I listened to this and the new Chvrches this morning. Both very enjoyable, but if you fused them together you could have a perfect alt-pop record. Ironically, given who is the indie act and who is the pop star, I found Chvrches a little too slick and Halsey a little too messy. The Chvrches album is insanely catchy and melodic, but even though they shook up the production in a few places, it starts to feel too samey by the end. Halsey's album is much more interesting, more varied, riskier, though it can still feel kind of anonymous in places. I don't think the issue is that her voice is thin in a physical sense, just that its not very distinctive and sometimes doesn't seem connected to what are often some very fraught lyrics. Actually the lyrics on both albums were pretty solid, I can't say they've ever been a big factor in either Chvrches or Halsey for me, but there's some substance to them this time around.
Yeah, honestly, I don't feel bad for DaBaby's current predicament at all, but he is young and he was ultimately just being dumb, so if people want to rehabilitate him when all of this dies down, I could care less. Marilyn Manson is an abuser and a rapist. Associating with him is vile but Kanye also defended Cosby and promoted Trump, so the sad truth is its kind of a schtick that he does at this point, and people still blow smoke up his ass and tell him he's a creative genius when he's descended to IRL shitposting for attention.
“I’m Not A Woman, I’m A God” sounds pretty good based on the snippet in the trailer. I was expecting this would go for broke on concept and not actually be super catchy (I rarely find Halsey's music catchy, IDK, loved "Without Me" and couldn't hum a bar of one other song she's done). Sounds like it'll be a fun listen & maybe pair well with the new Chvrches.
You really don't have to make excuses for everything he does. You don't work for him. Also pretty much the only thing I know about Jack's bio is that his sister died of brain cancer when they were both teens so I wouldn't actually say your statement is even true.
So the biggest crossover rap star in years wants to jump on a runaway hit with the biggest crossover K-pop act of all time, one whose fanbase doubles as a cyber-ops cel that would make Putin blush... and the label is saying no? I'm sure they won't regret that.
"This time he’s even having a replica of his childhood home built as part of the production."
Wait this sounds familiar...
https://www.stereogum.com/1956996/watch-jack-antonoffs-short-film-about-taking-his-childhood-bedroom-on-tour/news/
😳
We (rightfully) clowned Jack Antonoff for doing exactly this, so I really don't know what to say about the fact that Kanye is doing it again four years later when its still dumb but not even original.
Sad news. The Stones are supposed to be immortal! Lucifer must've backed out of the immortality pact. I feel like people should post their favorite Watts performances here.
Double Negative was very much an album that I respected more than I enjoyed. I never imagined Low extending into such a dark, distorted place with their music and it was stunning to hear that, but it was also a challenging album to listen to in a lot of ways. What Now seems like its taking a lot of the experimental aspects of Double Negative but bringing more of the warmth we expect from Low into the equation.
I mean Chvrches literally made their first album in their basement and it still sounds a lot better than the song you posted. It actually sounds like a demo of a Bones-era Chvrches song, but with weaker vocals, IDK, maybe more like Class Actress than Chvrches. It's got the Robyn-esque synth strobe and the breathy vocals. I can point you to a dozen or so acts from 2010-2012 that were doing exactly that sound, can't imagine why you think Stereogum has some duty to cover it in 2021.
& I will never understand why people think its Stereogum's job to "signal boost" small acts as opposed to just covering what the writers think is interesting enough to write about (which a lot of the time does end up boosting somebody's signal but that's not the main objective). Music websites don't exist to do PR for struggling buzz bands.
Sounds great, agree with everyone saying its a little underwhelming at the end, but as track 1 I guess its more of a mood-setter for the album than a banger in its own right.
Also, her dropping the project on Paramount+ shows she really knows her fanbase lol
It’s absolutely Kerry’s show but the drumming is major for me too - this type of record could easily become a big blur of reverb but Dan is just playing the shit out of the drums and it gives the whole thing some crucial intensity. When I started coming around on Great Mass of Color it was really the drums that did it. Like you knew this guy could pound the kit based on the last albums but that kind of precision and power in what are, more or less, some indie rock songs, is something you don’t hear often. Some of it is even almost danceable?
