Mary-Linh Tran

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EP REVIEWAvid Dancer "I Want To See You Dance"

A little under a year ago, Jacob Summers uploaded a song called “Stop Playing With My Heart” to his Soundcloud under the moniker Avid Dancer. Catchy, smoky, and riddled with Shangri-Las’ sentiment, his lo-fi vocals smoothly glide over the backing melodies in a way that’s both seductive and...

Mary-Linh Tran

VIDEO REVIEWCaribou "Our Love"

It’s been a few years since we’ve last heard new music from Caribou, the Ontario-based neo-psychedelic brainchild of Dan Snaith. So the release of his new album Our Love on October 7th from Merge Records is an unexpected, but nonetheless fantastic, 41 minutes of twirling synth melodies and the...

Mary-Linh Tran

LIVE REVIEWMade In Heights @ Le Poisson Rouge

If you crept down the stairs and into the venue at Le Poisson Rouge last Saturday evening, you would’ve heard the disembodied voice of a woman gliding off the walls. It was silvery and sensual and the sprightliness of her breathy singing chilled the space. It was a little after 7:30 and I...

Mary-Linh Tran

FLASHBACK FRIDAYJeff Mangum's Ghost All Around

When I was seventeen, I was hopelessly infatuated with an eighteen-year old poetry major who scribbled Neutral Milk Hotel lyrics on various buildings throughout our college campus. While the school administration felt that he was deliberately destroying the aesthetic of our pretty liberal arts...

Mary-Linh Tran