A recent conversation with my seven-year-old: "Dad, put on the cowboy boogie song." "You said you hated that song." "I did, but then you played it, and it was stuck in my head. So I started singing it, and then I wanted to hear it. And now it's good." He has figured out the way pop music works. And he's right. The cowboy boogie song is good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7U6AoZ27yE It's hard to...
Sleater-Kinney have shared the title track from their upcoming St. Vincent-produced album, The Center Won't Hold. It's the third song we're hearing from it following "Hurry On Home" and "The Future Is Here," and the first since drummer Janet Weiss announced that she was leaving the band. Weiss still plays on the album, though, and Carrie Brownstein recently commented on her departure, saying: "Her...
It's been a little over a decade since Vivian Girls got started -- we reflected on the 10-year anniversary of their debut album last fall -- and it's been 8 years since the release of their last album, 2011's Share The Joy. But the New York-bred trio -- Cassie Ramone, Katy Goodman, and Ali Koehler -- have all reconvened in Los Angeles, and today they're announcing their reunion and grand return. They'll...
Sometimes, when indie artists make their big debuts on late-night talk shows, they look cowed or overmatched -- like they're not sure what they're doing there and not sure how they should respond to this new situation. That was not the case for Weyes Blood last night. Natalie Mering's sharp, sophisticated pop project released the impressive album Titanic Rising a couple of months ago. Last night, she...
Chance The Rapper has been teasing his official debut "owbum" for literal years, and ever since winter he's been telling us it's out in July. At the end of June he launched a pre-order for the project, and last night on The Tonight Show he revealed some key details to Jimmy Fallon. The album -- Chance's first project to be identified as such after rising to Grammy-anointed superstardom with a trio...
Appropriately enough for a season defined by swimming pools, sweat, and refreshing ice-cold beverages, the Song Of The Summer is a slippery concept. Does it merely amount to the summer's most popular and inescapable track? If so, our current Song Of The Summer is "Old Town Road," objectively the biggest hit of not just summer 2019 but the whole damn year. Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus' joyous country-rap...
Lil Nas X's "Old Town" road is the #1 song in the country for the 15th week running. Part of its longevity has to do with how well Lil Nas X has been able to hold onto the cultural conversation via whatever wacky memes are currently blowing up on the internet. His latest foray into that zone is a new animated video for the recently released remix of the song that features Young Thug and Mason Ramsey....
Will they be the same band? That's something we used to worry about. From the post-Nirvana early-'90s grunge boom all the way through to the mid-'00s, some of us would bellyache every time one of our favorite bands signed a major-label deal. We would want these bands to succeed and thrive, but we would always fixate on the idea that these labels could take away all the things that made these bands...
There’s a song on Glitterer’s official debut album, Looking Through The Shades, called “The News.” Unlike the other 13 tracks on the record, which are all speckled with synths and/or propelled by a thumping drum machine, “The News” is just Ned Russin singing a simple melody over an equally rudimentary bassline. “Saw my face up…
In April of last year, Frightened Rabbit’s landmark, breakthrough sophomore album The Midnight Organ Fight turned 10. It was cause for celebration: This was the album on which the band came into its own, featuring some of Scott Hutchison’s most enduring songwriting, the album that fans would latch onto in their times of need and…
I have to constantly remind myself that Maxo Kream is a little less than two years older than me. Besides the black-and-green Supreme jersey, everything about the 29-year-old rapper emanates an OG persona. When he comes downstairs to a Flatiron District hotel lobby, he gives the type of hard handshake that makes you aware you’re…
We’ve Got A File On You is a new reboot of an old-school Stereogum franchise. Once called Annotated Media Guide, these are interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
The first time I saw Anthony Naples, he was shrouded in fog. He was DJing his residency at the Ridgewood, NY club Nowadays, lighting the misty dancefloor up with thorny techno and scrappy house. I saw an artist in full control of his craft as a DJ, unconcerned with appearances as a “performer.” Now, Naples…
We’ve Got A File On You is a new reboot of an old-school Stereogum franchise. Once called Annotated Media Guide, these are interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
“Where do you go when you just wanna go? Where do you go when you let it all go?” Emily Sprague asks on a song from Florist’s third album, which was written as an escape — from life’s external pressures, from the constant buzzing inside your own mind. It’s an album that’s constantly looking for…
“Method Man,” the lead single of Detroit-based rock musician Stef Chura’s new album, Midnight, paints a picture of a dude whose condescension is dreadfully magnetic. Driven by an fervor and fixation similar to that that fuels the type of relationship it describes, Chura’s vocals and the accompanying instrumentals speed up and intensify as the song…
Carlos Santana has a lot to celebrate in 2019. It’s the 50th anniversary of his band’s self-titled debut album, which was released on August 30, 1969. Two weeks before that, the band gave a legendary performance at the Woodstock festival in upstate New York. They’d been a popular live act in San Francisco, but their…
The rain can force us into unexpected places. Sometimes, it’s for the better. Such is the case when I meet Welsh musician and novice furniture maker Cate Le Bon in New York City during a torrential downpour. We take refuge in the Guggenheim, as our expected coffee shop has been overtaken by others also finding…
Trevor Shelley de Brauw is a pretty busy guy. In addition to being the guitarist in Pelican and RLYR — and releasing an excellent solo album, Uptown, in 2017 — he’s also a father and works full-time as a music publicist. (Full disclosure: de Brauw did press for my band United Nations’ last full-length in…
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…
