It's been five long months since the 1975 started whipping up a frenzy over their follow-up to 2016's I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, and we're still over a month out from when A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationship will finally come out. But Matty Healy and the rest of the British crew know how to keep people talking about them. Just a couple days ago, they...
Jessie Reyez has so much to say, and hearing her say it is so much fun. Here's the Toronto singer on "Saint Nobody," the opening track from her imminent Being Human In Public EP, which doubles as an origin story-cum-statement of purpose: "I think about dying every day/ I've been told that that's a little strange/ Well, I guess I've always been a little strange/ Another reason why I work like a motherfucker."...
In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Bobbie Gentry - "Ode To Billie Joe" HIT #1: August 26, 1967 STAYED AT #1: 4 weeks Something funny happened at the end of last year: A New Yorker short story went viral. Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" is a fictional...
Lorely Rodriguez writes about love in massive and minuscule ways. She measures it in the stars, she memorializes moments shared on a city stoop. Whether you're speaking to her in person or listening to her lyrics, Rodriguez is considerate and direct. Both are attributes that she uses to write songs that feel universal and familiar one moment and extremely private the next. With this resolve, the Los...
Noname has been on late-night TV before. Two years ago, when her friend and collaborator Chance The Rapper was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, he brought Noname to the stage, and they performed "Finish Line/Drown" together. Noname's entrance -- giddy and self-conscious and embarrassed, grinning huge while doing a little two-step dance to the center of the stage -- is something I'll always remember....
There's this phrase in pro-wrestling terminology: Killing the town. Back before the '80s WWF takeover, pro wrestling was a regional phenomenon: All of North America divided up into these discrete fiefdoms over which a single promoter would reign. Those promoters would then tour their wrestling rosters around their own corners of the map, running shows in bigger cities and smaller towns, performing...
In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** The Beatles - "All You Need Is Love" HIT #1: August 19, 1967 STAYED AT #1: 1 week The Beatles were already a monstrously successful band before the summer 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. But...
For a band who haven't released a new album in more than three years, Tame Impala have had an awfully eventful few days. This past weekend, the band's set at the otherwise-exemplary psych-rock festival Desert Daze was cut off, three songs in, in for lightning storms. And last night, as previously announced, band mastermind Kevin Parker joined up with New York rap polyglot Theophilus London to debut...
Lorely Rodriguez writes about love in massive and minuscule ways. She measures it in the stars, she memorializes moments shared on a city stoop. Whether you’re speaking to her in person or listening to her lyrics, Rodriguez is considerate and direct. Both are attributes that she uses to write songs that feel universal and familiar…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Sir Babygirl lives up to the excess of her name. Kelsie Hogue, the mastermind behind the fledgling project, admits that her music can be a lot. “I want to do pop escapism,” she tells me at a café in Brooklyn, where she’s recently moved from New Hampshire. She hasn’t really had time to settle into…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Last time David Nance Group toured through my town, the venue was a laundromat that hosts DIY shows. So opening for Jack White last month was a pretty big deal for Nance and his band of Omaha rock ‘n’ rollers. When I reached him by phone two weeks ago, Nance was still revved up from…
Chan Marshall is trying to remember how her three-year-old son likes his bed made. Having failed to get it right the first time, she strips a set of white sheets and a quilt off of a small futon in the corner of her East Village bedroom while I look on. She starts over, tucking the…
In the late ’90s, musical genres that once felt as separate as continents began to shift into each other like tectonic plates, the great unifier being electronic music. Pick any genre or scene and you’ll find it taking hold due to an increasing interest in technology, which was growing more accessible (and affordable) than ever.
In 2003, Chloë Sevigny would endure the biggest controversy of her career, the Riot Grrrl group Bratmobile would officially break up, and Sheridan Frances “Francie” Medosch would still be in diapers. When I call the 17-year-old via video chat, she is sitting on the floor of her bedroom in Berwyn, PA with her cat named…
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…
