For a lot of girls, there is always that one best friend they can count on. The friend who you’ve had since at least high school, who knows everything about you. The friend you’ve done really stupid things with; the friend who, even in the midst of a giant storm of annoyances, you automatically called when everything was going wrong; and the one friend (who you aren’t fucking) that you can stay up all night with and not get grumpy. So imagine a day …

You know who keeps summer real? Not those fucking hipsters dressed all in black, smoking on the street corner. And not the moms with their too-tanned busts and too-low tank tops, either. It’s not even the perfect people with their perfect bodies lounging by the side of the local beach. No, no, no… It’s the kids running through sprinklers, catching fireflies, and painting their mouths blue, red, and green with a steady diet of freezer pops. It’s kids like 12-year-old Asya and 10-year-old …

The first and only time I’ve seen the Demolition Doll Rods was in the basement of my dorm, thanks to the East Quad Music Co-op. Back in those days (February 2005), whoever was scheduling the shows seemed to have just been picking acts out of a random hat. None of the bands who played that night really had much in common with one another and very few of the fans of those bands had much in common either. Frankly, the night seemed like a …

Every year, the hipsters of the world find a mainstream artist, usually female, who they all simultaneously decide to love. It’s a tradition based on a deceptively simple principle: the songs by this artist of choice might not be that great or original, but damn, are they catchy. Last year’s queen of pop crossover was of course the first ever American Idol, Kelly Clarkson, whose “Since U Been Gone” could be heard pouring out of everyone’s car windows during the summer of 2005. Even …

The Hard Lessons
(with the Avatars and Tyvek)
Live at the Halfway Inn, Ann Arbor, M
Deep in the bowels of U of M’s East Quadrangle, between the laundry machines and the dumpsters, lies the Halfway Inn: a small, fluorescently lit basement dining area, known to natives as “the Halfass.” By day, the Halfass functions as something of a collegiate greasy spoon, serving up diner-quality food – along with overpriced pints of Ben & Jerry’s, loud “underground” music and some of the worst customer service in …

On hearing the Lovetones for the first time, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether the Australian indie-psych outfit is for real. After all, this is a band who name their paisley-tinted second album Meditations; who write songs like “Was I There in Your Future?” and then decorate them with trippy analogue synth atmospherics; who aren’t afraid to drop the occasional prominent sitar line into a bubblegum tune about a girl with “stars inside her hair.” These guys aren’t just your garden-variety walking anachronisms, in other words. They’ve listened to the …