Musicians are businesspeople–at least the smart ones. While up and coming bands once started their own labels and booked their own tours (full-time jobs alone), they’ve now expanded to crowdfunding album production (Kickstarter, Sellaband), selling merch online without the high distribution percentage cuts (Bandcamp) and much more as DIY is pushed into new territory.

Entrepreneurial successes this summer alone include Crooked Fingers, who raised over $12,000 to pay for recording and manufacturing a limited-edition vinyl 12” of cover songs–twice his goal.

Amanda Palmer realized her goal in mere minutes, selling $15,000 worth of merchandise in 90 seconds with the release of her ukulele-based Radiohead cover album. Not bad for someone who recently left a major label.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

As a New Year in a new decade dawns before our still-rheumy red eyes (how many days can a hangover last? Why did we all think those last five drinks last Thursday were a good idea?), let’s Flashion Backward through ye old UI archives to see what the boys and girls were saying, playing and wearing in yesteryear.

Lucy’s most notable commercial success was her 2003 hit “Dumb Girls,” but just as she was gathering steam, Atlantic Records pulled a corporate fast one, merged a bunch of shizzle and showed a roster of promising artists to their gleaming door–including Lucy.

No matter. She grew up singing in jazz cafes around New York for tips and/or a meal, so she probably was never particularly interested in following the typical “crank out a few chart-toppers; get seen at all the right nightclubs in NY/LA; date a bunch of douches; have a sex tape leaked online; suffer a breakdown; enter rehab for drug addiction; emerge and start talking about healing to Life & Style magazine/launch a perfume line” career path most aspiring songstresses stick to these days.

Lucy’s style is decidedly more ephemeral and simultaneously grounded. She sounds like her vocal cords have been sprinkled in lavender fairy dust. She looks like a sophisticated version of what Miley Cyrus’ publicist totes hopes she’ll look like in five years, but she acts like that enigmatic, super-smart, sweet sprite you knew in high school who is just as likely to go for “foreign affairs” as she is to run out and help build an Ashram in Goa, India.

But her kaleidoscope style, music and lifestyle are all part of her charm, right? She’s the CBGB-loving punk next door, the sextress who may or may not bite and the jaw-droppingly pretty smartass who’s always two steps ahead of you.

Below, check out Lucy’s perspective on traveling through passion-infused South America; the importance of holding onto your drunk-ass dance pants for two seconds on occasion; and of course, the joys of salsa-ing your way toward dawn.

I love Flashioning Backward through UI’s archives. One never knows what one will find; it’s like the haunted house version of Googling. Today, we’ve lucked into The Last Shadow Puppets’ box. Let’s see what gilded, stylish paths these nice boys lead us down.

Appropriately, the Last Shadow Puppets seem to enjoy Flashioning Backward themselves: Their aesthetic is early ’60s era Beatles floppy (but not yet scandalous) ’dos, velvet and pop-art-era smart suit silhouettes. Somehow, they maintain enough retro-mod stylistic tension to prevent themselves from looking like sad also-rans in desperate need of an E! Entertainment style intervention.

Their “spellbindingly elegant pop songs” on The Age of Understatement seem like the product of a full-time, totally cohesive, decades long effort, despite the fact that it’s really just a side project between Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner and The Rascals’ Miles Kane. While many expected the album to be a one-time, beautifully warbled swan song, rumor has it they’re working on a new album. I just hope they employ the same brilliant writing techniques.

Below, see how these non-ironically retro (but totally modern) gentleman managed to produce their last album…while skating downhill. You know, as one does!

Let’s throw on our favorite skins and prepare our weekly quest for answers to the most pressing existential sartorial queries. Per usual, we’re rifling through our treasure trove of interviews to Flashion Backward and fish out a vintage gem–the better to explore the strange vortex in which fashion and musicians meet. Today we’re going into hibernation with Bear Hands.

Wesleyan College alums–notorious for their outré fashion sense, oh so zany leftward political leanings and bizarre penchant for cranking out ridiculously talented and wildly successful indie bands (see: MGMT, Amazing Baby)–have surely added Bear Hands to their roster of famous grads for their semi-annual donation drive.

