Sacha Baron Cohen and his many disguises return to the airwaves tonight with his new series Who Is America? on Showtime. On the show, Cohen sets out to interview "the diverse individuals who populate our unique nation." The show shared clip ahead of tonight's premiere, in which Larry Pratt, Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners Of America, endorses a children's gun training program. Pratt recites...
I remember the rush. The first time I heard "Intergalactic," the electro-fizz jam that was the first single from the Beastie Boys' 1998 album Hello Nasty, I was in my mom's minivan. The song was on the radio. (Alt-rock radio, of course; rap radio wouldn't touch the Beasties by then.) Mike D rapped the words "Beastie Boys known to let the beat..." Then, there was this pregnant pause. And after it happened,...
Calling the state of the music festival market anything but saturated in 2018 would be either dishonest or disconnected. The optimistic would say the festival market is thriving and profitable enough to attract new entrepreneurs each year. The pessimist would call the festival scene a bloated, hyper-competitive wasteland. The truth is somewhere in between. A shakeout isn't just inevitable; it's already...
System Of A Down are still together -- they reconvened in 2010 after a four-year hiatus, and they have a few tour dates coming up in October -- but they haven't actually released any music in 13 years. Their last album, Hypnotize, came out in 2005, six months after its companion album Mezmerize, and their self-titled debut album just turned 20 years old in June. System Of A Down guitarist Daron Malakian...
Twenty years ago this past weekend -- on July 8, 1998 -- something very predictable happened on the Billboard Hot 100: Mase's "Lookin' At Me" became the third consecutive single from his Grammy-nominated, multi-Platinum album Harlem World to break into the chart's top 10. Label boss Puff Daddy was in his opulent, shiny-suited prime, and Bad Boy was, for the moment, too big to fail. After the considerable...
I am sitting on a folding chair in the middle of a football field. A few dozen yards in front of me stand two video screens several stories high, each angled slightly toward its respective side of the stadium, converging at the center of the stage like two sides of a triangle. A gargantuan rig of cranes, lights, and speakers looms over top, adding up to something like a construction zone out of futuristic...
Donald Glover has shared a pair of new summer-themed Childish Gambino tracks. Dubbed the Summer Pack, they amount to a two-song EP. "Summertime Magic" is a dancehall-flavored synth-R&B track that feels as appropriately sweltering as the subject matter demands. "Feels Like Summer" conjures a similar vibe but leans closer to druggy rock music, its guitar strums and psychedelic vocal harmonies undergirded...
Anyone who spent time listening to indie rock in the '00s has, on at least one occasion, asked themselves, "what exactly does 'subway, she is a porno' mean?" That odd yet resonant line is one of just many moments on Interpol's classic debut, Turn On The Bright Lights, that continues to linger in the mind more than a decade and a half later. The New York band has done its share of looking back as of...
Last year, someone broke into Lillie West’s apartment while she was sleeping. She didn’t wake up. At the time, West was living in a one-bedroom on the ground floor in Chicago and, while everything that was taken ended up being replaceable, a creeping unease settled in. Paranoia took over West’s mind. It made her feel…
Anyone who spent time listening to indie rock in the ’00s has, on at least one occasion, asked themselves, “what exactly does ‘subway, she is a porno’ mean?”
Owen Ashworth has been making criminally under-appreciated music for over two decades now, first as Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and more recently as Advance Base. He’s a storyteller by nature, and the narratives within his songs typically catalog the eternal ticking of the clock in heartrending but plaintive fashion.
On his new…
Two decades ago, smooth jams ruled the pop charts. Usher, K-Ci & JoJo, Next, Brandy and Monica, Lauryn Hill, and Divine were just some of the R&B acts who topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 1998. But amidst all the slick beats there emerged a goofy, lite rap-rock jam that was so undeniable, it managed…
David Le’aupepe isn’t one for small talk. That much was obvious when Gang Of Youths dropped a 77-minute album that begins with a song named after a Kierkegaard treatise, ends with one titled “Say Yes To Life,” and in between finds time to dunk on Ayn Rand, self-pity, political apathy, and any emotion that doesn’t…
Sophie Allison was eight years old when Paramore released their debut single “Pressure.” Fronted by Hayley Williams, Paramore was one of the only mainstream pop-punk bands that featured a teenage woman at the helm. She had fiery orange hair to match her stage persona and a warm but unshakeable personality that made Paramore stand apart…
Of all of the acts to spill out of the ’90s Bay Area rock scene, adult-alternative troubadours Counting Crows have been one of the most enduring. Right around the time Green Day were rattling the walls of Berkley punk incubator 924 Gilman, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows guitarist David Bryson were on the other side…
Foxing got hit by a runaway truck at 50 mph. They played the next night and released a Dido cover as a fundraiser for their totaled van. They had $30,000 worth of gear and merchandise stolen, an amount big enough to make the nightly news in Austin. Lead singer Conor Murphy got his nose broken…
Colin Stetson has probably frightened more listeners in the past week than in the preceding 15 years of his career. Many of them don’t know his name.
You probably know Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, the de facto leader of the band of kids battling Demogorgons and Demodogs on Netflix’s Stranger Things. But Calpurnia, his scrappy Vancouver indie-rock band, isn’t just some celebrity’s vanity project. Most of the four young musicians have been playing together for years, since before Wolfhard became a…
Heaven. Earth. One we know. The other we don’t. One we experience. The other is only believed in. But to many, one is just as real as the other. That is the crux of Kamasi Washington’s latest album, and Washington knows a lot about believing something into existence.
Everyone has to grow up eventually — even ducklings. “Look, dude — the baby ducklings!” Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy stops as we’re mid-conversation, pointing out a plump of web-footed friends on a small rolling pitch alongside the walking path of Los Angeles’ Echo Park.
“I know! They’re getting big,” the band’s howling lead…
Sorry are chameleonic by design. Since they started putting out music a few years ago, they’ve flitted through a variety of styles, refusing to settle on one distinct sound. For me, they recall an era of music consumption less dominated by narrative. It’s not that they lack an identity, just that their identity feels malleable…
Sarah Beth Tomberlin wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music growing up. She was raised in a deeply religious Baptist family, and one of the first memories she has of hearing music that wasn’t related to church was watching American Idol and realizing that she didn’t know any of the songs the contestants were singing.
Dominick Palermo’s never been one for motivational speaking, but he’s down to give it a try — that is, once he’s had a few drinks.
