Not too many #longreads this weekend, which probably is good news for us since our publishing schedule got sidetracked a bit this week, and there’s not much time left to cram.

The one exception is Stereogum’s week-long celebration of Britpop, featuring a ton of articles celebrating the 20th anniversary of one of the defining trends of the 90’s.  The pieces that grabbed my interest the most were the anniversary retrospective of Blur’s Parklife and the list of the Top 10 songs from The Verve, but I’ll be checking out more when I get the chance.

Going a few years from Britpop’s heyday, Shortlist has a slideshow of facts about Joy Division’s landmark album, Unknown Pleasures.  If that piques your interest, then I’d urge you to set aside some time in your schedule to watch Control and 24 Hour Party People if you haven’t already done so, because both are excellent looks at the brilliant band.

Just so you have the information somewhere on file, know that Lorde has been given Dave Grohl’s “Dad’s Seal of Approval”, which should have been somewhat obvious given her appearance with the reunited Nirvana at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony.

Finally, there are a couple of articles from Pitchfork I wanted to highlight.  On the one hand, there’s an interview with Marc Weidenbaum about his 33 1/3 book on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which provides some good insight into the composer, the development of the ambient genre, and the album itself.  At the end of the scale, we have this attempt by the staff to avoid writing a simple review of the new Pixies album Indie Cindy, with this half-assed stab at covering the entire Pixies discography.  It offers no insight or perspective on landmark albums like Surfer Rosa or Doolittle, but seems to exist only so that they have it on record that those records deserve perfect 10 scores, and that for some reason Trompe le Monde is a better album than Bossanova.  Perhaps that belief helps color their insistent tone in dealing with the new album.  I’d normally advise against reading something like this, but I’ll make an exception for this since it’s a good example of how empty some music writing can be.