It's an annual tradition: XXL collects a mixed-bag gaggle of young rappers, all of whom think they're already too big for this rigamarole. Together, they all pose for the magazine cover and submit to goofy public-relations stunting, all of which are engineered to boost both their own social media profiles and that of the aging magazine. So these rappers, these kids, are separated into groups and made...
Foxing got hit by a runaway truck at 50 mph. They played the next night and released a Dido cover as a fundraiser for their totaled van. They had $30,000 worth of gear and merchandise stolen, an amount big enough to make the nightly news in Austin. Lead singer Conor Murphy got his nose broken by a rowdy fan days before an Audiotree session and they played it anyway, rescinding their request for a substitute...
For decades, a small subset of jazz musicians has mistakenly believed that chasing R&B and pop trends represents a path to commercial success. In reality, it's rarely worked that way. For every hit like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" or smooth jazz radio staple like Miles Davis' "Time After Time," there are literally hundreds of albums of slick, forgettable -- and forgotten -- wallpaper music. At the moment,...
Katy Perry wiggles into a skirt shaped like a multi-tier cake, surrounded by sequin-sewing costume designers. It's the opening scene of the 2012 documentary Katy Perry: Part Of Me, and Perry's team is preparing for her California Dreams tour, scrambling around a pink Project Runway-style workroom. As if wielding a magic wand, she tries on spinning peppermint pasties and peacock feathers, remarking,...
A funny thing about punk rock: It's always been pastiche. The Stooges ground up hammerhead Detroit hard rock with Doors-ian self-laceration and free jazz's embrace of wild, twisty noise. The Ramones took '60s garage-rock riffs and Beach Boys melodies and played them as fast as possible. The Sex Pistols were as much a svengali creation as the Monkees or One Direction, but they drew from all the great...
The best part of the trilogy is never the ending. For the past few years, the most famous and beloved couple in the recent history of American popular music have been telling us a story, and it's been a riveting one. Two years ago, Beyoncé gave us Lemonade, an album of starting depth and intimacy and urgency. She was a wronged woman, furious and vengeful and ultimately forgiving. She whisked us all...
It's always a good idea to go see Nine Inch Nails live if you get a chance. For decades, their shows have been grand, cathartic theatrical experiences. But on the band's current tour, it appears that they're making their live shows even more special by switching up the setlists from night to night. At their Las Vegas tour opener last week, the band gave their new single "God Break Down The Door" its...
Vampire Weekend played their first full show in four years last night at the Libbey Bowl in Ojai, California. After performing their debut self-titled album from front-to-back, the band launched into "White Sky" from their sophomore album Contra, followed by songs from their most recent release Modern Vampires Of The City, a few live debuts, and special guest collaborations. They played MVOC's "Worship...
Foxing got hit by a runaway truck at 50 mph. They played the next night and released a Dido cover as a fundraiser for their totaled van. They had $30,000 worth of gear and merchandise stolen, an amount big enough to make the nightly news in Austin. Lead singer Conor Murphy got his nose broken…
Colin Stetson has probably frightened more listeners in the past week than in the preceding 15 years of his career. Many of them don’t know his name.
You probably know Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, the de facto leader of the band of kids battling Demogorgons and Demodogs on Netflix’s Stranger Things. But Calpurnia, his scrappy Vancouver indie-rock band, isn’t just some celebrity’s vanity project. Most of the four young musicians have been playing together for years, since before Wolfhard became a…
Heaven. Earth. One we know. The other we don’t. One we experience. The other is only believed in. But to many, one is just as real as the other. That is the crux of Kamasi Washington’s latest album, and Washington knows a lot about believing something into existence.
Everyone has to grow up eventually — even ducklings. “Look, dude — the baby ducklings!” Deafheaven guitarist Kerry McCoy stops as we’re mid-conversation, pointing out a plump of web-footed friends on a small rolling pitch alongside the walking path of Los Angeles’ Echo Park.
“I know! They’re getting big,” the band’s howling lead…
Sorry are chameleonic by design. Since they started putting out music a few years ago, they’ve flitted through a variety of styles, refusing to settle on one distinct sound. For me, they recall an era of music consumption less dominated by narrative. It’s not that they lack an identity, just that their identity feels malleable…
Sarah Beth Tomberlin wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music growing up. She was raised in a deeply religious Baptist family, and one of the first memories she has of hearing music that wasn’t related to church was watching American Idol and realizing that she didn’t know any of the songs the contestants were singing.
Dominick Palermo’s never been one for motivational speaking, but he’s down to give it a try — that is, once he’s had a few drinks.
“I just saw something happened with Kanye, right?”
This is John Ross’ way of saying he’s not particularly plugged into the pop culture narrative of the day — my conversation with the Wild Pink frontman occurred after Kanye West’s return to Twitter held the lives of music writers hostage for about a week…
Neko Case is walking on air, and she has Grace Jones to thank. “I’m still high,” she exclaims in between mouthfuls of banana at Brooklyn’s Nu Hotel while recalling a screening of Sophie Fiennes’ Bloodlight And Bami she took in a few days before. The singer, songwriter, and sometimes-New Pornographer never got to see Jones…
Sylvia Plath’s ponytail hangs in Washington, DC’s National Portrait Gallery. It’s a thick, dirty-brown plait housed in a glass box, and as unsettling as it is to look at a piece of Plath’s corporeal form while thinking about her short and tragic life, Taylor Mulitz is equally fascinated and weirded out by it. He leads…
Lily Allen didn’t like her last album. She says this and squeaks out a burst of nervous rat-a-tat-tat laughter. She does this a lot in conversation, touching on a topic that most people like to avoid, both in interviews and in real life, from dealing with stalkers to music industry machinations to her own feelings…
The roots of Bernice — an experimental pop group based in Toronto, led by vocalist/songwriter Robin Dann — already go back a while. They began playing together in the beginning of this decade and independently released a debut in 2011, followed by an EP in 2013. But a proper follow-up took some time to materialize.
For a very brief moment, Stephen Malkmus is spooning me.
Ben Gibbard is hesitant to talk about Death Cab For Cutie’s new album, knowing that whatever he says will probably be misconstrued. He learned this lesson in 2008, when bandmate and producer Chris Walla described their then-forthcoming Narrow Stairs as “bloody” with notes of “synth punk,” thus giving critics plenty of fodder to twist once…
