Over the weekend, Björk opened up about her own experiences with sexual harassment in the film industry. It was a thinly-veiled story about "a Danish director" who, although she didn't name him directly, is undoubtedly Lars von Trier, who Björk worked with on 2000's Dancer In The Dark. Von Trier denied the allegations yesterday, and today Björk has shared more details. Her description includes examples...
Fox News' Greg Gutfeld is a big music head -- he's had Stephen Malkmus, Fucked Up, and Ariel Pink on his show before -- and every year, he invites people on to discuss the new class of nominees for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Radiohead, patron saints of skinny indie kids, are up for the honor this year, and this is what Fox News host Kat Timpf had to say about them: Seeing as it's about fame and...
There's precedent -- not a lot, but some. In 1996, the California doom metal trio Sleep put together Jerusalem, a whole album that consisted of one slow, repetitive, atmospheric hour-long song. London Records, the band's label, had no idea how to sell it, so it stayed unreleased for three years, before a smaller label finally released it. A few years later, after the band was already broken up, another...
Pop music is littered with the shattered remains of relationships. As the stereotype goes: Personal strife often makes for good art. And for many artists, nothing is more of a catalyst for a great song than romantic discord or destruction. The list of classic breakup songs and albums feels endless; some artists' whole catalogs seem to revolve around the ups and downs, the exhilarating beginnings and...
A friend first introduced me to Phoenix as a hybrid of Daft Punk and the Strokes, and at the time in 2006 -- when both acts still felt like the coolest in the world even though they were starting to sound less and less like the artists that earned them those designations -- there was hardly a better way to sell me on a band, nor a better time for one to take up and run with both mantles. Phoenix had...
Last week, Los Angeles producer the Gaslamp Killer was accused of drugging and raping two women in 2013. The Gaslamp Killer comes from the same bass-music scene as Flying Lotus, and FlyLo's Brainfeeder label has released some of the Gaslamp Killer's music. And while Brainfeeder put out a statement distancing itself from the Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus himself finished a Los Angeles show by playing...
Among last week's many troubling accounts of entertainment-adjacent sexual misconduct was the news that guitarist Matt Mondanile was dismissed from Real Estate last year due to "unacceptable treatment of women" and not merely so he could focus on his solo project, Ducktails. Today SPIN has published a lengthier report detailing multiple specific allegations. In summary: These on-the-record accounts,...
William Patrick "Billy" Corgan now appears to be, among other things, a batshit conspiracy theorist, and during his appearance on the The Howard Stern Show today, he talked about a few of the supernatural events he's allegedly witnessed. He recounts a time that he apparently saw a shapeshifter -- "Let’s just say I was with somebody once and I saw a transformation that I can’t explain," he said...
Dive through the sea of sounds that emerged from of the 1980s and you’ll find the material that pulls on your senses the strongest. Maybe it’s metal or new wave or R&B. Perhaps you even quietly, unironically dig Huey Lewis And The News. But if there’s one act with the ability to unite all consumers…
During the epochal period when Belle And Sebastian were making albums such as If You’re Feeling Sinister, Tigermilk, The Boy With The Arab Strap and winning hearts for their wistful melodies and lovelorn character studies, the Scottish indie pop group were also releasing EPs like Lazy Line Painter Jane and Dog On Wheels that allowed…
John Carpenter, the director of such genre-defining shockers as Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and Christine, permanently scarred our collective childhood with his knack for spooky storytelling. Now, at the age of 69, he’s not only experiencing a deserved career Renaissance, he’s also embracing his status as — plot twist! — a recording artist.
“Hello, baby, how are you doing,” Princess Nokia greets me on the phone. Her voice is tender and genuine. She has been touring for the last year and a half and remains ridiculously busy, but in this rare free moment she’s chatting about 1992 Deluxe, Rough Trade’s expanded re-release of last year’s breakout mixtape 1992.
In the relatively short amount of time they’ve been a band, Toronto four-piece Weaves have garnered a good amount of well-deserved acclaim. Last year, we named them a Band To Watch ahead of their self-titled debut, a collection of bright, frazzled art-rock that wound up earning Weaves a ton of buzz and a nomination for…
Ten years ago, when R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People turned 15, Stereogum released a compilation of artists covering each song from the album (Drive XV is still available here) and, at the time, we got Mike Mills to talk a little bit about every track. Today, Automatic For The People turns 25 — an extensive…
It’s hard to place Faris Badwan. There’s the fact that his name alone sounds exotic. There’s the fact that his demeanor is some improbable mix of stoned, moody detachment and wired, up-all-night intensity. He speaks in a wispy, wandering murmur that could equally signal boredom, mild frustration, aloofness, or reflection. And, obviously, there’s the way…
Welcome to the fourth installment of “Tracking Down,” a new Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
When Jessica Lea Mayfield moved from Ohio to Tennessee a few years ago, it was not merely a professional decision. The relocation put her at the heart of the music industry in Nashville, but more crucially it gave a new start after some incredibly traumatic events in her life. A singer with a gracefully laconic…
Strike one for an indie band forming in 2009: playing “really bad, wussy emo rock 10 years after it was relevant.” Strike two: doing so in Willimantic, Connecticut, a city commonly known as “Heroin Town” in a state whose most renowned rock band to that point was probably Hatebreed. Strike three: call yourself the World…
Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz are twin sisters who make up the aptly named duo Ibeyi, which translates to “Twins” in the Yoruban language of West Africa. When I met up with them in New York, the two had arrived in the city an hour before — Lisa-Kaindé flew in from London and Naomi from Paris.
Someone hands Joe Casey another drink. He leans back, a smile breaking his reddened face as he observes it, his fingers now cradling an empty whiskey glass and a new apple juice/whiskey concoction, which looks pretty much just like whiskey. An unlit cigarette — the who-knows-which installment in a seriously endless lineage of pre-show smokes…
Rick Antonoff looks like he’s second-guessing this. Wearing a T-shirt and shorts, he’s perched on a board in a dunk tank, surveying the crowd gathered to watch as people take their shot at hitting the target — which clangs with a sound that immediately conjures state fairs and old carnivals — to send him into…
Michael Cera tends to come off as a music fanatic that occasionally moonlights as an actor. He played with Sex Bob-Omb in the film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and the indie-rock supergroup Mister Heavenly (featuring his friend Nick Thorburn) in the real world, played on a Weezer album, and even released a lo-fi folk…
Nothing about Moses Sumney is ordinary. When you set out to solve for x in the equation of two strict Ghanaian parents who also happen to both be pastors, the solution is usually not one acclaimed singer-songwriter operating at an intersection of genres. Especially one that has a B.A. in Creative Writing, a circle of…
