From Paste Magazine, November 2009:
Augusten Burroughs overshares. For almost a decade, the ubiquitous author has plundered his personal life to spit out three memoirs and three collections of personal stories, in addition to a novel. But he says he’s not doing it for the money. “I love preservation,” he tells Paste. ”Writing is the preservation of [...]

Jessica Dobson’s searing voice is at first the most striking element of ethereal trio Deep Sea Diver—until you notice her skill at coaxing beautiful sounds out of a guitar.

It’s surprisingly easy to see similarities between Bierce’s infamous collection of misanthropic, cynical definitions in The Devil’s Dictionary, and the poop joke-smattered tao of Cartman.

After trekking down Elvis Presley Boulevard, following the tacky signs and the scent of hapless tourists, you will find the $10 parking lot wedged between the “Lisa Marie” personal jet and the Heartbreak Hotel. So you plunk down $30 for the cheapest ticket (declining the tour of Elvis’ planes and stables), grabbing your lopsided headphones [...]

From Paste Magazine, May 2010:
Forgettable summer fun.
Free Energy’s debut LP boasts all the youthful zeal of the first day of summer break: kids tumbling down the front steps of school, making a beeline for swim trunks, trampolines and sunburns while flinging homework papers high into the air. Stuck on Nothing‘s gargantuan hooks and snappy “nah-nah-nah-nah’s” [...]

From Paste Magazine, June 2010:
Nine years ago, Stars burst forth with Nightsongs, their intelligent, delirious debut. It was Leonard-Bernstein-does-Europop, surging skyward with a sunny warmth that would inform their subsequent albums, Heart and Set Yourself on Fire. With their newest release, though, that flame has flickered into ash. On The Five Ghosts, the love-letters and sing-songy refrains of Heart are [...]

With her arbitrarily-capitalized alias, painted-and-feathered concert getup and tendency to drop phrases like “sonic recycling,” Merrill Garbus—the sole proprietor of Tune-Yards—risks coming off as yet another belabored, lofty “it’s-not-music-it’s-art” effort.

From SundayPaper.com:
In his new movie “The Rocker,” Rainn Wilson trades in the khaki pants of his uptight paper salesman Dwight Schrute (from NBC’s hit comedy “The Office”) for leather pants (and sometimes no pants at all). The actor stars as Robert “Fish” Fishman, former drummer for a hair-metal group, who gets another shot at fame [...]

“Cerebral allusions to New Order’s quivering synths and Air’s nocturnal dream-pop are buried beneath Mutemath’s thirst for a mainstream audience.”

From PasteMagazine.com:

Social media phenomenon Twitter has spawned gossip, hilarity, feuding (complete with 140-character-or-less zingers), and above all, an exponential decrease in workplace productivity. Independent filmmaker Frank Kelly, however, is seeking to find meaning in Twitter beyond abbreviated witticisms and one-liner celebrity snubs with his latest documentary, 140.

From PasteMagazine.com:
Taylor Hollingsworth is in the middle of professing his love for Natchez blues artist Hound Dog Taylor when a cacophonous wail resonates over the phone line. “Hush, doggies,” he murmurs in his drowsy Alabama drawl. “Sorry ‘bout that…” he says as the baying subsides. “That one’s a beagle.”
Hollingsworth has toured in America, Europe and [...]

“…the foursome weave a dizzying web of traditions into their own rough-hewn sound, dragging vestiges of alt-rock, punk and blues through the mud to achieve an album rife with brash dissonance.”

From RefinedRogue.com:
UPS brown versus club-kid neon. Stiff suiting versus “trendy” acid-wash jeans. These days, the average guy is faced with these no-win situations in nearly every store. Do I go with uptight menswear that belongs in ye olden Amish country, or should I venture into the “hip” territory of deep V-neck t-shirts and men’s leggings? [...]

The album is an enormously complex amalgam of influences that comprise one of their most unconventional works yet, proving that age-old aphorism which Aesop taught us all long ago: slow and steady melts your face.

