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Post-Odd Future Tyler, The Creator finds him somewhere between Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt. He can be as reclusive as his mates, but he embraces pop melodies, unlike Earl, and is too anarchic to be a cleansing songbird. Though he probably won’t admit it outright, he gives too much of a fuck to be punk. The reformed enfant terrible cared enough to tweet some instructions for listening to Igor...
Earlier this month, Vampire Weekend returned from a six-year silence with the generally excellent new album Father Of The Bride. And they're also getting back into making music videos, many of which feature famous friends and well-wishers. Their "Harmony Hall" video had appearances from Jonah Hill and Dev Hynes, while their Hill-directed "Sunflower" video had Jerry Seinfeld and Fab 5 Freddy. Today,...
The most recent music from Jonny Greenwood, the Radiohead multi-instrumentalist and film-score great, hasn't been a record. It's been a piece of sheet music. Last year, Greenwood published the Glenn Gould-inspired solo piano piece "88 (No.1)." And today, those of us who don't play piano and don't have the ability to force people to play piano for us can hear the piece. It's part of one of NPR's Tiny...
Nobody is excited about hologram tours, and yet someone, somewhere sees money in them. In the past few years, we've seen announcements about any number of dead icons touring via hologram: Amy Winehouse, Frank Zappa, Patsy Cline, Ronnie James Dio, a Roy Orbison/Buddy Holly double bill. It's hard to imagine any of these events without feeling an involuntary shudder pass through your body, and yet they...
The 1975 played Alabama's Hangout Fest last night and frontman Matty Healy took the opportunity to criticize the draconian abortion ban that passed in the state legislature. The "heartbeat bill" was signed by Republican governor Kay Ivey. (Healy hinted he would talk about the ban at the fest on Thursday.) "I was reading the abortion bill last night -- I actually read the thing -- it starts out by...
The Flaming Lips have survived and evolved through an astonishing number of indie-rock life cycles. They were labelmates with Fear, Wipers, and the Dead Milkmen and were three albums deep by the time Nirvana released Bleach. They were contemporaneous with both 90210, on which they memorably guested, and The O.C., which fomented the Bush-era indie boom they rode to festival ubiquity. They ushered Miley...
Lil Nas X's improbable, inexorable rise to the top of the charts and country-rap stardom continues to be one of the feel-good stories of the year. "Old Town Road," a supremely goofy song with a Nine Inch Nails sample and a Billy Ray Cyrus remix, blew up organically thanks to some TikTok memes and a catchy-as-hell chorus. Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes, two artists with the weight of the real pop music...
"You're too old. Let go. It's over. Nobody listens to techno." That was Eminem in 2002, giving some sincere and heartfelt advice to Moby. Like a whole lot of the things Eminem said when he was at the peak of his fame, it hasn't aged all that well. (Another thing that hasn't aged well: Eminem lobbing a homophobic slur at Moby on that same song.) Factually, Eminem was right, at least about techno. Very...
Do you remember being small in a big confusing world? Do you remember feeling excitement for the first time or being cognizant of how clothes fell on your body for the first time? Not many people do, or most of us don’t dare to think back on it. For shoegazey Madison rockers Slow Pulp, this…
(Trigger warning: this article contains discussion of sexual assault.)
In 2015, Charly Bliss had self-released a three-song EP called Soft Serve and were more than content to play tiny Brooklyn venues whenever the opportunity arose. “We were crushing it,” says drummer Sam Hendricks. “Spike Hill on a Tuesday.”
You can call Holly Herndon a doctor now. When I meet the experimental composer in lower Manhattan in April, she’s just arrived from the Bay Area, where she successfully defended her dissertation at Stanford’s Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics. Now that her PhD program is behind her, Herndon has moved from California…
Part of Sass’ origin took place at a party in a Minneapolis apartment complex turned personal palace that has 35 rooms and seven bathrooms, all lavishly dedicated to the 1960s. (Really, it’s quite something.) It was in one of those rooms that Stephanie Murck met Willem Vander Ark. Murck had been involved with some other…
“Let’s do the whale.”
It’s impossible to step into the American Museum Of Natural History and not feel a sense of childhood wonder. For anyone who grew up in New York City or the surrounding area, it was the site of class field trips and sugar-rushed weekends where it seemed like the entire…
Not many people would cackle as their house goes up in flames, but that image perfectly illustrates the kind of person and artist Yola is. Named for that tragic experience, her debut album Walk Through Fire came out in February. Its seamless blend of triple fiddles, steel, and shimmering tremolo guitars feels superbly refined, making…
The Get Up Kids were looking for a job and then they found some jobs. After the beloved Kansas punk band went on hiatus in 2011, main songwriter Matt Pryor became a farmhand — “I picked radishes and tomatoes and shit and it was awesome.” Guitarist/vocalist Jim Suptic went back to school and landed with…
In the first half of the decade, the Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture made their name with a mixture of dream-pop, soft rock, and folk leanings — and became a Stereogum Band To Watch in the process. Across their first two albums, 2013’s Moon Tides and 2015’s Pray For Rain, the couple of Daniel Hindman…
If you were a rock photographer in the mid-’60s, being invited to photograph Bob Dylan was perhaps the best thing that could happen to you. You’d get a front-row view to the then-burgeoning countercultural revolution. You’d get to trade wisdom with the tousle-haired genius who wrote “Visions of Johanna.” And, if all went well, you’d…
La Dispute were in a rut. After playing together (give or take a few members) for close to 15 years, the post-hardcore experimentalists were too stuck in routine and familiarity with each other to come up with ideas for their upcoming album. In search of something — anything — to jump-start their songwriting process, bass…
Admittedly, the name Intellexual is a bit of a forehead-slapper, but hear me out here: The record is good. Like, really good. You’d expect as much from Nico Segal and Nate Fox, guys who played a key role in crafting Chance The Rapper’s euphoric sound and who count Frank Ocean (“U-N-I-T-Y”), Kanye West (“Ultralight Beam”),…
As Weyes Blood, Natalie Mering has spent her career making more than just records: She’s created fully immersive experiences. The singer-songwriter has been self-releasing albums since she was 15, initially using the moniker “Wise Blood” from the Flannery O’Connor novel for her songs. For her self-released debut album The Outside Room, released in 2011, Mering…
In the beginning of 2017, Priests released their debut album Nothing Feels Natural. It was a long-awaited confirmation that this was one of the most exciting young rock bands of our time, and it wound up ranking towards the top of our list of the best albums of that year. Just under two years later,…
Coffee with Charlotte Gainsbourg seems like it should take place in black and white. There’s something distinctly classical about the 47-year-old, almost as if she walked out of the frame of an old film and into the streets of contemporary New York. But when we meet a few blocks from her apartment in the West…
Patrick Stickles does everything with intention. Having now released music via his Titus Andronicus project for over a decade, Stickles long ago proved that even in his work’s most aesthetically raw moments, there are layers of thought at play. So, while it may come as some surprise that he’s announcing a new album called An…
