Credit: Craig Barritt/Getty Images for AEG
It is difficult to divorce the blues from its history, though that doesn't stop it from happening in broader discussions of American music history. Part of this is due to an obsession with mythologies, which the blues are teeming with. There are crossroads and devils and bullets and bad dead men behind bars and bar brawls and blood. Still, narratives aside, it is worth noting that the blues has a real,...
Have you guys watched the new Black Mirror episode where Miley Cyrus sings Nine Inch Nails yet? Trent Reznor has! "Rachel, Jack And Ashley Too" stars Cyrus as pop star Ashley O, whose signature hit "On A Roll" is just Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like A Holl" transformed into a cheery self-esteem anthem about achieving your goals and being "so stoked on ambition and verve." Even though the song is clearly...
"Man, it's a hot one." That's all it takes; that song's gonna be in your head for the rest of the day. You're welcome. It's almost incomprehensible how popular Santana's "Smooth" -- with vocals by Rob Thomas, then still just the dude from Matchbox 20 -- actually was. The song was #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 for 12 weeks, and spent a total of 58 weeks on the chart. Its parent album, 1999's Supernatural,...
Sleater-Kinney released their last album, No Cities To Love, back in 2015. Soon, the legendary trio will return with a new St. Vincent-produced LP called The Center Won’t Hold. It will be out 8/16 via Mom + Pop Records, marking a move from Sleater-Kinney's old home at Sub Pop. They've already shared the forthcoming album's lead single, “Hurry On Home." That song ranked #1 on our 5 Best Songs Of...
Music has always been a vast universe to explore, and that sense of the unconquerable infinite has only intensified in an age of on-demand streaming and easily accessible recording equipment. The flow of new sounds is so constant, so voluminous, and so diverse that no one could ever claim to have a handle on all of it, not even those of us who listen all day every day. So in a sense attempting to sum...
Back in 1992, Pearl Jam played a show in the Dutch city of Utrecht. After the show, he spent a while talking to one particular Dutch woman, who ended up giving him a ride back to his hotel on her bicycle. They never saw each other again, but she stayed in his head. And a couple of nights ago, they reunited. According to the NL Times, Vedder played two solo shows in Amsterdam this past weekend, and...
"Hey young people - you're getting older every second. It's what we do. One day someone will tell you to stop and you'll be all like 'fuck you' just like Madonna." That was former Savage Garden frontman Darren Hayes on Twitter the night of the Billboard Music Awards. Madonna and Colombian reggaeton star Maluma had just performed "Medellín," the lead single from her new album, Madame X. In keeping...
By this point, I don't need to put out spoiler warnings to talk about Avengers: Endgame, right? It's the biggest fucking movie. If you haven't seen it, you are being willfully obstinate. So: One of the remarkable things about Endgame is that the movie makes a visual punchline out of depression -- Thor is sad about not being able to save the world, so he loses himself in beer and video games and puts...
“Method Man,” the lead single of Detroit-based rock musician Stef Chura’s new album, Midnight, paints a picture of a dude whose condescension is dreadfully magnetic. Driven by an fervor and fixation similar to that that fuels the type of relationship it describes, Chura’s vocals and the accompanying instrumentals speed up and intensify as the song…
Carlos Santana has a lot to celebrate in 2019. It’s the 50th anniversary of his band’s self-titled debut album, which was released on August 30, 1969. Two weeks before that, the band gave a legendary performance at the Woodstock festival in upstate New York. They’d been a popular live act in San Francisco, but their…
The rain can force us into unexpected places. Sometimes, it’s for the better. Such is the case when I meet Welsh musician and novice furniture maker Cate Le Bon in New York City during a torrential downpour. We take refuge in the Guggenheim, as our expected coffee shop has been overtaken by others also finding…
Trevor Shelley de Brauw is a pretty busy guy. In addition to being the guitarist in Pelican and RLYR — and releasing an excellent solo album, Uptown, in 2017 — he’s also a father and works full-time as a music publicist. (Full disclosure: de Brauw did press for my band United Nations’ last full-length in…
Do you remember being small in a big confusing world? Do you remember feeling excitement for the first time or being cognizant of how clothes fell on your body for the first time? Not many people do, or most of us don’t dare to think back on it. For shoegazey Madison rockers Slow Pulp, this…
(Trigger warning: this article contains discussion of sexual assault.)
In 2015, Charly Bliss had self-released a three-song EP called Soft Serve and were more than content to play tiny Brooklyn venues whenever the opportunity arose. “We were crushing it,” says drummer Sam Hendricks. “Spike Hill on a Tuesday.”
You can call Holly Herndon a doctor now. When I meet the experimental composer in lower Manhattan in April, she’s just arrived from the Bay Area, where she successfully defended her dissertation at Stanford’s Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics. Now that her PhD program is behind her, Herndon has moved from California…
Part of Sass’ origin took place at a party in a Minneapolis apartment complex turned personal palace that has 35 rooms and seven bathrooms, all lavishly dedicated to the 1960s. (Really, it’s quite something.) It was in one of those rooms that Stephanie Murck met Willem Vander Ark. Murck had been involved with some other…
“Let’s do the whale.”
It’s impossible to step into the American Museum Of Natural History and not feel a sense of childhood wonder. For anyone who grew up in New York City or the surrounding area, it was the site of class field trips and sugar-rushed weekends where it seemed like the entire…
Not many people would cackle as their house goes up in flames, but that image perfectly illustrates the kind of person and artist Yola is. Named for that tragic experience, her debut album Walk Through Fire came out in February. Its seamless blend of triple fiddles, steel, and shimmering tremolo guitars feels superbly refined, making…
The Get Up Kids were looking for a job and then they found some jobs. After the beloved Kansas punk band went on hiatus in 2011, main songwriter Matt Pryor became a farmhand — “I picked radishes and tomatoes and shit and it was awesome.” Guitarist/vocalist Jim Suptic went back to school and landed with…
In the first half of the decade, the Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture made their name with a mixture of dream-pop, soft rock, and folk leanings — and became a Stereogum Band To Watch in the process. Across their first two albums, 2013’s Moon Tides and 2015’s Pray For Rain, the couple of Daniel Hindman…
If you were a rock photographer in the mid-’60s, being invited to photograph Bob Dylan was perhaps the best thing that could happen to you. You’d get a front-row view to the then-burgeoning countercultural revolution. You’d get to trade wisdom with the tousle-haired genius who wrote “Visions of Johanna.” And, if all went well, you’d…
La Dispute were in a rut. After playing together (give or take a few members) for close to 15 years, the post-hardcore experimentalists were too stuck in routine and familiarity with each other to come up with ideas for their upcoming album. In search of something — anything — to jump-start their songwriting process, bass…
Admittedly, the name Intellexual is a bit of a forehead-slapper, but hear me out here: The record is good. Like, really good. You’d expect as much from Nico Segal and Nate Fox, guys who played a key role in crafting Chance The Rapper’s euphoric sound and who count Frank Ocean (“U-N-I-T-Y”), Kanye West (“Ultralight Beam”),…