From The Connector, February 2009:

Antiques — the very word conjures up images of grandma-scented velvet chairs and dusty bureaus strewn with lace doilies. But once you enter the doors of the dark, vast and mysterious Paris on Ponce, you tend to abandon those musty preconceptions as soon as the owners, George and Judi Lee, welcome [...]

From PasteMagazine.com:

Oberst stops whining, grows up, learns to have a little fun

Let’s be honest: Conor Oberst  has an image that he’s dragged around with him like a tear-stained cardigan for about a decade. The whimpering, “dear diary” Conor lamented, wailed, wept and whispered his way to indie-rock stardom as the frontman of Bright Eyes , simultaneously [...]

We’ll start with a basic rule of thumb: if you can see through it when you hold it up to the light, it probably won’t stand up well against a good glass of wine.

From PasteMagazine.com:
Hometown: Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Album: Is It O.K.
For Fans Of: Brandi Carlile , Grace Potter , Bonnie Raitt

In 2001, an 18-year-old girl from a tiny Canadian town sat down at Toronto’s Little India restaurant to have lunch with musician/producer Hawksley Workman. “I’d never even had Indian food at that point, I was such a small-town girl,” Serena [...]

Helm tinges old folk tunes, like Happy Traum’s “Golden Bird,” with a dash of rootsy rusticity, and his leathery voice adds a beautifully threadbare weight to the song.

Clues may be cryptic, but the spectral howls and hauntingly carnivalesque pianos that cloak the album do so in pursuit of a straightforward musical goal.

From PasteMagazine.com:
The Dolls chuck the mascara but keep their glam-rock swagger

Back in the mid-’70s, the New York Dolls  teetered their way to cult status atop platform heels, shredding on the guitars and giving everyone the finger along the way. Now, a Dolls overhaul has resulted in their fourth studio album after 36 years of trash-talkin’ [...]

“I have a constant stream of beer and coffee and Diet Coke,” he explains with the gravelly voice that epitomizes the gritty, bare feel of his debut album.

From The Connector, January 2009:
Most SCAD-Atlanta students are probably familiar with the quirky, colorful neighborhood of Little Five Points. The notoriously rebellious, mohawked area of town is full of eccentric storefronts bearing a hodgepodge of random knick-knacks and vintage goods. One of the largest and most beloved of these shops is Rag-O-Rama, a veritable mecca [...]

Instead of selling plasma for $30 a pop or tap-dancing on street corners for spare change to press a few more LPs, scantily funded artists are hitting up an innovative new website that puts the power to help out in the hands of the fans.

From PasteMagazine.com:
Last month, when we reported on Gonzales’ 27-hour record-breaking concert, we didn’t foresee the controversy it would stir up. Apparently, we failed to give proper due to Mark Mallman , a singer-songwriter who allegedly performed a much longer show a few years ago. The “Marathon Two,” as it is known, sounded like the stuff of [...]

From RefinedRogue.com:
Your cubicle walls are looming in closer and closer with every passing summer day, and the last time you had a “vacation,” it involved a $30/night room in a Super 8 with 20 of your closest fraternity brothers. The daily toil of office life is not for the faint of heart. So when it [...]

[Note: To read the digitized reports of Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill labor spies Winward and Williams, see Georgia Tech's digital collection.]
It happened when the operatives were listening in on the Tuesday night meeting, on June 9, 1914, just as they had been doing for the past week. Winward was having trouble hearing the speaker, [...]

I’ve watched her for the past week. She pads back and forth across the wet dirt, nose to the ground, as though she is looking for a hiding place. Or perhaps mapping out coordinates with her small red paws.

My brother and I, three years apart and always sniffing out trouble, wriggled and giggled our way through the weekly hour of church every Sunday. That hour felt like it stretched into infinity, and when we finally made it home it was like the gate on a horse racing track had been risen. I would [...]

Situation: you have a date with that edgy, cool printmaking major. She’s left the “where to” up to you, and now the pressure is on.