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After seven years away, Broken Social Scene have returned with Hug Of Thunder, an album that's a galvanizing reminder of the strength of the Toronto indie-rock scene. In fact, there's been a lot of music this year that has served as a reminder of the longevity and potency of the ragtag crew that ushered in the Bush years. In the past months, we've had stellar comebacks from Feist and Do Make Say Think,...
Days Are Gone had legs. Four years is a long time, and yet HAIM's debut album never really left rotation, at least at my house. That album, so full of incandescent and immaculately assembled studio-pop, turned out to be perfect backing music for house-cleanings and long car trips and any other situation where you need backing music that isn't going to annoy anyone. Its hooks, so carefully considered,...
Bill Withers cut one single in 1967 as his (and anybody's) sole release for the one-and-done label Lotus: his own uptempo if downbeat composition "Three Nights And A Morning," backed with a Motown-esque version of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do." Despite a pop-friendly arrangement by Mort Garson -- a year after he arranged the Sandpipers' "Guantanamera," and a year before he did the strings for Glen...
This past Friday, JAY-Z released his shockingly personal and intimate new album 4:44. It's a great album, but people tended to have one big complaint about the thing: They couldn't figure out how to hear it. At first, the album was only available to stream if you were a Sprint customer or if you'd become a Tidal subscriber before midnight on Friday night. Eventually, JAY opened it up to all Tidal subscribers....
Arcade Fire are getting good at this trolling business. Lately, there's been a weird story about Kendall and Kylie Jenner selling "vintage" $125 T-shirts that superimpose their faces over the images and logos of famous musicians like Ozzy Osborne, Pink Floyd, the Doors, and Tupac Shakur. The mother of the Notorious B.I.G., another of the artists on those shirts, blasted them for the "exploitation,"...
Out on the road today, I saw a Memory Tapes sticker on a Cadillac. Little voice inside my head said don't look back, you can never look back, even when you entire aesthetic is specifically predicated on looking back. Neon Indian is eating, Washed Out has Kyle Mooney all in the videos, but damn near a decade after the Year Chillwave Broke, the genre of fuzzy, drifting nostalgia has become the subject...
"I dumbed down for the audience to double my dollars." That was Jay-Z 14 years ago, just before his fake retirement. At the time, it was a remarkable admission. Jay was, if not the best rapper working at the time, at least top three. And here he was, saying that what we'd been hearing all these years was the watered-down, altered-for-consumption version of himself. It also raised questions: How might...
The first Harry Potter book turned 20 years old this week, and in honor of that anniversary (or maybe just because), Perfume Genius mastermind Mike Hadreas decided to try his hand at being an "indie sorting hat." On Twitter, he asked fans to name indie musicians and then sorted them into different Hogwarts houses. Sufjan Stevens is Ravenclaw, Mitski is Gryffindor, and Father John Misty is "public Slytherin...
The eucalyptus tree is not native to California, but it flourishes there, its distinctive scent hanging in the air in and around Los Angeles. It’s a fragrance that Animal Collective frontman Dave Portner, also known as Avey Tare, immediately associates with his adopted hometown — one in which he, too, flourishes, finding creative inspiration in…
From dominating alternative radio to soundtracking your favorite movie about brain injury to chartering your incredibly specific cruise, 311 are nothing if not incredibly diverse. Here Stereogum commenter at-large Raptor Jesus gets the inside scoop from frontman Nick Hexum on 311’s new album Mosaic (out this Friday), the band’s secret influence on new artists, and…
Keigo Oyamada has made many changes to his life since 2006, when he last released an album under the moniker of Cornelius. He moved his office/recording studio from Tokyo’s Nakameguro neighborhood — a place he celebrated in song and video — to the slightly quieter Sakura Shin-Machi area. He’s taken on a variety of new…
About one year ago, the Toronto punk quartet PUP released their second album, The Dream Is Over, a set of 10 ferociously catchy anthems that took its name from the diagnosis singer-guitarist Stefan Babcock received from his doctor after he blew out his vocal cords and was told he’d never sing again. He fought through…
Stereogum is named from a lyric from the Air song “Radio Number 1,” from the French futurists’ 2001 LP, 10,000 Hz Legend. As such, we are always legally and morally obligated to take any opportunity we get to talk to the duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, creators of some of the most forward-thinking…
Last weekend, Parquet Courts played a late-night set at the new Brooklyn venue Villain, one night before their moshpit-inducing afternoon mainstage set at Governors Ball. For the Villain set, Courts’ bassist Sean Yeaton made a bold sartorial choice, donning his finest Slipknot T-shirt.
Jared Scharff has one of the best music gigs in television. As a longtime member of the Saturday Night Live band, the Rockland County-bred guitarist has regularly performed alongside his heroes and lent memorable riffs to sketches like “The Californians.” And since the show often only needs him on Saturdays, it’s given Scharff plenty of…
Guerilla Toss have come a long way from their beginnings as an inscrutable art-punk band known for their riotous live shows and scuzzy recordings. Their…
Towards the end of Soft Sounds From Another Planet — Michelle Zauner’s second full-length as Japanese Breakfast — there’s a song that offers a blueprint of the emotional growth that she’s experienced over the last couple years. “Till Death” is a litany of what’s been plaguing her since the events that resulted in her debut…
It’s hard to imagine a more impressive introduction than Azniv Korkejian’s debut album as Bedouine. The globetrotting singer-songwriter confidently strides into the frame with her Silvertone guitar and proceeds to unfurl one stunner after the next, each poetic dispatch enlivened by seasoned LA session players and lifted heavenward by the Spacebomb Orchestra. The sound is…
When I reach Adrianne Lenker by phone it’s raining in New York City — not just misty and overcast, but pouring — and it’s kind of cognitively refreshing. Lenker agrees. “I don’t mind it,” she says. “It’s kind’ve a cliche but I like when it’s raining. I like the feeling of staying in and not…
Nick Hakim’s sumptuous folk-soul-hop debut, Green Twins, seems destined to be one of those albums you hear everywhere this summer, from the hipper coffeeshops to cookouts to smoke-out and make-out sessions, and beyond. Co-produced by Andrew Sarlo, it’s a smart blend of dusted beats, finely plucked chords, and heady production you can get lost in,…
Matthew Barnes, the composer and producer behind the Forest Swords moniker, is the first to tell you that he doesn’t listen to all that much music. It’s a curious thing to admit, seeing how Barnes is not only in the business of beatmaking, but his work is an amalgamation of dub, experimental soundscapes, hip-hop, techno,…
Arguably the progenitor of EDM music and culture, DJ/producer Paul Oakenfold has no qualms about the hyper-colored, mainstream juggernaut he has spawned. In his 53rd year, Oakenfold is more interested in playing Mt. Everest then bemoaning a culture that has been co-opted by the likes of the Chainsmokers, flower crowns, and the disastrous Fyre Festival.
Speaking by phone from London, Darren Cunningham doesn’t initially want to explain the process behind his new album, AZD, the fifth he’s released under the name Actress. Given time, though, he starts to describe the album’s genesis with specificity, using different framing devices: the tools used, the colors suggested, the echoes of visual art.
