Neumu
Neumu, at www.neumu.net, was founded by writer Michael Goldberg as an online forum for discussion of art, writing and music. It ceased to be updated in January 2007.
69 articles
List of articles in the library
Review by Yancey Strickler, Neumu, 2001
...AND YOU WILL Know Us By the Trail of Dead have been playing it smart all these years, and here we were thinking they were ...
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Boards Of Canada: Deciphering The Code
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 23 February 2002
Boards of Canada and ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead offer a musical yin/yang that will blow your mind ...
Retrospective by Yancey Strickler, Neumu, 31 December 2002
In terms of great music, 2002 is as good a year as I can remember. It says a lot that when making this list, and ...
Beck, Sue Garner: Low Down and Low Key: Taking the Road Less Travelled
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, September 2002
BECK SOUNDS like he's channelling the long-dead British folk-rock poet Nick Drake on his latest album, Sea Change (Geffen). For ‘Round the Bend’ the pace ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: In Defence of Big Brother!
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 17 May 2002
A recent documentary reminds us that Janis' bandmates mattered too ...
Big Star: What Makes Great Rock 'N' Roll Great, Part Two
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 16 March 2002
Sometimes great rock 'n' roll is simply pure pleasure. Like sex, only without the complications ...
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006
IT HARDLY seems to begin or end. Just continue. With Aerial, Kate Bush's first CD in 12 years, we could be anywhere between her first ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 21 June 2002
From Trout Mask to Dub Housing: how did music that once seemed so harsh and incomprehensible come to sound so good? ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 21 June 2002
WHEN THE noble savage theory of punk rock was first laid out in the early-to-mid-'70s, I bought in. According to one version of the mantra, ...
Rosanne Cash: Black Cadillac (Capitol)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, January 2006
YOU CAN'T EXPECT these things. So let me start in another place to explain. ...
Clinic: What's Behind Those Surgical Masks?
Interview by Yancey Strickler, Neumu, 9 October 2001
CLINIC SINGER Ade Blackburn's voice hiccups, squeals and coos, like a child just learning how to talk. Lyrics consist of unintelligible gibberish like "Tikki tikki ...
Jarvis Cocker: The Jarvis Cocker Record (Rough Trade)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, November 2006
CAN HIPS BE witty? Jarvis Branson Cocker proved it last year as part of the stellar ensemble for Came So Far for Beauty, the Leonard ...
Death Cab For Cutie: 'Soul Meets Body' (Atlantic)
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 2005
IN 1987, WHEN R.E.M., one of the premier indie-rock bands of the '80s, scored a Top 10 hit with 'The One I Love', it gave ...
Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan Live 1975: The Rolling Thunder Revue
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, December 2002
At long last we get to hear the 24-track recordings from the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue. ...
Bob Dylan: Dylan Hits The Road In An Old Cadillac
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 8 September 2001
On his first album of new songs in four years, Dylan's still got plenty to say ...
Bob Dylan: Modern Times (Columbia)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, September 2006
THIS RECORD came in a wooden box. When I opened it, the hinges creaked. Inside there was an old phonograph and a dusty 78, cracked. ...
Erase Errata, Le Tigre: Le Tigre, Erase Errata: The Noise Of Revolution
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 13 October 2001
New albums from two post-riot grrrl bands demand your attention ...
The Flatlanders Deliver A Classic
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 19 July 2002
Can a new country recording be "authentic"? ...
Beth Gibbons, Portishead: Beth Gibbons: Out of Season
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, November 2002
Portishead's singer delivers a solo album of extraordinary beauty. ...
Grateful Dead: The Golden Road
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 10 November 2001
Reconsidering the Grateful Dead ...
Guided By Voices: GBV's Abstract Expressionism
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 5 July 2002
Putting the mystery back in rock ...
Buddy Guy Reinvents Hill-Country Blues
Report by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 21 July 2001
A trip to an Oxford, Miss., studio results in a stunning album by one of the last living bluesmen ...
Heavenly: Escaping Into Le Jardin de Heavenly
Retrospective by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 22 September 2001
Finding comfort in obscure pop sounds from the past ...
John Hiatt, Starsailor: John Hiatt & Starsailor: Making Classic Rock Sound Good
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 16 February 2002
A couple of years ago the singer/songwriter/guitarist John Hiatt recorded Crossing Muddy Waters, an acoustic album for the revived Vanguard label. ...
Charley Patton, Skip James: The Spooky Blues Of Skip James
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 20 October 2001
Mystical, otherworldly sounds from the '30s ...
Bert Jansch Takes The High Road
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 31 May 2002
Discovering the idiosyncratic yet influential Scottish folk singer. ...
