"I'd like to imagine people would listen to the album really loud. Or on headphones so it's like there's no space left anywhere in your ears." That's not really an exacting demand on the part of Victoria Legrand, but that's what she wanted from those who listened to Beach House's third album, Teen Dream, when it came out 10 years ago this weekend. It might not seem like much, but that was a pretty...
Cedric Bixler-Zavala of the Mars Volta and At The Drive had to put down his family dog yesterday after she ate rat poison, and he says that Scientologists protecting That '70s Show actor Danny Masterson were behind it. In 2017, Bixler-Zavala's wife Chrissie Carnell Bixler accused Masterson of raping her while they were dating in the late '90s. Several other women have also made similar accusations...
One could argue -- particularly if "one" is "me" -- that the greatest album of the 21st century was released only about three weeks into it. I make this argument from nowhere resembling objectivity: On a January night 20 years ago tomorrow, I stood shivering outside of a Tower Records (R.I.P.) waiting for the opportunity to purchase D’Angelo's Voodoo at midnight, a particular music-consumer experience...
PROGRAMMING NOTE: The Week In Pop is moving to Mondays! Today's installment will be the final Thursday column. Look for the first Monday column just four days from now, on Jan. 27. The Grammys are this weekend. You probably know this because the Recording Academy is mired in scandal right now, with allegations of corruption ranging from a compromised nomination process to a rape coverup. Barring a...
It’s been said before, quite possibly about every album Destroyer’s released in the past 15 years, but the latest, Have We Met, is a very different Destroyer album. On one hand, it's dark, eerie, and volatile. Ghostly wisps of synths glide past lyrics dripping with dread. Craggy guitar lines emerge out of nothingness and then all of the sudden, tower over everything. It’s populated by a sorry-ass...
Maybe you've seen the clip. There's Rob and Fab, the two model-handsome faces of Milli Vanilli, cavorting around onstage at a July 1989 MTV concert to their #2 hit "Girl You Know It's True" when the backing recording -- or is it main recording? -- gets stuck during the chorus. Rob clearly panics after he finds out what's going on, and after realizing he can't just mime "girl you know it's" a dozen...
What did we expect? What did anyone expect? Eminem's new album Music To Be Murdered By dropped as a clear-blue-sky surprise on Friday, and yet the outrage that followed was just a muffled, quieter version of previous Eminem-related outrages. People used to get excited to get upset about Eminem albums. Now Eminem compares himself to both the Las Vegas shooter and the Manchester bomber, and we get a...
Pearl Jam took their sweet time making Gigaton, their first album in almost seven years, and they're taking their sweet time rolling it out too. OK, so they've only been at it for a couple weeks, but it sure feels like they've been dragging it out: First there was the augmented reality teaser, then the album and tour announcement, then the tracklist reveal. Now they've finally delivered the lead single,...
It’s been said before, quite possibly about every album Destroyer’s released in the past 15 years, but the latest, Have We Met, is a very different Destroyer album.
If you live in the British coastal town of Brighton, it’s hard not to feel the ever-present draw of the sea, for better or for worse. For Dana Margolin, the pebbly beach and great watery beyond that signal the end of Brighton’s city center became particularly entangled with her life around the time she was…
No matter how vulnerable or genuine a musician’s work is, when they get up on stage there is always an added performative element. Whether under their own name or an alias, they’re recreating a past state of mind — one that still might be fresh, but is reconstructed nonetheless. Ella O’Connor Williams considered this when…
Every album Daniel Lopatin has made feels like a portal into an alternate universe. His earliest work as Oneohtrix Point Never, made almost solely on his father’s old Roland Juno-60 synthesizer and collected on Rifts, formed a sprawling multi-album narrative about an astronaut dying in space. The crumbling TV commercials of Replica, MIDI church hymnals…
David Bazan is crying while driving. Many scenes in the new documentary Strange Negotiations find the once and future Pedro The Lion frontman alone, steering his sedan down endless highways between emotionally taxing house shows. In this one, he reaches his breaking point, despairing over the loneliness of his chosen path and the conflict between…
Over the course of this decade, Jenny Hval has built up a catalog of boundary-pushing, thought-provoking electronic music that’s rightfully earned her consistent acclaim and fascination. Two months ago, she released her latest collection, The Practice Of Love, the culmination of that decade’s worth of work. The immediate impact on first listen was hearing the…
For the sake of technical accuracy on their Bandcamp tags, Glass Beach identifies as a Los Angeles “post-emo” group. But ask the infectiously gleeful quartet where they live spiritually, sonically, and socially, it’s all the same answer: “online.” “Us, and people who are online as us, get information about the outside world from our Twitter…
Over the years, Brittney Parks has undergone her own personal apotheosis. It all started with the fiddle. She was mesmerized as a child after witnessing an Irish folk band performing in her hometown of Cincinnati. She begged her mom for a violin. Parks became mostly self-taught growing up, defining her style in church and warping…
Emily Yacina’s new song “Gleaming” is an upward rush of momentum. “Meet me here/ I’ll show you/ The same light/ I’m feeling,” she sings, her delivery breathless, words spilling out in an incantatory pulse. The track was originally supposed to be entirely instrumental, and it wasn’t until late in the process of making her new…
The legendary Liz Phair is releasing a memoir today, Horror Stories — you can read an excerpt from it here — and she’s also releasing a brand-new song, her first new track since 2010’s Funstyle, if you don’t count this Christmas original from 2014. “Good Side” finds her reuniting with producer Brad Wood, who she…
I am trying very hard to make this orange look like an orange. But after trying my best to bring my illustration of Adrianne Lenker’s snack to three-dimensional justice, I must concede that I have inadvertently drawn the sort of bowel movement that should make one hurriedly call their doctor.
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
The music of Lower Dens has always been dense and to some extent difficult, even when cathartic or hypnotizing. Across their first two albums, 2010’s Twin-Hand Movement and 2012’s Nootropics, the band perfected a kind of shadowy then nervy rock sound — exemplified by the albums’ respective highlights, “I Get Nervous” and “Brains.” Then, on…
Britons have a complex relationship with the Monarchy. Though adored by older generations and millions around the world, the Royal Family are almost exclusively met with scorn and contempt from younger Brits, and especially those who are left-leaning and in the music community. That makes “Magic Of Meghan,” the debut single from southeast London four-piece…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
