Stephen Thompson

First Listen: G&D, 'The Lighthouse'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:18:37 +0000

Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins (a.k.a. Declaime) have worked together and separately for years now, trafficking in funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelic space-rock, spoken-word poetry, protest music and more.

We Get Mail: How Can A Vinyl Lover Start Over From Scratch?

Stephen Thompson — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:37:09 +0000

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the ironic promotional cassingles is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how a regretful fan of vinyl records can re-create her discarded collection.

Kirsten Elbourne Mathieson writes: "I'm big-time regretting getting rid of all of my record albums years ago. Any advice for someone starting from scratch with vinyl after all these years?

Jittery Jams: 10 Songs For Coffee Lovers

Stephen Thompson — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:52:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb5qqoQgPlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVGXcjM9SOQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUx5z9O2ZGk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WfQN_M1pQc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZk2LYsBIi8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxS7Q64xUQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFURd_EOIuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzMS_YrgFk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk_wVO7NBMQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oqXVx3sBOk

First Listen: Mother Falcon, 'You Knew'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:51:51 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
A super-sized chamber-rock collective from Austin, Texas, Mother Falcon constructs sweepingly majestic rock out of a nine-piece string section, multiple horns, a bassoon, a glockenspiel and a diverse assortment of voices that sing and shout to the rafters. The band makes the most of those many moving parts — its songs shimmer and boom with infectious joy — but Mother Falcon doesn't skimp on the songwriting, either.

First Listen: Steve Martin And Edie Brickell, 'Love Has Come For You'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:42:28 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
For all his wry self-deprecation, Steve Martin has never been a musical tourist: The actor, comedian and author has been passionate about the banjo for decades, and trotted it out on stage at every opportunity in the years leading up to his decorated recording career.

First Listen: Laura Mvula, 'Sing To The Moon'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:40:36 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
The massive commercial success of Adele and Amy Winehouse guaranteed an avalanche of high-profile U.K. soul singers, particularly the kind whose music harkens back to brassy '60s soul.

First Listen: The Flaming Lips, 'The Terror'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:42:55 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
After nearly 30 years, The Flaming Lips couldn't be harder to predict or pin down. The Oklahoma band has nothing left to prove — no lofty commercial standard to maintain, no gigantic hit of the variety anyone expects it to re-create, and no core sound whose boundaries and limitations must be pressed against with great care.

First Listen: Shuggie Otis, 'Inspiration Information/Wings Of Love'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:41:12 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
Shuggie Otis has long been adjacent to worldwide stardom. His late father, the R&B legend Johnny Otis, is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

First Listen: Iron And Wine, 'Ghost On Ghost'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:37:57 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
No one's ever been voted Least Likely To Lead An 11-Piece Band, but if such an honor had been bestowed 12 years ago, Sam Beam would've been a frontrunner. A shy, prolifically bearded academic, Beam started out making whisper-quiet bedroom recordings — just his voice and an acoustic guitar, issuing bleakly poignant songs about troubled lives and worried minds.

First Listen: Villagers, '{Awayland}'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:53:24 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
In the past, calling Villagers a band has been a misnomer: From its inception, it's been little more than an alias for Conor O'Brien, a singer-songwriter from Dublin with a flair for the dramatic and a gift for creating rich arrangements out of instruments he's played himself.

First Listen: Telekinesis, 'Dormarion'

Stephen Thompson — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:27:20 +0000
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Michael Benjamin Lerner crafts songs that embody control and precision — which makes a whole lot of sense, given that he's 1) a drummer at heart; and 2) Telekinesis' only member.

First Listen: Low, 'The Invisible Way'

Stephen Thompson — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:57:23 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
In 20 years, Low's basic ingredients haven't changed much: Guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker swap and sometimes layer their vocals, with a third member joining the married couple on bass. The pace, for the most part, is kept deliberate, even glacial, with strategically deployed silence hanging between notes in order to enhance their power.

Baby Bands, Pop Stars And Room-Filling Joy: What To Expect At SXSW 2013

Stephen Thompson — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 20:50:00 +0000
Listen to Stephen Thompson's conversation with Audie Cornish on All Things Considered by clicking the audio link.
The South by Southwest music festival kicked off Tuesday with the first of five straight nights of music overload: The clubs, makeshift music venues and front porches of Austin, Texas, were overrun with little-known discoveries-in-waiting and big names alike, as well as tens of thousands of fans who have flocked to the city in search of epiphanies.
Finding a prevailing trend at SXSW isn't easy; the festival is like 50 events in one, so it's possible t

The Mix: The Austin 100

Stephen Thompson — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:08:49 +0000
Audio for The Austin 100 is no longer available.
It says a lot about SXSW's size and scope that this "sampler" of the annual music festival spans six and a half hours, but here we are: 100 songs by 100 artists worth discovering at this year's big event.
Handpicked from among thousands of artists, this genre-traversing playlist picks highlights, discoveries and future thrills from this year's festival — and, for the next 30 days, it's available for free download in its entirety, as one 813 MB zip file, right here.

First Listen: Devendra Banhart, 'Mala'

Stephen Thompson — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:23:29 +0000
For a guy who gets tagged with a lot of limiting descriptors — "freak folk," "hippie" and so forth — Devendra Banhart doesn't like to let his music sit in any spot for long.

First Listen: Jimi Hendrix, 'People, Hell And Angels'

Stephen Thompson — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:23:55 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
Given that Jimi Hendrix has been dead for more than four decades, the visionary guitarist has remained awfully prolific: He left behind a formidable tape library, full of alternate takes, discarded ideas and collaborations of varying quality, and those materials have been mined in the making of far more albums and compilations than he churned out during his 27 years.

First Listen: Josh Ritter, 'The Beast In Its Tracks'

Stephen Thompson — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:21:41 +0000
As one of the most thoughtful singer-songwriters around, Josh Ritter isn't one to write angry, over-the-top, knee-jerk breakup songs — even though his new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, was written entirely in response to his own recent divorce.

First Listen: Shout Out Louds, 'Optica'

Stephen Thompson — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 02:59:23 +0000
Audio for this feature is no longer available.
Say what you will about some of the biggest songs of the 1980s — go ahead and badmouth electric pianos, and by all means bemoan the prevailing production quality — but the decade continues to cast a long shadow over popular music.

First Listen: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, 'Push The Sky Away'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:58:52 +0000
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Seedy and slick, grandiose and intimate, mysterious and matter-of-fact, Nick Cave's songs unfold like short stories from bygone eras — that is, until Hannah Montana and Wikipedia make their jarring appearances.

First Listen: 'Son Of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys'

Stephen Thompson — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:47:42 +0000
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As its title suggests, Son of Rogues Gallery isn't the first overstuffed collection of what it dubs "Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys." The first Rogues Gallery compilation, dreamt up by the Pirates of the Caribbean team of Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski, came out in 2006 with the help of an all-star cast; Nick Cave, Sting,