Index | Daytrotter: index

The Daytrotter Index

A Week With TV On The Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain": Day 4

29 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ally Ritchie
What I don’t want to do is listen to this record the same way I listen to every other rock and roll record I listen to. That said, the issue hasn’t been forced. It hasn’t been difficult to foster a new approach for sitting down with “Return to Cookie Mountain.”

Read the story »

Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players: The Family That Sings About Eggs Together Stays Together

29 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ryan Flynn
Just outside my bedroom window this morning, were the sounds of backyard commerce. The night before, the chiropractic student living on the other side of our duplex asked if we had any objections to having a yard sale to get rid of everything she owned and didn’t want to have to deal with anymore when she traveled halfway across the country, back to where she was raised and had most of her family.

Read the story »

Owen Lasso'd

Owen's Mike Kinsella Gets Lasso'd

28 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Able Brown
The songs on Mike Kinsella’s latest Owen record “At Home With Owen” don’t seem to be about his home life at all (but he does have over a month left until the Nov....

Read the story »

The Advantage review

The Advantage: 8-Bit Music For The Reality-Oriented

27 September 06

Words by Justin Hurty//Illustration by Ryan Flynn
We as a generation are fairly keen to beginning life in the hyper-advanced and technologically overwhelming post-post-postmodern world. This beginning for many of us was a gray box with red letters that had controllers, and games. Some will argue that Kong, or Ms. Pac-Man, or Centipede began the transition out of the innocent age of telephones and board games, but it is the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System that cemented our relationship to things plugged into the T.V.

Read the story »

A Week With TV On The Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain": Day 3

26 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ally Ritchie
This seems like a fine day for bananafish and to write about “Dirtywhirl,” one of the most electrifying tracks from “Return to Cookie Mountain.”

Read the story »

Jackass

Jackass: Number Two -- Death Toll Remains Zero, Moms Remain Pissed

25 September 06

Words by Gabe Durham//Illustration by Josh Frankel

At the 11:00 show on opening night, the theatre was packed full of loud, sweaty men, aged 18-to-35, and boys who convinced the men to pretend to be their guardians. The air was so thick with testosterone, I could have sworn it was Super Bowl Sunday. The gathering was the kind of niche market advertisers dream about: Where else but at a Jackass movie can you cram into one room a couple hundred guys who will shell out $10 to see a man drinking horse semen?

Read the story »

Doveman

Doveman: So They Come Barbed With Insomnia For A Birth Mother

25 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Johnnie Cluney

Free Daytrotter Session Songs (Don’t miss this page!)

Thomas Bartlett doesn’t write ballads. To know this is just to possess the logical wherewithal to understand that no one, man or woman is seduced by a well-concealed switchblade or a frothy, rabid growling. One might share a beer after the exchange of such sentiments, but on no occasion will one be quick to lie in close and press warmth to warmth with another after such a thing has occurred. One would be crazy to do so. Somebody would get hurt is how the trite and familiar warning might go. It’s a long-winded way of getting back to the beginning and making it perfectly clear that Doveman, the musical project that Bartlett fronts out of New York City is not wimpy or coy with any of the words you think you may or may not hear on its debut full-length “The Acrobat.” They do not write ballads for ballads are usually fuzzy and these songs are barbed. It’s best to approach his songs the way a beekeeper or a snake charmer would – with the utmost care and respect. Find yourself all the protection in the world. In this case, the pain is mightier than the sword. Bartlett has been stung and wronged and saddened and when any of those three things happen, he turns those shitty experiences into songs that sound like they were taken from the soundtrack to Makeout City, volumes one, two and three. They have that overall feel of bed sheets getting pulled directly out of the dryer and placed up to chilly cheekbones, but it’s mostly a decoy, a way to distract the mind from something inevitably less comforting. Bartlett writes some of his lyrics, it seems, with dual purpose, lacing them with poison or just constructing them with an invisible liner that lures the ear in and then takes a nibble before it’s suspected a thing. You think Damien Rice and Antony and the Johnsons, but then you’re nailed with a blackened heart, naively fooled into falling for that old joke about Bangkok (What’s the capital of Thailand? Don’t know? The punchline gets pretty literal and the disruption in the belly feels about the way the original feelings do that Bartlett goes after).

Read the story »

A Week With TV On The Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain": Day 2

23 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ally Ritchie
Not only does this record defy gravity, but it puts a spell on you. Without really meaning to fall for it, the angularity and the significance of this one vision—shrouded in a return to a mountain made out of cookies, like something that would have been addressed in “Goonies” or “Follow That Bird,” wherein Big Bird is looking for his real parents and thinks they’re dodos—that’s gripping and much more serious than a Sesame Street spin-off.

Read the story »

A Week With TV On The Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain": Day 1

21 September 06

Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Ally Ritchie
There’s this record store near here with a sign, written on what looks like a torn off hinge of a white Von Maur gift box that flannels or sweaters get exchanged in come the holiday season.

Read the story »

Hockey Night Lasso'd

Hockey Night Gets Lasso'd

21 September 06

Nope, you’re thinking of The Zambonis. With that, you can just about imagine for yourself the disgust Hockey Night lead singer Paul Sprangers would have in his face right before he slammed a little boat of cheese fries into the...

Read the story »