It’s not even so much that it needs more screams as I wish they were more creative about how they used them. Like it kind of always comes in the last minute of the song or the last three on Mombasa. The formula works but they could have varied it some. That said I am basically on the same wavelength as everyone else: it’s a beautiful and immersive album and far far exceeds what I was expecting.
Low hitting ANOTHER sustained peak this deep into their career is some GOAT shit. Hey What is shaping up to be even better than Double Negative... and Double Negative was really really good.
"Great Mass of Color" has grown on me a lot, like a LOT, though I'm still not that into the other two just yet. But like everyone else, the Nelson seal of approval is already having me breathe easier, I mean after that description of "Mombasa" I literally cannot wait to listen and that's not where I was this morning.
I also bought one of the shirts from their webstore last month, just because it looked so cool (Waveform White Long Sleeve) but secretly I considered it a kind of investment in wanting to come around to liking this album and not having to be that guy who gets asked about the band shirt and says he doesn't really like the new stuff. Really wanted to believe they'd pull this out.
I'm also not that into "Take My Breath" and I was starting to think I was alone on that. It's solid but in terms of Abel's past pop juggernauts I don't think it comes close to "Blinding Lights" or "Can't Feel My Face"
Yeah I was just throwing out hardcore-ish bands I like but in terms of direct comparison Quicksand is closer to the money than Fugazi or ATDI. Prioritizing groove & tight breakdowns over emo bloodletting. How cool that we get new Quicksand tomorrow and then Turnstile later this month.
The Lolla data is very encouraging... I literally never want to go to a concert or festival that big, but I was starting to worry that I would just need to eat my Pfork tix
She's right, but was this even a controversy? Like every piece on Jack emphasizes that he's the collaborator/facilitator/wingman and not a Svengali. Feels like a last ditch-effort to pretend there's *anything* interesting about this project.
I wouldn't say I have any natural inclination to care about hardcore. I liked some of the 90s/00s post-hardcore and that's about it. Turnstile isn't quite like those bands, but they make dynamic, melodic, ambitious hardcore, which is what I liked about the Fugazi/Quicksand/ATDI lineage in the first place.
Sad day for Chromatics fans. But I do think the writing was on the wall here. Somewhere around year three or four of the Dear Tommy saga, I gave up hope that the album would ever get a release. I think JJ fell in love with the mythology of his lost masterpiece, and I think somewhere around 2018 I concluded that this was actually what he wanted to make: an album we would always talk about but never get to hear. Can't say it's ever been done before, at least not quite so intentionally. And of course, just about everything we heard from the album, especially in the early years after K4L, was fire. JJ is prolific, he is the head of his own label, he released tons of music, Chromatics and otherwise, in the interim... if he had sincerely wanted us to hear Dear Tommy we would have heard it.
Likewise, so glad to have caught the 2019 tour. RIP to a legendary band. I guess Dear Tommy gets the "lost cult classic" status JJ always seemed to want for it.
Pre-Delta I think this argument would have held more water but it’s clear that vaccination is lagging out and we can’t control the virus with polite recommendations to get vaccinated. In NYC introducing the passports has caused a notable uptick in vaccinations - for some people, whatever the reason for hesitancy, they need a stronger push, and this could be it. I absolutely don’t think it should apply to public transit or grocery stores or other necessary things, but no one has a human right to go out to eat or to a concert. I would not be allowed to teach my classes this fall if I didn’t get vaccinated and my students wouldn’t be allowed to take them. My husbands employer is mandating vaccination to return to work. If that’s in bounds I think any venue or private entertainment establishment can demand vaccination too.
Don’t forget that black and brown communities are also the most at risk as this variant rips through the nation. Who are the people most likely to be working as bartenders, waiters, etc? Who is least likely to have some fake email job they can do remotely? Vaccine mandates may be uncomfortable but they will absolutely save black and brown lives
If the Republican Party and the success of a certain Fox News blowhard have taught us anything, it's that there's always an audience for pretending to be a man of the people while advocating for shit that is almost guaranteed to kill some of those people. Jason Isbell is making a choice that will save lives for his fans, his crew, and their families, and anyone who thinks that's "elitist" or not "blue collar" enough can fuck all the way off.
I completely agree with the wider point you are making, but people should be cautious about inferring too much from the P-town cluster. What goes down there during bear week is not exactly your normal crowd interaction lol
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