Jefferson Airplane: The Rise & Crash Of Jefferson Airplane
Book Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, May 2003
PERHAPS THE MOST endearing thing about Jefferson Airplane that emerges from Jeff Tamarkin's in-depth biography of the group, Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of ...
The Magnolia Electric Co.: Magnolia Electric Company: Trials And Errors (Secretly Canadian)
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, January 2005
I’VE NEVER been a big fan of live albums. Maybe it's because I'm usually just not that interested in live versions of a bunch of ...
The Minutemen: Minutemen Live On!
Memoir by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, June 2003
Bassist Mike Watt remembers his days in one of THE best rock bands – punk or otherwise – of the '80s. ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 24 May 2002
Is Herman Melville's great-great-great-great-great-grandson a new kind of artist, or just a technician assembling easy-listening hits? ...
Maria Muldaur's Perfect Moment
Retrospective by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 18 August 2001
Maria Muldaur's solo debut: among the best albums of any era Long, long ago, a collaboration of producers, musicians and a singer ...
N.E.R.D.: Inventing The New Funk
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 29 March 2002
Pair the Neptunes and Kelis and what you get is state-of-the-art groove music ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 1 September 2001
Ten years on, we search interviews and books for clues to the mystery of music that once shook the world. ...
David Pajo: Pajo: Pajo (Drag City)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, June 2005
I DIDN'T KNOW what I felt about this record by David Christian Pajo. Then I hated it. ...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Tom Petty Takes A Stand
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, October 2002
FACED WITH the constant change and uncertainty that is life these days, it's a relief, on occasion, to be able to count on a band ...
Radiohead: In The Forest As The Fire Burns
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 23 June 2001
Esoteric? Non-Commercial? Then how come it's #1? ...
The Ramones: Why The Ramones Really Belong In The Hall Of Fame
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 12 January 2002
One of the world's great bands gets its due ...
Report and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, November 2002
A trip to Iceland unlocks the secrets of the ages to Michael Goldberg ...
Sleater Kinney: Sleater-Kinney Search For “Hope, Goodness And Faith”
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 2002
The punk trio answer their own questions on their new album, One Beat ...
Sleater Kinney: What Makes Great Rock 'N' Roll Great?
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 9 March 2002
A question about Sleater-Kinney opens a Pandora's Box of confusion ...
Smog: A River Ain't Too Much To Love (Drag City)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, May 2005
THERE'S SOME kind of desert here, some grand landscape hinged between dusk and dawn that Bill Callahan evokes. ...
Sparklehorse: Saving Good Morning Spider From The Black Hole
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 19 January 2002
Taking another listen to a '90s masterpiece. ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, August 2002
He may be on the cover of Time again, but The Rising sure ain't Born to Run ...
The Strokes, The White Stripes: Revenge Of The Underground: The Strokes and the White Stripes
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 8 December 2001
Is a new day at hand for 'alternative' rockers? ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 29 September 2001
A media blitz has created a backlash this exceptional New York combo might not survive ...
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, May 2005
I SEE kaleidoscopic images, swirls of psychedelic color, a sunny day in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, with hippies everywhere, long-haired teenagers and twentysomethings blowing ...
Tricky: The Drama You’ve Been Craving
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 30 June 2001
Michael Goldberg blows back with Tricky... and discovers the new Sly. ...
Rufus Wainwright Makes One Like They Used To Make 'Em
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 14 July 2001
A young man following in the footsteps of Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks records a masterpiece ...
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, 2004
DID YA COME from outer space? Did ya kill that bird in the coop? Ooh there be a guitar like old Barney Kessel and something ...
M. Ward: M Ward: Post-War (Merge)
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, Summer 2006
STRANGE TITLE: makes you wonder what he means. Though the words to M Ward's cover of Daniel Johnston's 'To Go Home' may get to the ...
Gillian Welch: The Cost of Music
Essay by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 11 August 2001
"EVERYTHING IS free now," sings Gillian Welch. "That's what they say/Everything I ever done/ Gotta give it away." There is resignation in her voice. Though ...
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, October 2002
THE INK THAT says Wilco YHF Demos is slightly smeared on the home-printed white cover of the CD that arrived the other day. The 21 ...
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, 6 October 2001
Two decades on, 'The Unheard Music' is still the music you need to hear ...
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever To Tell
Review by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, April 2003
KAREN O OF the New York trash-rock trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs leaves lots of room in her lyrics. Those lyrics are like idea fragments jotted ...
Warren Zevon: Parting Shot: The L.A. Purveyor of rock noir Makes His Last Stand
Comment by Michael Goldberg, Neumu, September 2003
I FELT LIKE crying as I watched VH1's special on Warren Zevon. How sad. Zevon, as you likely know, died on Sunday, Sept. 8; he's ...
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