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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 have largely adhered to a formula, but with 7 -- their excellent seventh album, which is out in a couple weeks -- it's clear that the duo have been playing the long game. Each...
Time to dig out the industrial-strength earplugs! My Bloody Valentine, the punishingly loud UK shoegaze legends and must-see live act, have not played any American shows since 2013. But they have talked about plans to release two new EPs -- one this summer, and another next spring. They're set to headline FYF Fest in Los Angeles. And now they've announced plans for a short US tour this July. MBV don't...
Some songs are spells. The ones Nandi Rose Plunkett casts as Half Waif conjure meaning out of everyday human experience. Through her lens, a walk through the garden, a lover’s spat, or a moment alone becomes a catalyst for self-reckoning and sometimes, revelation. On Lavender, Half Waif’s third full-length album and most cohesive collection to date, Plunkett attempts to put words to indescribable...
If you thought 21 Savage performing on Ellen was weird, I raise you Parquet Courts. The violent image 21 projects on record might clash with the family-friendly aesthetic Ellen DeGeneres is known for, but his appearance made sense in at least one way: He's tabloid-famous due to dating Amber Rose. That fame trumps whatever cognitive dissonance is inspired by watching DeGeneres chitchat with the guy...
"The Middle" is a hell of a song, and as it turns out, it took a hell of a lot of work to pull off. We, the listening public who helped the tune reach #1 at pop radio and #5 on Billboard's Hot 100, know it as the work of Zedd (the Russian-German EDM superproducer), Maren Morris (the Texas-bred, Nashville-based country singer), and Grey (the LA-based producer brothers). A new New York Times video feature...
Late in 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, Kanye West visited Trump at Trump Tower in New York, posing for him with photos. This came shortly after West claimed, during one of his shows, that he would've voted for Trump if he had bothered to vote. This came around the time West was hospitalized, so many fans were content to write this off as some kind of mental break, especially...
I don't believe in superstition, but here I am, a writer with a cover-songs column, discovering on Friday, April 13 that Taylor Swift did a countrified version of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September." Well, shit. Might as well take a swim in Crystal Lake here and see what's going on. I'm not enough of a genre purist to instinctively cringe at the idea of a country version of EWF's most enduring classic....
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 they volley commentary back and forth, finishing one another’s sentences. "It’s not a pairing...
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…
Flatbush Zombies’ Meechy Darko contains multitudes. On April’s first Friday at their album release concert in Rough Trade’s Brooklyn shop, he’s shirtless rapping in a gravelly voice alongside his two other crewmates — rapper-producer swingman Erick The Architect and long-bearded fast-spitter Zombie Juice. It’s a crowd that ranges from the Rawkus Records generation to Pro…
Ben Schneider, as is his tendency, is trying to remember the night we met. The Lord Huron mastermind believes it took place after a show where his fledgling band opened for Avi Buffalo. I always assumed it was Abe Vigoda. Either way, this is definitely an “LA indie rock in 2010″ story. That’s the world…
Twelve years is just a blip in the grand scheme of humanity, but for any living person, that’s a pretty significant chunk of time. And for Dear Nora, a project that started in 1999 and went on to put out three proper albums and a ton of ephemera in just under a decade, 12 years…
The late ’90s were a heady time for hopeful, plucky alt-rock hits that would forever soundtrack senior class montages, and I’m not sure I’ll ever understand why. Maybe it was the economy or the internet boom or just the general laissez les bons temps rouler vibes of the last days of Clinton that made opportunity…
Music fans can often be territorial. “That’s an understatement, my friend!” Michael Imperioli — the actor/writer/director best-known for his role as The Sopranos’ perennial fuckup Christopher Moltisanti — cackles over the phone when I make this statement to him in conversation. And the sentiment is extremely relevant to him right now: His just-released debut novel,…
The first thing I notice when I walk into Kacey Musgraves’ hotel room is a pair of heeled metallic boots. It feels like the perfect welcome. Like country divas before her, Musgraves is known for rocking rhinestones and all things sparkly, and though her new look has gotten definitively more space-aged on her Golden Hour…
And lo, there came a time when deep up in Heaven, the sainted Lester Bangs plied God with enough cough syrup to be allowed to create the perfect rock band. And when Bangs heard Iceage’s 2011 debut, New Brigade, he smiled, for he knew that it was good. Iceage were henceforth known as the Lord’s…
When she was a teenager, Frances Quinlan wanted to be as famous as Conor Oberst. She rolls her eyes as she says this, knowing how ridiculous it all sounds now.
If you’ve done so much as read this website today, odds are you’ve experienced the emotional polarity of modern music consumption — the giddy thrill of having instantaneous access to virtually every note of popular recorded music, countered by the much more powerful dread of realizing just how much of it you’ll never get to…
Lindsey Jordan feels like a jaded old man. She tells me this after ordering a burrito to-go, because she has a bunch of appointments after this one and isn’t all that hungry right now. Photoshoots, interviews, meetings, what have you; she’s ping-ponging between them, and I happen to have an hour with her at a…
Since adopting the Mount Eerie moniker almost 15 years ago, Phil Elverum’s mostly remained in the same place. In the early 2000s, he returned to his island hometown of Anacortes, Washington after spending five years in Olympia making music as the Microphones, and borrowed the name of the island’s tallest peak. Outside of tours and…
