Andrew Stout

SF Weekly Letters

SF Weekly Letters

Top Five Concerts To See in San Francisco This Week

First Aid Kit @ The Fillmore, Wednesday, Oct. 17 If First Aid Kit's music is proof, Stockholm must be much closer to the American South than any maps have had us believe. In "Emmylou," off January's The Lion's Roar, Swedish sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg pay perfect homage to a bevy of America ... More >>

Our Earbud Solitude Isn't the High-Tech Serenity Glenn Gould Predicted

Glenn Gould was born 80 years ago today. To listeners of classical music, Gould was an iconoclastic pianist, most famous for the interpretations of Bach that, in his day, stirred controversy for their relative strangeness. To everyone else, Gould was a broadcaster and essayist. He called himself "th ... More >>

Animal Collective's Deakin and Geologist Talk Miscommunication and Trust Within the Band

For this week's print feature on Animal Collective, I spoke separately with Brian Weitz (a.k.a. "Geologist") and Josh Dibb ("Deakin"). Both were generous with their time and it was about half-way through the second interview, with Dibb, that I noticed a subtext linking both conversations in a way ne ... More >>

Christina Aguilera: The Latest Pop Star To Have Her Way With Marilyn Monroe's Image

I should know better than to step within two time zones of Marilyn Monroe. She has a way of drawing the worst from writers of my gender. Stalwarts from Norman Mailer to Thomas Pynchon have embarrassed themselves, some at greater length than others, trying to mask their macabre and masturbatory impul ... More >>

How Obama and Romney Are Presiding Over the Death of the Campaign Song

Last week in Charlotte, Bill Clinton stepped to a podium in front of his party's delegation and delivered a speech. Maybe you saw it? What I remember are words -- lots of words. Some of them wrapped around statistics, others glaring back at me like bumper stickers on chrome. Clinton's words flowed f ... More >>

Remembering Hal David, Whose Pop Lyrics Portrayed a Very Different 1960s

Mom and Dad are baby boomers. Though they're not just any kind of boomers. They are an underrepresented type, a minority voice within their generation. My parents never liked Bob Dylan and thought the White Album was too weird. So the 1960s that Mom and Dad passed down to me was different from the o ... More >>

Avril Lavigne, Chad Kroeger and How Celebrity Gossip is Misanthropy Without Tears

I've been thinking a lot about Avril Lavigne and The-Guy-From-That-Awful-Band this week. (By the way, the band's name is Nickelback. But from now on, I'll refer to him as TGFTAB, otherwise pronounced "Chad Kroeger," if you're reading this aloud). Maybe you have, too. And now that the initial shock o ... More >>

Background Music Makes Daily Life Worse, Not Better

Is background music necessary? Ever? My favorite sound in the world is the white noise the city makes outside my open window. I hear distant traffic; the arrivals and departures of streetcars; all manner of beeps; the occasional (and always alluring) clacking of high heels; the ascendent smoke ring ... More >>

Elvis Presley and Otis Blackwell's "All Shook Up": The Story Behind the Song

Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, 35 years ago today. A lot of incredible things have happened since then: political stuff and science stuff, mostly. But the post-Elvis development that wows us every time we're reminded of it is the launch of a little S.F. music blog called All Shook ... More >>

Why I Don't Like Going to Shows

I'm guessing a lot of you are recovering from a long weekend spent at Outside Lands. So, with live music still ringing in your ears and overpriced alcohol still traceable in your bloodstream, it seems a good time to talk about a subject several people have brought up to me since last week's column: ... More >>

What to See at Outside Lands: Nine Artists

Sharon Van Etten Wants to Tell You a Story

[This post is part of our week-long preview coverage of Outside Lands 2012. Check out more of All Shook Down's Outside Lands coverage, and catch Sharon Van Etten's set this Friday at 1:15 p.m. on Outside Lands' Sutro stage.] In music today, there's no other instrument quite like it: Sharon Van Ette ... More >>

