Totally agreed about Nattesferd sounding "pillowy" with too many slow songs.
Ballou is my favorite contemporary metal producer. I will listen to anything he produces with an open mind, just knowing at least it'll sound great. Always balanced, but super punchy.
Agreed, the debut and Meir floored me (Meir a little less so), but Nattesferd just didn't have the same magic at all.
Despite having an entirely different singer now, I am hearing that magic again. Really digging this single and cannot wait for the album. It's been too long.
I totally feel you on having the Ballou production and Baizley artwork at once. Both of those things together are usually a stamp of quality for a contemporary metal album. I felt the exact same way about Skeletonwitch's album Serpents Unleashed. Ballou production and Baizley art. An absolute banger of an album.
Sadly, I haven't felt the same way about that band since their founding singer was booted out. Frankly their sound changed a bit with longer track times, no fault of the new singer, I think they just wanted to evolve - but I think they made a mistake.
His bit in Madonna’s song is actually exactly 15% of the song, in terms of timing. A $25K advance on 15% of royalties, is a fair offer. He got greedy with that 1% of tour proceeds shit. That’s not how this shit works. He’d be earning performance rights royalties on that automatically anyway.
That said, I saw Fischerspooner live in 2003. One of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.
Pretty sure nobody is saying, nor has ever said, the Black Keys are "now the vanguard of rock" and the only people saying Greta Van Fleet are its future are their publicists.
Some starving kid in the third world (assuming they had a computer with web access) is reading this story, looking at that photo, and shaking their damn head.
Agreed. Because of a few serious bad apples, many have decided to take a sledgehammer to social norms and cues, rather than the more appropriate scalpel. Yes, the baby has not only been thrown out with the bathwater, but smashed to a pulp for good measure.
Now, people don't know how the fuck to connect with other people, and we've been reduced to puritanical infants (both intellectually and sexually), abandoning true agency and self-actualization.
The sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's was about true agency and empowerment for women, equalizing the playing field and eliminating sexual stigmas and limits. This, now, is quite a bit different. Now it's the future predicted in Demolition Man, where sex is just ew ew ew, or worse. Better just engage via electronic device and skip all the ickiness.
You been watching the news for the last five years? Not sure exactly where it started, but a man pursuing a woman at all (flirting, complements, plainly asking somebody out) is increasingly perceived in many political and philosophical circles as harassment. It is in part why younger generations of people in the west have a lot less sex than previous ones, and marry in far fewer numbers.
I'm just thankful I met my wife of nearly a decade at a bar while both of us were high and drunk, like normal people used to do, and avoided this minefield of shit that passes for "social norms" now.
Can you imagine the lyrics of this song acted out in real life?
Girl - "I have to go"
Guy - "Cool, just called you an Uber"
Girl - "I have to go"
Guy - "I know, the Uber's here"
Girl - "I have to go"
Guy - "The Uber's right there. Bye"
Girl - "I have to go"
Guy - "Fucking hell, girl, I said the Uber is right fucking there! What's wrong with you? Bye!"
Back in about 91' - 92' when I was in my early teens and honestly didn't know jack shit or care about genres, the Black Crowes were just as important to me as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
When I started developing my own dress style (through observing and copying my favorite musicians of course) I was dead set on wearing bell-bottoms and boho shit like the Crowes but couldn't find that stuff anywhere. Through the natural course of of falling into trends and peer pressure, I opted for ripped jeans and flannels like everybody else. At the same time I fell away from the Crowes and didn't get back into them until about 2008 with their album Warpaint.
Anybody into the Crowes looking for another excellent band in that style should check out Blackberry Smoke. Also from Georgia.
Or, she could've attended and challenged Nielsen face to face?
Outside of a small slice of the music world, nobody, much less Nielsen, knows or cares about who Carlile is. Maybe it would've been a stronger message to attend and make her point in a larger forum? Instead, she's preaching to the choir.
Hip-hop's got a long history of groups being funded, especially early on, by drug/gang money. Would not be surprised at all if there's some nefarious shit going on behind the scenes with this.
I honestly don't know anything about this cupcakke person, but it reminds me of a few other black artists that have abandoned their music or changed direction, or otherwise expressed regret about their music - Donna Summer, Little Richard, Al Green etc.
Like the article author said, no documentary, even at 16 hours, is going to be able to adequately cover everything and Burns had to have a cutoff point. Dude’s been working on this for years and there’s a century of history in this genre to cover. This doc isn’t going to please everybody. I wouldn’t call it a “failure”.
Anybody who doesn’t agree that “Old Town Road” is up there with “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” or that Billy Ray shouldn’t be up on the Mount Rushmore of country music will be downvoted to oblivion here. This whole “Old Town Road” thing has been one big gaslighting mind fuck since day one.
Thanks for this in-depth review. Been looking forward to this series for a while. Sad to hear about so many omissions (the history of the steel guitar seems like the most egregious), but thanks for mentioning them.
However, I will go to my grave never understanding how or why anybody ever considered "Old Town Road" to be a country song, and I'm highly doubtful this song has steered anybody toward country music. Like, "damn, I really like 'Old Town Road', let me dive right into this stack of George Strait albums." Never happened. Not gonna happen.
I read in one of their interviews release d this weekend that there's no new album planned. Just this retrospective box and a bunch of shows. Cool, but I want a new album! Please, guys!
Well, making a formal announcement for a band breakup serves at least two purposes. . . .
1) It helps sell tickets for the band's "final" tour, then builds up anticipation for a "reunion" years later (especially if their album sales declined for the band in its final days). I think Black Sabbath announced their "breakup" and toured for the next three years straight. I'm probably forgetting about a dozen other bands who've also done this.
