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Almost 10 years ago to the day, longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante announced that he had left the band, this time seemingly for good. He was replaced by John Klinghoffer, who would go on to play on two RHCP albums, 2009's I'm With You and 2016's The Getaway. Today, the Chili Peppers have announced that Klinghoffer is leaving the band and that Frusciante is back in. "The Red Hot...
Tweets! At the end of every year, for the past four years, we have collected memorable music tweets from artists and musicians into a handy little list for you. It's tradition! And tradition, as we all know, is always good and never bad. Sorry, we don't make the rules. Or the tweets. But, as previously explained, we do collect the tweets, so that is exactly what we have done for you. Some of them are...
The year is almost over, and the lists are abundant. This one is called The Top 40 Pop Songs Of 2019, which is a double entendre, see? Here is the context you need for understanding what you're about to see: The list is intended as a culmination of my column The Week In Pop, which appears here every Thursday (and is now going into hibernation until 2020). As conceptualized from the outset, TWIP is...
There have been long stretches this past year when I didn't want to listen to anything other than hardcore -- where music didn't sound right unless it had volcanic mosh parts and I-just-ate-bad-curry-and-I'm-angry-about-it vocals. I could attempt to be cute and blame my hardcore fixation on the perilous state of the world or whatever. But it's not that. It’s just that I started paying better attention...
If you’re looking for the stories behind your favorite songs, but don’t have time to read, say, Flea’s 400-page memoir or even all the liner notes on the latest Numero Group release, podcasts can be the answer for the music fan in need. Even if you just want to hear more from Kim Gordon or Bun B while waiting for them to put out a new album or want to figure out how the hell Slipknot made "Unsainted"...
Ethereal is one of those words music critics overuse to the extent that editors often caution their writers to avoid it entirely. Grimes feels differently. Earlier this week she posted a new playlist and manifesto arguing that "ethereal" should be an officially recognized genre on streaming platforms. Here's what she wrote: We petition that ethereal should be an official genre on streaming platforms!...
Every winter, Cyndi Lauper hosts her all-star Home For The Holiday benefit. The show raises money for True Colors United, the nonprofit that Lauper founded in 2008 to battle against LGBTQ youth homelessness. Last night, Lauper headlined the 2019 edition of the show at the Novo in Los Angeles. This time around, Lauper performed alongside people like Marilyn Manson, Kesha, King Princess, Perry Farrell,...
A year ago, Juice WRLD asked a rhetorical question: "What's the 27 Club?" And then: "We ain't making it past 21." The we there is crucial. Juice WRLD asked that question, and gave his own heavy-hearted answer, on the song "Legends." He released it in June of 2018, the day after the murder of XXXTentacion. Juice WRLD wrote the song in immediate tribute to his late peers XXXTentacion and Lil Peep: "This...
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.…
Of the many reasons artists have missed interviews — schedule conflicts, illness, feigned illness — childbirth is among the most reasonable. The original plan was to Skype with both members of the Oslo duo Konradsen, but vocalist and pianist Jenny Marie Sabel was unavailable due to the strong likelihood of induced labor. Fortunately, multi-instrumentalist Eirik…
Vagabon makes music for outcasts. Laetitia Tamko writes quietly luminous songs that help the listener feel less alone. Her work often meditates on how we find a sense of belonging within a community and what it means to feel truly at home. But it also grapples with what it feels like to be alienated, to…
It’s hard to believe Great Grandpa’s newest album is by, well, Great Grandpa. It’s a drastic musical shift, the kind that has you questioning if you accidentally put on a different band’s record or missed a transitional EP along the way. Four Of Arrows, the Seattle band’s sophomore full-length — due out this October via…
