Alex LaRue

Latest stories

• Is it me, or is pop music getting more creative?

  May 19, 2008 at 12:12 a.m.

  I can’t escape the conclusion that pop music is getting better.

• Music’s function: to make you think

  May 12, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

  For as long as people have been making music, they have found a function for it.

• Musical invention now relies on new sounds

  May 5, 2008 at 1:30 a.m.

  It’s been centuries since Western music emerged from religious chant, and in that time an incredible array of instruments has evolved, from the bizarre and short-lived to the moving and canonical.

• Soundbite: Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti

  April 29, 2008 at 12:02 a.m.

  Bedroom producer and as-lo-fi-as-possible musician Ariel Pink occupies a place completely of his own, and that makes sense, considering the relative isolation that has created his musical career.

• Electronic music’s histrionics

  April 28, 2008 at midnight

  Last Thursday, I saw a show with Caribou and Fuck Buttons.

• Q & A with Alex Ross

  April 23, 2008 at 1:48 a.m.

  Alex Ross is the classical music critic of The New Yorker.

• Music buyers find haven in MySpace

  April 21, 2008 at 12:59 a.m.

  With the nervous analyses and speculation gripping music technology of late, almost any new developments in marketing or software give rise to far-flung prophecies of change.

• Ash Grove: folk’s L.A. stomping ground

  April 17, 2008 at 1:56 a.m.

  When Ed Pearl first got going in the late ’50s, there weren’t really any music clubs in Los Angeles.

• Hip-hop struggles to find a new beat

  April 14, 2008 at midnight

  The idea of art-rap has always been a precarious one.

• Artists selling out can pay off for everyone

  March 31, 2008 at midnight

  There’s something loaded about the concept of a commercial.