About a year ago, I told myself that I’d stop buying vinyl. I was spending about $50 a month on heavy and fragile disks of plastic that I’d never actually listen to. I have a record player, but it’s spent most of its life at my parents’ house collecting dust. I didn’t have any frames […]
This March, I spent my spring break in Los Angeles. It was my first time visiting, so naturally, I had to see the best of the city’s tourist offerings. The best of Hollywood included the Chinese Theater, the Walk of Fame, and of course, Amoeba Records. After an hour of meandering through the store, flicking […]
Call me old-fashioned, but for me, collecting vinyl is almost like keeping a photo-diary or a homemade VHS cassette. Every record that I own in my collection is a relic of my past – each with a memory attached. “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac was a gift from a former girlfriend; “Land of Pleasure” from a […]
In 1990, as a follow-up to 1988 Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth released Goo, their first album with major label Geffen Records. The black-and-white cover art resembles what a Lichtenstein piece might have looked like if he had taken the sunglass-wearing Velvet Underground as his subjects. It’s goth and apathetic, visually capturing the angst and rebellion […]
It was the fall of 2017! I was a young, bright eyed junior, fresh off a summer filled with Tyler the Creator’s Flower Boy, listening to the interlude “Sometimes” on a Jersey Shore beach on Labor Day weekend. The song blasted from my shitty iPhone speakers at full volume while waves crashed and the sun […]
The greatest gift I ever received was an old Corona Light box from my grandfather. Confused and intrigued as to why I would be receiving this as a 15-year old girl, I was delighted to find that my grandpa was passing on his record collection to me. In the box I found original Beatles albums, […]
Joseph Dabney of Philly band Social Norms joined Sophie Burkholder on air last week to talk about their music and play some songs on air. Their most recent release, Balcony, is available now on Bandcamp.
Just over four decades later, and “Dreams” is back on the Billboard charts. And it’s all thanks to a viral 38 second clip of an all-female all-African American dance troupe doing a routine that happens to perfectly sync up to the song in the background. But, if you ask me, “Dreams” and literally every other […]
Hinds, a female alt-rock group from Madrid, initiates this year’s sound of summer with their new album, I Don’t Run, released on April 6. This album is the follow-up to the hazy garage pop-rock of their 2016 debut, Leave Me Alone. With film photographs as album covers and girlish lyrics of angst, Hinds channels a […]
Last Friday, local Philadelphia rock band RFA hosted a record release show for their new album, Rfa. The four band members that make up RFA met in high school over a shared love of artists like Elvis, The Rolling Stones, and The Strokes. Flash forward six years, and the group is starting to sell out […]
