Email Author Ray Cummings

2007 Stories by Ray Cummings

• Stop and Smell the Noises

  published December 6, 2007

  Greg Pritchard is a consummate multi-tasker. On an early November afternoon, the Minnesota-bred musician is conducting a telephone interview with... More >>

• Saturday Looks Good to Me

  published November 8, 2007

  God bless K Records' tousled-bedhead messes, but it's a mystery to us what, exactly, Saturday Looks Good to Me are doing on this label's roster.... More >>

• The Cave Singers, and Black Mountain

  published October 18, 2007

  Cave Singers frontman/guitarist Pete Quirk doesn't need a band, really. He's got a vocal delivery so weathered and lived-in — thin as... More >>

• On Your Markers

  published October 11, 2007

  So witty, so inquisitive, so downright loquacious is Elisa Ambrogio that a telephone interview with her threatens to unravel at any given... More >>

• Mouthus

  published October 4, 2007

  The output of Brooklyn duo Mouthus consists — for the most part, anyway — of variations on sepulchral groans. Brian Sullivan's... More >>

• Beyoncé

  published August 23, 2007

  From blandly cute child stardom to booty-licious, cold isolationism to diva-level, so-in-luv obsession to pan-media omnipresence — that's the... More >>

• Benni Hemm Hemm

  published July 12, 2007

  Kajak — the sophomore long-player from namesake/frontman Benedikt H. Hermannsson's Icelandic easy-listening band — may not be the... More >>

• Battles

  published June 28, 2007

  No calendar year is complete without at least a handful of insurgent, crit-consensus staples that can't quite win over the populace. M.I.A,... More >>

• The Mary Timony Band

  published May 24, 2007

  Two songs on The Shapes We Make show the influence moving back to Washington, D.C., has had on Mary Timony's writing. The spritely... More >>

• The Silver Daggers

  published May 10, 2007

  The Los Angeles coeds in Silver Daggers bring the apocalyptic no-wave party ruckus, and then some: They're a viciously exuberant counterpoint to... More >>

• Beach House

  published April 26, 2007

  Airily pretty, vicariously depressing, and just plain emotionally exhausting, the Velvet Underground & Nico tune "Sunday Morning" nailed comedown... More >>

• Religious Knives

  published March 22, 2007

  This ain't a scene, it's a bottomless, underground-market glut: '00s noise upstarts spinning off fly-by-night collabos à la '80s Marvel... More >>

• Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

  published February 8, 2007

  While your iTunes playlist is doubtless clogged with songs by bands well-suited to their noms de plume, Philly/NYC quartet Clap Your Hands Say... More >>

• Bracken

  published January 25, 2007

  The further Anticon strays from its original granola posi-artiste rap roots, the more intriguing this Oakland, California label becomes. England's... More >>

• Of Montreal

  published January 18, 2007

  When Kevin Barnes started Of Montreal in the mid-1990s, he was a bit late to the Athens, GA, scene's retro pop-rock party. At that time, Apples in... More >>