From Within

As the year comes to a close (and the decade as well), the time comes to make opinionated and frustrating ordinal lists of the "best"s everything for the year--singles, albums, live shows, ad nauseam. It's fun to read for sure but it's a task that's difficult to process for us here. We've done countdowns the previous two years and it's one of the most argued about things we've ever come across, so this year we bring a sea change. We're presenting our list of the twenty-four best records of 2009 in no particular order whatsoever . We're so thankful for the music we've been able to listen to and experience both at home and in the live setting, and this list is compiled from the most memorable hit-points of the story of 2009, a year that's taken so much away from us all (the "summer of death") but has given us all so much to be truly thankful for. There were so many standout tracks and albums, we had to limit our list significantly (you should see the scrawled and scribbled-over notebook pages we used to ponder this list) but these twenty-four represent for us the best lot from the year that brought forth so much. Please enjoy. Read More

I am gripped by the soul stirring music of Tchaikovsky. Read More

A celebrity sex tape can go a long way toward reality stardom, as we've seen with everyone from Paris Hilton to Kim Kardashian. Read More

For those of you who happen to have been subjected to Karaoke, my heartfelt apologies from the music industry. Read More

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known to the world as Lady Gaga, has had a meteoric rise in the world of pop music with the release of her debut album The Fame . Read More

It is no coincidence that the music in Cubist reinvigorates the concepts presented by the Cubist movement in the early 20th century. Read More

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The lights went down at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and a single chair, tiny on the stage, emphasized the fact that the evening's concert would consist of one musician and one instrument alone in the large, newly refurbished auditorium. Read More

There are so many great events over the next couple weeks, I just wish I could be in more places at once. Read More

On the Sixth Day God Created Man…chester: Part 1 ; Part 2 and; Part 3 "Has rock and pop music ever seemed so thoroughly knackered, so stumped for inspiration as it did in 2000?" asked The Guardian 's Alexis Petridis in a reflective preamble to his glowing review of Elbow's Mercury Award-winning 2008 album, The Seldom Seen Kid . ( Read More