Rock Around the Web

As you’ve probably heard, it appears that Pavement is set to reassemble for a series of concerts next summer. (Confirmed!) As anyone who knows me will tell you—and as I have written about at length myself—I like the band just a little bit. So this is exciting news.

And yet?

Marginally more exciting was the semi-recent news that Oasis has finally, benevolently broken up. It’s not that I would rather drive a railroad spike into my head than hear “Champagne Supernova” again, or that I put the musician brothers Gallagher on the same level as the comedic brothers Gallagher. No, the…

In the past, touting Monsters of Folk—a winsome outfit formed by Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and indie troubadour M. Ward—as the best supergroup of the year wouldn’t have meant much. But it’s a big deal in 2009, a.k.a. the Year of the Supergroup.

Ah, supergroups, those bloated Frankensteins concocted by two or more well-known musicians in what must only have been a moment of hubris or extreme inebriation. Supergroups, which, with their marquis names and zero chemistry, almost always feel like a Major League Baseball All-Star team:…

Few things in recent memory have annoyed me quite like the opening scene in the trailer for Fox Searchlight’s upcoming film “500 Days of Summer.” This is surprising because it involves two of my very favorite things: Zooey Deschanel and the Smiths.

The trailer begins with two apparent strangers, played by Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, standing next to each other on a workplace elevator, the young man clearly listening to “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” through his headphones. The woman, by way of introduction, says, “I love the Smiths,” and then breaks into a few…