In 2005, Coldplay released their third album, X&Y.; In many ways, it was one of those collections where a band starts to sound exactly like everyone's most basic idea of them. The subtle hints of something weirder that lingered at the edges of Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head, the element that allowed Coldplay to straddle the worlds of murky post-Britpop atmospheric rock and more straight-up...
"I hate permission, you know? I don't want permission. If I just want to drop something, I just drop it." So says Grimes at the beginning of a new Apple advertisement spotlighting her creative process. It feels like a pointed statement given Claire Boucher's very public frustrations with the slow process of releasing a new album for 4AD. Despite beginning 2018 with the promise of a new album this year,...
When SOPHIE put out PRODUCT in 2015, it was meant as more of a singles collection than an album. Most of the tracks were released week by week in the leadup to its release and some had even come out years before, so it ended up playing more like a greatest hits album than anything else. That loose structure, with just one banger after another, was great but it felt like there was little intention behind...
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 semi-household name. And he's at least as passionate...
Zach Galifianakis' comedy talk show Between Two Ferns is back with its first episode since they had Hillary Clinton on during the 2016 election. So it's been a while! The world has changed! But he got one of the most talked about celebrities (Cardi B) plus another celebrity (Jerry Seinfeld) for the latest edition of the show. Seinfeld is up first, with a guest appearance from Newman (aka Wayne Knight),...
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. It’s as discouraging as it is difficult to imagine that someone as supremely talented as Washington was once convinced that he...
Along with her fellow ex-Mousketeers Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera proved to be one of the most durable hit-makers of the Y2K-era teen-pop explosion. Long after most of their peers found alternate careers in show business or disappeared from pop culture entirely, these artists kept sending singles to the top 10. Spears survived her period of mid-aughts tumult and found an...
In the early years of the 21st century, before he became the biggest rap star in the world, Drake played Jimmy Brooks on 145 episodes of the Canadian teenage soap opera Degrassi: The Next Generation. For a very short period of time, Drake's child-actor roots seemed like a reason not to take him seriously as a rapper. (Please bear witness, for instance, to the first thing I ever wrote about Drake.)...
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…
When Gang Gang Dance emerged from New York City in the early 2000s, the band’s sound was raw, ragged, and raga’d — a percussion-powered swirl of elephantine hooks and dizzying chants. On dispatches like 2005’s God’s Money LP and 2007’s Rawwar EP — both via the Social Registry label — the ululations of lead singer…
