his Q&A session. A long pause after an answer can give them […]Read This
69 Love Songs Is Like a Triple Album
69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields is a magnum opus of pop if there ever was one. Delivering no fewer than the promised 69 songs, the album serves as a veritable encyclopedia of pop music and of the relationships contained therein. Its three-hour runtime can make it a daunting listen, so Conor and Will […]Read This
The Hot Take: Innocence Reaches, of Montreal
The below review was written by Will Boogert and Conor Fellin as they listened to of Montreal’s Innocence Reaches for the first time. They started writing when the album began, and stopped typing when the album ended. Except for grammar, the review has not been changed since that moment. “Let’s Relate” Conor: Not sure how […]Read This
Rail Gaze CD Club: Hearts and Bones, Paul Simon
Hearts and Bones is an easy album to overlook. Coming before it were four solo albums that sold better than it and had the hit singles it lacked. Coming after it was Graceland, which would justly receive universal recognition as Simon’s best album. And yet it’s Hearts and Bones that I find myself coming back […]Read This
Breaking Down Breakmaster Cylinder
I just don’t wanna be out there. I don’t matter. It’s nice to be any / every / nobody. –Breakmaster Cylinder, in an interview with Exolymph Conor and Will are sitting at a pair of microphones in a mid-budget recording studio, recording their commentary on Reply All. Conor: There you have it: the whole animal […]Read This
On Our Turntable: “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” Bob Dylan
Blood on the Tracks is the album where the sprawling milieus of Highway 61 Revisited finally solidified and started to resemble narratives. This is evident on “Tangled Up in Blue,” but it’s even clearer on “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” For all the complications, its story of marital infidelity is pretty easy to […]Read This