On Jack White's Crusade Against Social Media at Live Shows

Well, hello! Let's talk about social media at live shows, shall we? IPhones, Twitter, Instagram: I'm all for them. Jack White, on the other hand? He is not. White has taken to posting signs at shows telling his fans that the use of Twitter and Facebook is "strictly prohibited" during his set. (No w ... More >>

Bruce Springsteen and the Universality of Self-Loathing

One way Bruce Springsteen is becoming a lot like the American Psychological Association is how he's assumed special authority over what you and I call our bad times. The medical community does this by coming up with words like neurosis and limerence, whose lasting impact is to trivialize basic human ... More >>

Fiona Apple: Recording the Feelings We're All Too Distracted to Feel

When Fiona Apple's latest album, The Idler Wheel..., leaked last spring, critics immediately singled out the singer's shrieks and screams. Her fervor -- which will be presumably be on display in Apple's sold-out show at the Fox Theater tomorrow, July 28 -- seemed a strange digression from the clever ... More >>

Summer of the NPR Intern Shit Storms: What Austin Cooper's Public Enemy Essay Says About Taste

In many ways, pop culture in 2012 is more sophisticated than ever. Hit TV shows and movies boast plots that are more twisty-turny than was once allowed; the general public's understanding of what Joni Mitchell once called "the star-maker machinery" seems pretty thorough by now; and there seems less ... More >>

How Frank Ocean's Sexual Openness Could Help Liberate His Fans

See also: * Live Review, 7/16/12: Frank Ocean Meets a Sea of Support at the Regency Ballroom * Frank Ocean: The Only Band That Matters In music this year, the moment that has meant the most to me didn't happen while playing a record or attending a show. It happened while reading a Tumblr. On Jul ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Radio Rewrite: How Radiohead Caught Steve Reich's Ear and Vice Versa

Maybe you've heard about Radio Rewrite? It's the next orchestral piece by Steve Reich and is due to premiere in London next March. With Radio Rewrite, Reich hopes to remake two Radiohead songs. Which begs the perfectly fair question: what makes Reich any different from your housemate's shitty band? ... More >>

Justin Bieber's Believe: A First Listen

Like my colleague Andrew Stout, I have mostly managed to avoid Justin Bieber for what I'm pretty sure are good reasons. He's a typical "innocent" white male singer trying to represent universality to nonwhites and nonmales. Then there's his musical blandness: bits that crept through my defenses of " ... More >>

Lana Del Rey's "National Anthem": Trying to Work 'Outside,' But With Nothing New to Say

[Editor's note: The Upsetter is a new weekly column exploring music news and pop history from a perspective that is both bewitched and bothered. Here, Andrew Stout will explode the old clichés of rock journalism to make room for some new ones.] In 1995, Brian Eno took a break from Photoshopping wo ... More >>

His World: My Week of Listening to Justin Bieber

Bieber Fever? Beliebf? Hepatitis Bieb? Whatever folks called it a couple years ago when Justin Bieber's fame spread like a liver infection, it completely passed me by. What I remember most about that time was a colleague telling me the teen sensation was "the real deal." Having never valued authenti ... More >>

I'm Stupidly Obsessed With the Music of 1982, Thanks to Afrika Bambaataa Spinoff "Play at Your Own Risk"

[Editor's note: The Upsetter is a new weekly column exploring music news and pop history from a perspective that is both bewitched and bothered. Here, Andrew Stout will explode the old clichés of rock journalism to make room for some new ones.] Nostalgia's only purpose is to make us dumber -- to m ... More >>

The Upsetter: The Perils of Liking the Flaming Lips

[Editor's note: The Upsetter is a new weekly column exploring music news and pop history from a perspective that is both bewitched and bothered. Here, Andrew Stout will explode the old clichés of rock journalism to make room for some new ones.] My wife, who three years into our marriage fell in lo ... More >>

In Print: Menomena, Scissor Sisters, and the Reunion of Bay Area Metalheads Sleep

​Menomena: "Having long ago eschewed the glitchy breakbeats of its early albums, the Menomena of today is an immaculately spacious rock band," writes Andrew Stout in this week's print edition. "Something vital has changed. Arrangements are stripped to their essentials with nary a wasted note. The ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters