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When Adrianne Lenker attempts to put a feeling into words, she narrows her eyes and moves her hands around like she's physically trying to grab onto something. Gesticulation is, of course, a thing that a lot of people do, but the way Lenker does it feels intentional. Like she can see that one crazy feeling hovering somewhere in front of her, like she needs to hold it in her palm in order to accurately...
By 2008, TV On The Radio were already revered. Having emerged from New York's early '00s rock renaissance, the band immediately set themselves apart from their contemporaries and surroundings. While a lot of the big names of the day were favoring retro-leaning post-punk sounds and a devotion to a fading brand of Lower East Side edginess, TV On The Radio always sounded like the future. Here was a multi-racial...
Back in May, Ryley Walker released his fourth album Deafman Glance. It marked the most significant transformation in an already shape-shifting career, finding Walker miles away from the folk troubadour we once knew as he delved into a battle-scarred sound indebted to Chicago post-rock and perhaps truer to himself than any of his past work. Ranking as one of our favorite albums of the year so far, Deafman...
Parallel Lines changed everything. Not instantly, but soon enough. When it came out in September '78 (exactly 40 years ago yesterday), it cheesed off purists (Blondie went disco???) and earned just enough critical praise to stir interest (Christgau: "as close to God as pop-rock albums ever get") without immediately pushing Blondie's greatest album into the ranks of the revered -- it reached a modest...
After an online campaign asking Weezer to cover Toto's '80s mega-hit "Africa" went viral, the band obliged, resulting in their biggest hit in years. Weezer's "Africa" cover has climbed as far as #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is even getting airplay on top 40 radio stations. And now they've released a fun video that could push the song even higher on the charts. The video mimics Weezer's video for...
Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy has occasionally toured and played shows on his own, and last year, he released the solo album Together At Last, re-recording songs from Wilco and his other projects as solo acoustic ballads. But today, he's officially announced WARM, his first proper solo album of all new material. Recorded at Wilco's Chicago studio the Loft with some of Tweedy's usual collaborators like...
Cat Power's upcoming album Wanderer, her first album since 2012's Sun, is coming out on Domino Records. That makes it her first album in 22 years to not be released on Matador. And in a new interview with The New York Times, Chan Marshall talks candidly about the break with what she calls her "ex-label." Marshall says that Matador rejected Wanderer. "They said, do it again, do it over," she explains....
Shockingly, if you're putting money into buying a $12,000 bottle of celebrity tears, you might be getting scammed. Yesterday, we learned that Noah Cyrus, aspiring pop star and younger sister of Miley Cyrus, was promoting her new Good Cry EP by selling a limited edition line of merchandise on Pizzaslime. The items available include hoodies that say "sry i'm trash" and "NOAH CYRUS SUCKS," sweatpants...
When Adrianne Lenker attempts to put a feeling into words, she narrows her eyes and moves her hands around like she’s physically trying to grab onto something. Gesticulation is, of course, a thing that a lot of people do, but the way Lenker does it feels intentional. Like she can see that one crazy feeling…
Back in May, Ryley Walker released his fourth album Deafman Glance. It marked the most significant transformation in an already shape-shifting career, finding Walker miles away from the folk troubadour we once knew as he delved into a battle-scarred sound indebted to Chicago post-rock and perhaps truer to himself than any of his past work.
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
I know this is a big ask because it sounds like a throwaway gag from The Office, but I beg of you, loyal Stereogum reader: Put some respect on the name of “Lackawanna County’s ska-punk scene in 2005.” The Menzingers, Captain, We’re Sinking, and Tigers Jaw all emerged from hardscrabble Scranton and laid the groundwork…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Back in the ’90s, Melissa Auf der Maur rose to prominence as the bassist of Hole. But even then, the mechanisms and visibility of being in a major rock band weren’t for her. She signed the contract in search of experience, got it, then walked away. After a brief stint with the Smashing Pumpkins following…
Homeboy Sandman raps; he does not dance. So he was surprised when he found himself with his girlfriend doing the thing he doesn’t do at a party at Queens’ Rockaway Beach. His collaborator Edan was DJing and put on William DeVaughn’s “Be Thankful For What You Got.” Sandman immediately started moving. “I thought y’all were…
When British indie collective Los Campesinos! announced a reissue campaign and North American tour for their first two albums — the brilliant one-two punch of Hold On Now, Youngster… and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, which both saw release in 2008 — warm feelings of nostalgia were undoubtedly elicited for anyone who held the…
Tim Kasher is really, really glad to be back in a band. Though the longtime artist put out a solo record, No Resolution, just last year, he hasn’t released anything with his best-known project, post-hardcore stalwarts Cursive, since 2012’s I Am Gemini. But that’s all about to change: Come October 5, Cursive will drop an…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Yowler debuted in 2015 with the release of The Offer, a short, lush collection of songs that honed in on a very particular strain of sadness. The project started as a songwriting outlet for Maryn Jones separate from the music she worked on with the Columbus-based indie-folk act Saintseneca and her scrappy rock band All…
Kennesaw, a small Georgia town just north of Atlanta, is most famous for two incidents. The first, the 1982 passage of a law mandating gun possession as a largely symbolic rebuttal to a handgun ban in a county three states away, gives you context for the community that would erupt in the second event: the…
There’s a lyric on Thou’s new album that sums up their 11-plus year existence pretty succinctly: “We are vast unknowable beings without the confines of your perception.”
John Rossiter came of age as an emo kid in the Midwest, so it goes without saying that he’s had some formative Saddle Creek experience. But with only the slightest prompt, the Young Jesus frontman is gonna say it anyway: “Album Of The Year is one of my all-time favorite records,” he gushes, describing the…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.
1991 is the year alternative rock went mainstream. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden were about to take over the world; Out Of Time and “Losing My Religion” turned R.E.M. into megastars;…
