music Archive

  • 26 Psaltery & Lyre: Kris Bluth, “What’s Playing on God’s iPod?”

    Posted on November 12, 2012 | 1 Comment
    "Falling snow without wind . . ."

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  • Staff Stacks, Pt 1

    Posted on August 15, 2012 | 32 Comments
    What the writers of D&S are into now.

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  • The Green Room Piano

    Posted on July 18, 2012 | 13 Comments
    Growing up in the Olson household, playing the piano was just something you did-kinda like breathing or eating.   There were four of us-two older sisters, then me (four years later), and then my brother, the caboose (six years later).   When I was a […]

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  • A Chronology of Pop Culture Heroines

    Posted on September 13, 2011 | 17 Comments
    Part One, ages 6 to 18

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  • Window to Utopia

    Posted on August 11, 2011 | 6 Comments
    What would heaven be like, for a teenager?

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  • Ride to Music and the Spoken Word

    Posted on July 31, 2011 | 7 Comments
    Today’s Ride to Music and the Spoken Word comes to us from Katrina Barker Anderson, who took pictures of her family’s ride to Music and the Spoken Word in Salt Lake City in conjunction with a Mormon Stories conference in June 2011. ;

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  • But With Joy Wend Your Way

    Posted on July 26, 2011 | 15 Comments
    Few hymns seem to capture the Mormon spirit so completely or at ts best. The steady beginning building to the gorgeous swell of music and lyrics work together to convey the sense of joy and faith that Clayton wrote about, the beauty of life in spite of difficulties and hardship.

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  • Rasputin Records

    Posted on July 5, 2011 | 10 Comments
    My husband and I both enjoy a really broad range of musical genres. As such, I’ve often wondered — how will our kids find a way to fulfill the role of the rebellious teenager at our house when we as parents seem to appreciate most […]

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  • Battles – ‘Gloss Drop’ Tour, London

    Posted on June 11, 2011 | 1 Comment
    From the packed-in floor of a dark club (under Victorian railway tracks), and through the dancing columns of sound and light, the three members of Battles appear as conjurors, athletes, inventors, and heroes. Playing mostly material from their brand-new album (released this week) ‘Gloss Drop‘, […]

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  • It’s Not You, It’s Me

    Posted on May 31, 2011 | 12 Comments
    I loved this recent segment from NPR’s All Songs Considered about the bands that  contributors have  broken up with over the years and why. From the piece: “Context is everything here, so the three narrowed their picks into four basic categories: bands you swore off […]

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  • Angels with Power Tools

    Posted on May 12, 2011 | 9 Comments
    When you hear the words “Compassionate Service” what comes to mind?   This is like one of those word association games- just go with your gut feeling.   Macaroni and cheese?   Sign up sheets?   Relief Society Board Meeting? A calling you hated (or […]

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  • In the Gut

    Posted on May 3, 2011 | 11 Comments
    "It's not about masculine or feminine. It's about power, and passion, and weirdness"

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  • Helping an Orphanage in Ethiopia

    Posted on April 14, 2011 | No Comments
    One of my dearest and oldest friends (one of two friends without whom I would not have survived high school) and her husband are adopting two babies from Ethiopia. She recently sent me this email that I am sharing here: ; Hi Friends and Family– […]

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  • Bicycle Playlist

    Posted on April 5, 2011 | 1 Comment
    "Bicycles move with the flow of the earth ..."

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  • To The Greatest Boy in the World — A Tribute

    Posted on March 8, 2011 | 6 Comments
    My boy, my oldest, is turning nine tomorrow. He is still young, but in the last six months, there have been these strange flickers of the future, a shadow of the young man he will become running through him. There are wry asides, hair that […]

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  • The Book of Mormon Musical

    Family Home Evening at “God’s Favorite Musical”

    Posted on March 3, 2011 | 23 Comments
    Guest Post: by Ian – An Early Review of The Book of Mormon Musical. This past Monday I had quite the Family Home Evening-I saw a preview performance of the new BOM Musical. I was in NYC for work and wasn’t going to miss my […]

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  • Georgia Lee

    Posted on February 19, 2011 | 3 Comments
    Perhaps my favourite Tom Waits album is Mule Variations (1999). This simple song really stuck with me: for the honesty of its question. We all live different lives, and have different struggles: and, I think, sometimes all feel a longing for the kind of God […]

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  • Elaine Bradley: ‘Marching to the Sound of Her Own Drum’

    Posted on February 13, 2011 | 3 Comments
    For the most recent addition to the ‘Mormon Women Project’, Krisanne Hastings has interviewed Elaine Bradley, the drummer and backing vocalist for Billboard top #100 alternative rock band ‘Neon Trees’, and an active member of the LDS Church. Her story takes her from sixth-grade ‘New […]

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  • Hosanna in the Highest

    Posted on February 13, 2011 | 22 Comments
    This week on ‘The Sanctuary’: a guest post from Andy. One way of characterising my spiritual journey over the last four years would be to say I’ve gone from functioning within an inherited culture, towards a more critical outlook and need for rationality in assembling […]

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  • Foolish Love

    Posted on February 8, 2011 | 7 Comments
    My husband likes to attribute a lot of our personality quirks to generational influences. In his eyes, we are deeply earnest, but pathologically afraid of cheesiness or sentimentality (to such a degree that almost all of our shows of affection tend to be in joke […]

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  • Seminal Works – Exile in Guyville

    Posted on January 11, 2011 | 13 Comments
    But, there is so much more to Exile than sexual frankness. Exile is about finding your way in the third wave of feminism, when you believe in equality, but you aren't quite sure how it is supposed to look.

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  • 15 Best Albums of 2010 (so far)

    Posted on December 21, 2010 | 14 Comments
    Despite the fun of tidying up a year's worth of music listening into a concise list and orderly rankings, end of year lists are always fluid for me. Things will change.

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  • Seminal Works — Kind of Blue

    Posted on December 14, 2010 | 8 Comments
    Sometimes hype is justified, Kind of Blue earns its reputation with every listen.

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  • I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon

    Posted on December 5, 2010 | 15 Comments
    Or under the sea. Or the jungle... at least, not permanently.

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  • File Sharing

    Posted on November 23, 2010 | 8 Comments
    My iTunes library is an autobiography of all my relationships. There is the musical theater from my parents, the Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco from one of my oldest friends. The Outkast and Lupe Fiasco came from my Hip-hop loving brothers -- we have, since our teens, been doing musical cultural exchanges, like the Judgment

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  • Being Awesome

    Posted on November 9, 2010 | 17 Comments
    You cannot try to be awesome, you must be awesome....that is the law of awesome

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  • 15 Favorite …

    Posted on November 2, 2010 | 15 Comments
    Personally, I'm a sucker for these lists. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of resisting them, even though they're hardly ever revelatory.

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  • Keeping My Hand In

    Posted on October 19, 2010 | 18 Comments
    Four years on, I'm in a slump and I'm really just keeping my hand in.

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  • Follow the Prophet

    Posted on October 12, 2010 | 10 Comments
    When we enter the world of art, we are at war and our choices can either be an act of brilliant heroism or pathetic cowardice. When you look back at the music you have listened to, are you filled with the pride a veteran might have for the medals he's won, or do you quietly brush off your associations with the bands you used to listen to?

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  • Stacks

    Posted on October 4, 2010 | 4 Comments
    There are stacks of books and CDs on almost every flat surface of my house. Next to my bed is a tantalizing stack of; books I haven’t read yet. Beside the books waiting in the wings are the recently read, which I’m; not quite ready […]

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