Thirty-six seconds into Daytona, Pusha-T's new seven-song album, something becomes abundantly clear: Kanye West still knows how produce rap music. That wasn't a given. For the past few months, West has been careening from one baffling PR disaster to the next, giving off the distinct impression that, somewhere along the way, he's fully and irreparably broken his brain. But that brokenness doesn't extend...
"This is the half-light, see me as I am." When Jeff Buckley wrote that line in 1997 for a love song called "Opened Once," he may simply have been referring to the eerie, revealing qualities of dawn and dusk, which have fascinated writers throughout history. But 20 years after the song's release on Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk, it's easy to envision his first posthumous compilation as its own...
How does he do it? How the hell does he keep pulling this off? Every time you think Josh Tillman is about to drop the ball, he makes the exact right move. The very things that shouldn't quite work, that would backfire in lesser hands, are precisely the things that work about Father John Misty -- his clever, careful balance of sincerity, performativity, acerbic remove; his savvy approach to media; his...
Repertory can be a fraught subject in jazz. Obviously, there are artists whose compositions have become standards, re-interpreted by artist after artist over the decades. But at the same time, there's the constant pressure to be creative, and if you must work with other people's music, to interpret it in such a way that your individual voice is of primary importance. There's a real divide: the AACM...
Sometimes a band emerges just in time to encapsulate a moment in music. Consider this incomplete history of post-Y2K indie rock trends: You want to sum up the early aughts garage rock revival? Cue up the Strokes' Is This It. The post-punk revival that unfolded soon after? Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights functions as a sacred tome. The dance-punk movement that took hold next? The Rapture's Echoes...
Shawn Mendes will finally exit his teen years this August, but you can't take his youth away. So sang the suburban Toronto native Sunday at the Billboard Music Awards, alongside Khalid -- another young pop star born in '98 -- and survivors from the Parkland shooting. The song, "Youth," from Mendes' self-titled album out tomorrow, is a resolution to persevere hopefully in the face of constant shootings,...
Liam Gallagher has finally met his estranged 21-year-old daughter for the first time. Molly Moorish -- the daughter of Gallagher and fellow English musician Lisa Moorish, who were in a relationship for two years in the late '90s -- posed for a picture with her father and two half-brothers, Gallagher's sons Lennon and Gene, on Tuesday. The BBC reports that the reunion took place at the London Stadium,...
Ariana Grande and Mac Miller recently ended their nearly two year relationship. E! News reports that she's now casually dating Saturday Night Live cast member Pete Davidson. About a week after the couple announced their split, Miller was arrested for drunk driving after crashing his car into a power pole and fleeing the scene, and some Mac Miller fans on the internet made comments that seemed to blame...
Lily Allen didn’t like her last album. She says this and squeaks out a burst of nervous rat-a-tat-tat laughter. She does this a lot in conversation, touching on a topic that most people like to avoid, both in interviews and in real life, from dealing with stalkers to music industry machinations to her own feelings…
The roots of Bernice — an experimental pop group based in Toronto, led by vocalist/songwriter Robin Dann — already go back a while. They began playing together in the beginning of this decade and independently released a debut in 2011, followed by an EP in 2013. But a proper follow-up took some time to materialize.
For a very brief moment, Stephen Malkmus is spooning me.
Ben Gibbard is hesitant to talk about Death Cab For Cutie’s new album, knowing that whatever he says will probably be misconstrued. He learned this lesson in 2008, when bandmate and producer Chris Walla described their then-forthcoming Narrow Stairs as “bloody” with notes of “synth punk,” thus giving critics plenty of fodder to twist once…
When Gang Gang Dance emerged from New York City in the early 2000s, the band’s sound was raw, ragged, and raga’d — a percussion-powered swirl of elephantine hooks and dizzying chants. On dispatches like 2005’s God’s Money LP and 2007’s Rawwar EP — both via the Social Registry label — the ululations of lead singer…
“I was not made to be a Lower East Side model,” Ryley Walker cracks as I force him, for the purposes of splashy journalistic representation, to act like a Lower East Side model. We are walking around the Manhattan neighborhood in question, Walker a rapid-fire mixture of rapt observations on the city around him, jocular…
Music towns like Brighton often come with a set of contrasts. They’re inspiring, because there are tons of artists milling around, collaborating, figuring out their voices alongside each other as they jump from band to band. You’ll always find one gig or another to go check out. But on the flipside, that means there’s that…
Like many of us, Harriette Pilbeam loves Carly Rae Jepsen. She cites her as an influence, admiring her talent for writing smart pop music. Under the moniker Hatchie, Pilbeam makes a cosmic concoction of dream-pop and shoegaze injected with the DNA of a Top 40 melody. While it’s easy to compare her music to that…
Like many of us, Sadie Dupuis thought Hillary was going to win.
Ever hear a new band that’s so truly, madly, and deeply your shit that it immediately seems like a prank?
Meg Remy is moving very, very quickly. She’s just rushed offstage after soundcheck, introduces herself out of breath with a quick handshake, and then immediately collects herself to do a rapid lap around the block for a photoshoot. She has to move quickly: Her band, U.S. Girls, is about to undertake the daunting and frenetic…
There are great bands that reinvent themselves with each new album, others that hit a sweet spot and stick with what works, and then there’s Beach House. Over their decade-plus career, some might argue that the Baltimore-based band has largely adhered to a formula, but with 7 — their excellent seventh album, which is out…
Two weeks before her band released their debut EP, Avery Springer found herself on family vacation at Universal Studios dealing with a crisis. The new band she formed a few months prior had just been served a cease-and-desist notice from another band that was also using their name. Springer and her bandmates were in a…
Hanging out with Forth Wanderers feels like infiltrating a club house. Ava Trilling, Ben Guterl, Zach Lorelli, Duke Greene, and Noah Schifrin have known one another since they were kids, and when I meet them all for a very late lunch in Midtown Manhattan, inside jokes abound. It can be hard to keep up as…
This place used to be a big part of Nandi Rose Plunkett’s life. This is where her life happened. Nearby, that’s where she lived as a young, hungry artist, fresh out of college and newly transplanted to the city. We pass a giant enclosed lot crammed with the tour buses you see crawling the streets…