Like their Wesleyan cohorts, Bear Hands seemed to profit from blossoming in relative isolation away from the self-consciously hip land in which they eventually landed–NYC. Their early ability to sort out their sound without subjecting themselves to the cacophony of aggressive attempts at unique avant-garde tonal poems that all end up sounding pretty much the same (which all too often passes for a music scene in my dear city) ultimately produced an album that sounds “splashing” “in the way a sort-of ethnic Talking Heads meeting an unusually relaxed Velvet Underground might sound. The voice is defiantly American, the backing defiantly invigorating.”

Bear Hands’ tambourine and cymbal accented music is as unpredictable, delicious and refreshing as their fashion sense is not. But who cares if they wear standard issue vintage wear, cigarette pants and mildly puffy jackets? While their hats, bad surfer hair and tongue-in-cheek attempts at looking “eccentric” fall as flat as a B note, in their case, I’m giving ‘em a pass.

Substance over style, is after all, the name of their well-played game. Below, check out their educational rant against Rock Band.

It’s time to jog our ADHD-addled minds with Flashion Backward, a feature that’s the spiritual cousin of Flashion Forward. Here, we rifle through our treasure trove of interviews to fish out a vintage gem–the better to explore the strange vortex in which fashion and musicians meet. Our dose of Ritalin today: Wye Oak.

Indie folksters Wye Oak (named after a 460-year-old tree in Maryland, their home state) have always managed to temper their earnest, reflective lyrics with a dose of bittersweet, poignant edge, saving them from the degrading horrors of existence on lite radio. (Perish the day)!

Fans and critics alike gobble up their pretension-free collision of reverberating noisy fuzz and friendly, naked emotionalism. They seem like the kind of sweet/eccentric duo who would randomly invite you over for a snack after hitting it off at the laundromat, then proceed to serve you PB&J with the crusts cut off and a glass of organic milk while chatting about their pet hamster. And then they’d whip out the pot brownies and Pabst and suggest a game of Twister.

(Check out their latest song of innocence and experience, then check out their new album on July 21).

Below, it sounds like their approach to life hasn’t changed for Jenn and Andy since high school–though Andy’s fashion sense may have improved, and their alleged status as cripplingly embarrassing dorks certainly has. But actually, I’ve always found huge fros, Hawaiian shirts and the practice of playing in a steel-drum band to be rather charming.

Thanks to the UI-Approved, must-see CMJ Marathon Artist Blonde Acid Cult, I’ve now got an unbelievably confusing definition of a vice. One of my favorite vices is trolling my friends’ Facebook pages to see if they have cooler friends than me, then poaching their friends to be my friends.

It’s a system ThePerryTrain has put into effect in many areas of my life. When I’m at a friend’s house I’ll look in their fridge to see if they have better food than me, I’ll check out girls on the street to see if they have cool style ideas and I’ll straight up copy them, and I peruse the artist list on the Uncensored Interview homepage to see if they have any new cool bands I didn’t know about before.

(MORE “IMITATION INDIE” HERE)

Even though Poingly doesn’t want to hear it, I am going to talk about indie elitism. First, I am all for Project Jenny, Project Jan. And I am all for them listening to whatever they want to listen to. And I am all for them respecting likeminded artists who fight the corporate machine of music.

What I am not okay with is PJPJ implying that people who don’t agree with them are stupid.

It’s great to show some respect for musicians who “do the right thing” (whatever your definition of that is), but their personal and professional respectability has little to do with how awesome their jams might be. Do I support R. Kelly’s actions as a person? No. God, no. But will I sell my first born to see the next episodes in his hip-hopera “Trapped in the Closet.” In the words of Gov. Palin, “You betcha!”

As horrifying as rape allegations against an indie musician might be, I am still going to sing “Trucker’s Atlas” at the top of my lungs whenever it comes on in my proximity. That doesn’t make me dumb, it makes my appreciation of music devoid of interest in the politics of the people who create the music.

(Read more “Elitism” after the jump)