Word: albums
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...Harvard students flock to campus in dewy-eyed obscurity, it’s safe to say that only one has already accomplished the rock star trifecta: multi-platinum album sales, critical acclaim, and—the holy grail—an appearance on MTV’s “Cribs”: Incubus guitarist Mike A. Einziger. FM’s paparazzi tracked down the rock star-cum-graduate student for fifteen questions...
Allan and his band are making a habit of defying preconceptions. While the soundtrack to 2008 is all jangling indie guitars and retro '80s bleeping, the Scottish band's much heralded debut album, released on Sept. 8, boasts a mile-high Phil Spector-style "wall of sound" built - as it was by fellow Glaswegians the Jesus and Mary Chain - with brooding, layered guitars and pounding rhythms. Those expansive, girl-group arrangements are the epic backdrops to Glasvegas' brave and brutal lyrics. "Where Spector came from I guess is quite a good place to go if you want to land some...
Nobody can accuse the band of cowardice. The opening song on the album, Flowers and Football Tops, is inspired by the racist 2004 murder of a 15-year-old, while Go Square Go captures the pounding, fearful heart of a school fight - all delivered with Allan's uncompromising accent that makes the Proclaimers' broad Edinburgh brogue sound like plummy royalty...
...lines of Glasgow's state schools. "I was at a Catholic school, he was at a Protestant school," James says, nodding to his cousin Rab, who has joined him in the bar. "Our mums are twins," adds Rab, without clarifying further. Allan's feelings about this division inform the album's haunting, hymn-like final track Ice Cream Van, a paean to a better place, a world free of sectarianism and hate. It's hard to imagine any other trendy indie band credited with nailing the zeitgeist writing something as bold as a message. But Glasvegas leave us with this...
...Hirst also seems to have a second father figure - the painter Francis Bacon, who died in 1992. Hirst says Bacon's bleak, tumultuous work made an impression on him early: "It was like album-cover art. It was gory, high impact. When you're young you love that kind of stuff. But then I started painting, and everything I was painting was kind of shit Bacons, really bad copies. So I gave...