No Doubt were nominated in the Grammys' Best New Artist category because of the success of Tragic Kingdom, their third album and one released some nine years after the band had initially formed. So it's not too much of a stretch to think of its 2000 follow-up, Return Of Saturn -- released 20 years ago this weekend, nearly half a decade after Tragic Kingdom made them stars -- in "troubled second album"...
Before we take a dive into the rich text that is Trolls World Tour, a brief disclaimer: This is a movie for children. I feel the need to state this essential fact up front, since you are almost certainly reading this in quarantine (if you are not: get inside immediately), and quite possibly running out of things to watch -- or desperately in need of a light-ish distraction from the Criterion Channel...
The Hives seemed to come out of nowhere. By 2002, the garage rock revival was in full swing, and unless you were wearing red and white, leather jackets, Converses, or some combination of each, you weren’t really part of the gang. You had to look like you were on a four-day bender, and you had to play like it too. Suddenly, here comes this sharp-dressed band clad in black and white suits, armed with...
It took a little longer for Hamilton Leithauser to find his way to The Loves Of Your Life. After the prolific burst the former Walkmen singer enjoyed following the dissolution of his old band in 2013, it's now been four years since we heard from him. By Leithauser's own estimation, figuring out what the album was supposed to be required some time. Now that his instantly recognizable voice is booming...
Charli XCX released her last album, the half-self-titled Charli, last September. Though she's often prolific, whether in output under her own name or with frequent collaborations, it still wouldn't have seemed likely that we'd be getting a new Charli XCX album so soon. (Though given that Charli was one of the best albums of 2019, it goes without saying that new Charli music is certainly welcome anytime.)...
It's been a little over a month since Phoebe Bridgers released "Garden Song," the first single from her upcoming sophomore album, and a lot has happened in Phoebeland (and the real world) since then. For Bridgers in particular, she's guested on a Hayley Williams song alongside her Boygenius comrades (Williams covered a song of hers earlier this week), she's covered her Better Oblivion Community Center...
Right now, the Weeknd is flying about as high as any musician can possibly fly during quarantine. For the past two weeks, the Weeknd has had both America's #1 album (After Hours) and #1 single ("Blinding Lights"). And evidently, Abel Tesfaye is feeling himself, since he's just provoked one of the modern gods of R&B.; Yesterday, Variety published a cover-story feature on the Weeknd. In that piece, the...
I didn't think John Prine would die. I always thought he would disappear into some dark jungle, carried along by a herd of wild pachyderms. Or he would ride a steamer out over the horizon, waving to those on shore. Or he’d just ascend on wings right up to the pearly gates, where he’d regale St. Peter with a few songs on harp. Grounded as he was in worldly eccentricities, Prine always had an air...
It took a little longer for Hamilton Leithauser to find his way to The Loves Of Your Life. After the prolific burst the former Walkmen singer enjoyed following the dissolution of his old band in 2013, it’s now been four years since we heard from him. By Leithauser’s own estimation, figuring out what the album…
Kelley Bader delivers the first words of I’m Glad It’s You’s new album looking out from the back of an ambulance, reliving the most painful day of his life. Almost certainly the luckiest day of his life as well. On July 5, 2017, Bader was at the wheel of the band’s van when it rolled…
At the end of the week, Stephen Bruner will release his latest album as Thundercat, It Is What It Is. He’s once again crafted an LP that, at times, feels like one long continuous piece — a 43-minute liquefied opus that exists in some unknown territory crossroads between soul, jazz, funk, and electronic. As ever,…
All Gareth David wanted to do was find a few friends. And if they were into indie rock, so much the better. He had just enrolled at Cardiff University, and he didn’t know anyone at all. Fortunately, he had just discovered Myspace right before heading out to university.
Sometimes you need to forget, and sometimes you need to feel. Deeper are all about the latter. The Chicago quartet, currently made up of singer and guitarist Nic Gohl, guitarist Drew McBride, drummer Shiraz Bhatti, and bassist Kevin Fairbairn, are about to release their new album Auto-Pain, and there’s a lot of pathos to be…
Detroit rockers Dogleg have spent the last several months building a considerable amount of buzz around their debut LP, Melee — and its release, which is set for this Friday, was perfectly timed with what would’ve been an all-out performance assault at this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. “We’d been sitting on the record…
The results of Super Tuesday have not lightened Jami Morgan’s already dim view of American politics. “We were watching it last night and it fucking sucks, dude,” the Code Orange drummer/vocalist/primary mouthpiece grumbles, and like just about every worthwhile artist who’s publicly endorsed a presidential candidate, all five band members — Morgan, guitarist/vocalist Reba Meyers,…
It’s after midnight in the early days of the new millennium and Chris Carrabba is wide the fuck awake. He hasn’t been getting much sleep lately — especially not at nighttime.
Snarls’ music is as much about self-preservation and baring teeth as their name suggests, even though that wasn’t the point. One day someone blurted out “The Snarls” at practice. From there they dropped “the,” and the Ohio-based band had the perfect moniker to contain their roaring emo pop-punk fusion.
If there’s one moment on Caribou’s upcoming album Suddenly that boils down its elastic essence, it’s the transition from verse to chorus on second single “You And I.” Initially, the song floats on pillowy chords, a twinkling lead melody, and a persistent midtempo beat, instantly recalling the spaciest moments on the last Caribou album, 2015’s…
It’s been said before, quite possibly about every album Destroyer’s released in the past 15 years, but the latest, Have We Met, is a very different Destroyer album.
If you live in the British coastal town of Brighton, it’s hard not to feel the ever-present draw of the sea, for better or for worse. For Dana Margolin, the pebbly beach and great watery beyond that signal the end of Brighton’s city center became particularly entangled with her life around the time she was…
No matter how vulnerable or genuine a musician’s work is, when they get up on stage there is always an added performative element. Whether under their own name or an alias, they’re recreating a past state of mind — one that still might be fresh, but is reconstructed nonetheless. Ella O’Connor Williams considered this when…
Every album Daniel Lopatin has made feels like a portal into an alternate universe. His earliest work as Oneohtrix Point Never, made almost solely on his father’s old Roland Juno-60 synthesizer and collected on Rifts, formed a sprawling multi-album narrative about an astronaut dying in space. The crumbling TV commercials of Replica, MIDI church hymnals…
David Bazan is crying while driving. Many scenes in the new documentary Strange Negotiations find the once and future Pedro The Lion frontman alone, steering his sedan down endless highways between emotionally taxing house shows. In this one, he reaches his breaking point, despairing over the loneliness of his chosen path and the conflict between…
