Anthony Fantano
Critic
1985-10-28
Anthony Fantano is an American music critic, YouTuber, and journalist. He is best known for publishing album reviews on The Needle Drop.
Quotes by Anthony Fantano
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The group disbanded prematurely in 1983, but its records made a sizable mark: Mission of Burma became a band's band; leaving noticeable impressions on the likes of Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo.
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Cryptic messages and abstract statements are littered throughout the music of Happy Birthday, but it hasn't made the band's sun-baked pop-rock any less infectious.
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If you want to truly take in the subtleties and detail of your favorite records, then enjoy them the same way you would a movie. Make music an event, not a side dish.
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If music ever needs FDA approval in the future, bands like this will be the reason why; Magic Kids' sugar-coated songs paint a mental picture of smiling clouds and double rainbows, with a unicorn or two tossed in for good measure.
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In music, trends are always rising and fading in popularity, but nostalgia never dies.
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If Death Grips isn't the fourth horseman of a hip-hop apocalypse, its music at least tests the genre's threshold of extremity: The trio's abrasive, jittery style teeters on the edge of palatability, and plays toward a morbid curiosity to which many listeners won't succumb.
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The U.K. trio Let's Wrestle doesn't make music for its art, but for its attitude.
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Since reuniting in 2002, Mission of Burma has become the triumphant story of a band that time forgot.
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On its fifth full-length album, 'Cervantine,' A Hawk and a Hacksaw's love of the Balkans continues unabated, but with new songs and collaborators. In 'Uskudar,' the music finds an equal balance of sweet, sour and earthy sounds with nimble string melodies and a grunting tuba.
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I always liked popping up in a place, inviting my fans out, and then having a discourse with them in person. That's what I try to do with 'The Needle Drop,' even though it's difficult to have a two-way conversation.
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Justin Broadrick's career isn't widely celebrated, but it's still shockingly uncompromising. From his place at the beginning of grindcore with Napalm Death to his role in Godflesh's expansion of industrial metal, the U.K. musician specializes in artistic hairpin turns.
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Bands such as LiLiPUT and Essential Logic were just as unorthodox as Gang of Four or Wire, even taking their sounds a step further with shrieking vocals and saxophone.
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A Hawk and a Hacksaw may be from America, but the band's music sure isn't: Since the beginning, Eastern Europe has been an unwavering source of musical inspiration, not to mention fertile touring ground, for the group.
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Ab-Souls Outro' serves as a jazzy, spoken summation of 'Section.80's themes. Guest cohort Ab-Soul opens the song with one urgent verse after another: Flowing freely like the saxophone behind him, his words advocate veering outside life's most predictable pathways.
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After a casual listen, it might be easy to lump Rocky Votolato in with the downtrodden likes of Conor Oberst and Elliott Smith. But his songwriting is a bit more triumphant than theirs: Votolato would rather pull himself out of a gutter than wallow in it, focusing instead on the victory before the misery.
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The TV show 'How It's Made' brings the intricate details of assembly lines to numerous North American living rooms. But if the series were to ever branch into exposing the secrets of music production, Colin Stetson's 'New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges' would make for a mind-bending episode.
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Garage-rock eccentric King Khan may be from Montreal, but his heart is almost a thousand miles away, throbbing from Atlanta to Castle City, Mont., until it hits cardiac arrest in Kalamazoo. Khan and His Shrines warn that this so-called 'Land of the Freak' is where only the strong survive, but it's a strength that can't be measured in muscle.
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Music can provide a much-needed break from life's harsh moments, but Eddy Current Suppression Ring has no interest in creating a sonic fire escape for the distraught. Instead, the band embraces the real world, wrapping its arms around the beautiful and the ugly alike.
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