Why haven't Deerhunter already disappeared? "There's a reason why I'm here with Deerhunter after all this time," Bradford Cox recently told Stereogum. "Certainly not for money, for Christ's sake. What do I have to gain by being in Deerhunter? By continuing this project?" After explaining how much he hates the name Deerhunter, which he didn't choose, Cox then revealed his motivation for continuing the...
There's been something happening in Dublin. Across 2014 and 2015, a group called Girl Band started to generate international buzz thanks to their idiosyncratic blend of noise-rock, post-punk, and techno-inspired rhythms. Here was a new sound, one nobody associated with a specific generation or scene in Ireland. Girl Band then went silent for several years, and became something like lost progenitors...
Charlotte rapper DaBaby looks at his phone, and there is a video of a woman's butt on it. DaBaby gets so fired-up about this that he drives his pickup truck off of a cliff. While the truck is falling, DaBaby is dancing. The truck crashes, exploding into a crude special-effects fireball, but DaBaby is just fine. He crawls out of the ravine and finds a blind man cooking soup in a shed somewhere. DaBaby...
Last month, word leaked out that Travis Scott would join Maroon 5 at this year's Super Bowl Halftime Show. That news has recently been confirmed, and it's led many, including public figures like Meek Mill and the Rev. Al Sharpton, to criticize Scott. After every NFL team refused to sign the former San Francisco 49ers quaterback Colin Kaepernick after he protested police brutality by kneeling during...
If you ever want to freak yourself all the way out, try driving a newborn baby -- your newborn baby -- home from the hospital. All of a sudden, everything is new. There is a car seat installed in your car, and there is a tiny and fragile human, a human whose health and wellbeing are your responsibility, trussed up in it. All of a sudden, it feels like every other car on the road is out to get you....
Bikini Kill are reuniting for a string of shows later this year in New York City and Los Angeles. The lineup will feature the trio of Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox, along with Erica Dawn Lyle on guitar. It'll be the first time they've played a show since 1997, though last year they briefly reunited to perform one track at a book release party. Bikini Kill broke up in 1997 and their last...
Toto's oft-memed, cheesy '80s hit "Africa" had a bit of a resurgence last year. One Weezer fan ran a viral campaign to get the band to cover the track. It worked and became their biggest hit in years. Toto returned the favor with a cover of Weezer's "Hash Pipe." Last month, Pitbull sampled "Africa" in a ridiculous song for the new Aquaman movie. It's 2019, and I regret to inform you that "Africa" is...
Just under two years ago, Tim Showalter released Hard Love, his fifth album under the Strand Of Oaks moniker. It was the successor to his 2014 breakthrough HEAL, and as such came with a lot of pressure, the weight of following up your most acclaimed and scrutinized career turning point yet. The years that elapsed between the two were tumultuous, transformative -- a journey partially catalogued in our...
There’s been something happening in Dublin. Across 2014 and 2015, a group called Girl Band started to generate international buzz thanks to their idiosyncratic blend of noise-rock, post-punk, and techno-inspired rhythms. Here was a new sound, one nobody associated with a specific generation or scene in Ireland. Girl Band then went silent for several years,…
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.
Almost 10 years ago, Sharon Van Etten released…
For someone who can be so verbose, Bradford Cox is the first person to admit he doesn’t have all the answers — at this point, he’s not even pretending to.
Chris Simpson doesn’t think he’s ever met a casual Mineral fan, but the potential for millions of them briefly existed in the minds of people like Sylvia Rhone, Jimmy Iovine, and Clive Davis. Even your parents can probably name the careers shepherded by these legendary A&Rs: Santana, Bruce Springsteen, 2Pac, Eminem, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Metallica,…
Sasami Ashworth is determined to make it. In a sense, she already has. She’s scored short films and commercials, taught in an elementary school, and collaborated in the studio with artists like Vagabon, Hand Habits, and Wild Nothing. And for two-and-a-half years she was a member of Cherry Glazerr, playing the synths that leveled out…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Wayne Coyne is always busy. Whether working on official albums or a smattering of side projects, the Flaming Lips — the band he’s now been a part of for 35 years — never seem to stop moving. “With us, it’s always like five things at one time,” he says from his home in Oklahoma City,…
Phoebe Bridgers won a lot of people over quickly. Amidst releasing her debut Stranger In The Alps last year, she immediately made her presence known: A gifted singer-songwriter often diving into confessional, melancholic depths while maintaining a sometimes-dry, sometimes-quirky sense of humor online and elsewhere. She was gifted, and she was interesting. We wound up…
Right now, it certainly seems as if Open Mike Eagle can’t be stopped. Since he got started in earnest at the beginning of this decade, he’s never really taken a break from releasing projects in various forms. His run of albums and EPs since 2014, in particular, has shown the arc of an artist getting…
“It certainly has been … a surprising year,” Lindsey Buckingham joked from the stage at Manhattan’s Town Hall last week. Fleetwood Mac’s erstwhile singer and guitarist is playing shows in support of Solo Anthology, a career-spanning collection that’s somehow his first-ever hits package 37 years into a successful solo career. The just-released 6xLP version of…
Snail Mail was already having a quick ascension. Last year, when Lindsey Jordan was just 18, she garnered a ton of buzz and acclaim for her reissued 2016 EP Habit, eventually earning her a deal with Matador for her full-length debut. She seemed like one of the indie world’s bright new stars, and we named…
When someone says they want to show you a piece of Old New York, there are certain locations you might imagine. Maybe a far-flung corner of Brooklyn or Queens, less touched by waves of gentrification. Perhaps one street hidden away in the long-lost stretches of the Lower East Side, still openly marked by all the…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Before she had no luck at all, Aimee Mann had beginner’s luck. She hit it big at the age of 24 with one of the first songs she ever wrote, “Voices Carry,” a top-10 hit for her band ‘Til Tuesday. Despite its superficial new-wave signifiers, “Voices Carry” wasn’t merely a vacuous byproduct of the Me…
The most influential emo bands are almost invariably mourned using the lexicon of incompletion and imperfection – they break up on the precipice of something bigger, are misunderstood or scorned by contemporary critics, leave a cruelly small recording legacy cited by more commercially successful peers as a primary influence. And since Algernon Cadwallader is a…