2) There are a lot of egos in these bands, and making an "official" breakup announcement probably helps alleviate or at least channel some of the bitterness within the group, and help bring some closure.
Remember, a lot of band members might as well be "married" to each other. They spend years or decades together in close quarters, traveling together, going through tough times together, pooling finances, sharing the same dreams (which inevitably die). Add booze, drugs, and late nights and it's a recipe for turmoil. Just being able to announce "we quit" when it all goes to shit is probably highly necessary in their minds, like the satisfaction a lot of workers get from simply saying "I quit" to their boss. Just walking away without saying anything isn't nearly as satisfying.
Oh, shit. Didn't think this would ever happen. I'm excited for this. In retrospect, this was my favorite band of the Britpop era (though I would've said Blur at the time, to sound cool). Very fun band, and excellent live. Saw 'em at least once live back then.
Not enough women on mainstream country radio? How about not enough “country” music on country radio. For every artist that climbs the charts, there are a dozen more deserving artists working under the radar, male and female, dedicated to the genre.
But hey, everybody was pushing hip-hop artist Lil Nas X and pop artist Kacey Musgraves for months and pretending that was solving a problem.
Based on all the press and interviews with Homme at the time, it absolutely sounded like he had all the ideas and control over how the album sounded and was simply feeding Ronson instructions. Homme wanted the album to sound super dry, like it was recorded in an airless vacuum.
Anybody who’s ever heard a Ronson track, we all have, knows he drenches everything in thick, vintage, funk production. There is no way anybody would’ve assumed Villains was a Ronson production if it wasn’t advertised by Homme and the album’s press release.
Queens of the Stone Age have been on this vibe for at least ten years now. That said, I dig this a lot. I've seen Sturgill live a handful of times. I wonder if the new show is gonna be all strobe lights, lasers, and dry ice smoke machines. Can't wait.
Christ, this again? Why do advocates of "Old Town Road" consistently forget commercially and/or critically successful black country artists like Charlie Pride, Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, and Rhiannon Giddens?
You said it yourself, "rappers co-opting country tropes." In other words, not country, just rap with country tropes.
Yeah, I don't really think they're chasing the money or neglecting the art for the sake of money. I didn't mean to imply that, but I guess I did.
I also don't know how much Carpenter's comments have been played up for click bait and magazine sales. He'd be insane to ditch the band. The draw for me with Deftones, and I'm guessing for a lot of their fans, has always been the combination of melody and riffs. This was always baked into the band's sound, which set them apart from the other "nu-metal" acts. Carpenter's gotta know that.
Yeah, they've been going a bit more shoegaze-y and maybe a little synthwave lately, but I'm fully confident they'll bring back the crushing riffs soon enough.
Seems every band that starts out "metal" who wants to get a bit of popular following (I won't blame 'em, we all gotta eat) has to inch toward a "rock" middle-ground. Mastodon did it. Baroness did it. Torche are doing it now, going explicitly "shoegaze" on a lot of their new album (arguably Deftones did that first with "Minerva" 16 years ago), and Ghost basically came out of the gates doing it (and are one of the biggest "metal" acts on the planet now). I get Carpenter's frustration, but just work on those riffs and let Chino work on those hooks.
I've been a fan of the Deftones since the late 90's when they were lumped in with Korn and the rest of them, and not well regarded critically, so I literally have no idea how Deftones and Hatebreed shake out in terms of merit in the eyes of metal fans (I was never a fan of Hatebreed but assumed there was some overlap in their fan bases, or tour schedules).
Frankly I'm amazed Deftones seem to have outrun their past and escaped the nu-metal ghetto to become relatively well regarded and accepted by music critics, press, and casual non-metal music fans.
*raises hand*
Yes, I do. Deftones have name-dropped Hum as a major influence for at least twenty years, and Gojira are about on par with Mastodon in terms of popularity and draw (especially abroad, since they are a French band).
Do Hatebreed have beef, or want beef, with the Deftones? Because why the fuck else would you publicly mock the lineup of a festival with "Deftones" in the name, curated by said band?
Not looking for drama, but I think Chino or somebody in Deftones needs to chime in and tell Hatebreed to fuck off with that shit.
I've literally only heard one of these tracks before. "Old Town Road" - only because it's impossible not to be assaulted by this track everywhere, every day. I think I've officially aged myself out of Stereogum. Goodbye. *slowly backs out of the room*
I'm kind of burned out on Mark Lanegan at this point. Tons of respect for him, but it seems like he puts out a new solo or collaborative album every year or two (not including guest appearances which seem to be nonstop) over the last few decades, and very few of them are particularly exceptional (or necessary).
I find myself enjoying his stuff for a week or two, but then I don't listen again at all until he drops another new album. Seems like a quantity-not-quality type of guy at this point. I'm also curious about what role he's actually playing in the creation of the music, other than lyrics and singing. He gets compared to Waits and Cohen a lot, but I dunno if that's a logical or fair comparison (other than some vocal similarities).
I'm skeptical mainly because absolutely nothing in that clip made me think a coal miner's grandson from Kentucky was involved with it at all. Absolutely none of that made me think "Yep, this has Sturgill written all over it! Only Sturgill could come up with something like this." Looks like literally any other anime movie. I'll watch it once on Netflix for sure, but my hopes are way higher for the actual album.
Artists who disavow or trash their own hits, the ones that put them on the map, irk me. It either strikes me as false modesty or straight up pretentiousness. Like they don’t respect or understand their own fan base. We get it, the sheeple loved your big dumb hit song, but you’re above it (see what I did there?).
So, he's just sort of doing the magnanimous "everything is awesome" shtick now, in an attempt to counteract the flack he's been getting in recent years for being an obnoxious Luddite and curmudgeon, right?
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