Pitchfork

With Janet Weiss (wo-)manning the skins in the Jicks full-time and Corin Tucker maybe writing but mostly chilling away from the world of indie celebrity right now, most of the post-breakup news coming out of the Sleater-Kinney camp is focused on the day-to-day of Carrie Brownstein. Fortunately, between her ThunderAnt comedic collaboration with Fred Armisen and other miscellany, her day-to-day is plenty newsworthy.

Brownstein's latest endeavor comes in the form of a blog for the newly launched NPR Music. The site is a multimedia resource for music information in the form of news, reviews, interviews, concert and studio performance footage, podcasts, and more.

Brownstein's blog, Monitor Mix, is one of two initial NPR Music blogs. (The other is the "All Songs Considered" blog, written by that show's producers.) In her introductory Monitor Mix post, Brownstein lays out her goals quite straightforwardly: "Though I might occasionally review a piece of music, I would rather explore the contexts and the ways in which we enjoy or maybe even despise it... I'll post daily or almost daily, so please check back." Look out, Kanye!

She also posted the following query:

"The other day I was driving home and saw a boy in his early twenties walking along the sidewalk. He was wearing a gray trench coat, combat boots, and a backpack, and he had a medium-haired black cat on his shoulder. It always worries me when people carry their cats around in public. It's not as bad as the woman in North Portland who brings a mini pony with her to the coffee shop, but it still makes me uneasy; it's attention-seeking, and I am forced to spend the next few hours wondering how someone trains a cat to do that. But what kind of music does a young man who is a human scratching post listen to? I might guess Peter Murphy or Tool or My Chemical Romance, but I have no idea. These are some of the questions I want to answer. I want to find out why people are drawn to certain songs, genres, voices, or instruments.

Let's start with this question: If you carry a cat around on your shoulder when you go out, or a bird, or a lizard, what music do you listen to? Or, if you're not any of those people, ask someone who is."

Another noteworthy feature on NPR Music is "Project Song", a challenge filmed at the NPR studios in which songwriters are asked to write and record an original song in 48 hours. The Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt was the first participant, and following him will be Georgie James.