Residents of Hudson, NY have a way of noticing outsiders. It's a small town, so that's reasonable enough, but they always seem to know when someone's wandered up the river from New York City for a weekend. It takes them approximately two sentences to guess. Maybe because there are always city-dwellers fleeing up two hours of Amtrak rails to get a bit of idyllic escape in Hudson, or maybe it's because...
I never shared the concerns many held about the union between stoner-rock royalty Queens Of The Stone Age and Uptown Funker Mark Ronson. I suppose if you hadn’t been paying close attention it'd be easy to miss that Joshua Homme's desert-rock ensemble cast is one of the most groove-heavy outfits in their class. Homme's got this evil Elvis swagger, a dusty soulfulness he infuses with a devilish veneer....
Erika M. Anderson has now spent a solid decade getting us ready for this historical moment. Back in 2007, Gowns, the noisy drone-folk trio that Anderson once led, released an album called Red State. It's an apocalyptic vision of Anderson's native South Dakota. She sang about it as a place where despair runs rampant, where kids flirt with death and oblivion by wolfing down whatever pills they can find,...
Billy Corgan has been discussing a solo album produced by rock-star whisperer Rick Rubin for nearly a year now. Today he's finally announced that project in earnest. It's called Ogilala, and he's releasing it under the name William Patrick Corgan. Lead single "Aeronaut" is expected soon. UPDATE: Here's "Aeronaut." https://youtu.be/7PdZXNET88A Oligala tracklist: 01 "Mandarynne" 02 "Antietam" 03 "Amarinthe" 04...
Last month, Jim DeRogatis, the veteran music journalist who's been covering the R. Kelly sex-abuse allegations for many years, published a Buzzfeed piece about how Kelly had apparently been imprisoning women in what amounted to a sex cult -- controlling their access to the outside world, confiscating their cell phones, telling them what to wear and say, and threatening them with physical and emotional...
Let's just take a second to marvel at the fact that, after eight years, having a new Brand New album out in the world feels like nothing short of a small miracle. There were times when it felt like this day might never come and other times when it felt like it was right around the corner, but it's finally actually here. A couple years ago, I wrote about how being a fan of this band could be a frustrating,...
Taylor Swift purged much of her social media presence last Friday, leading many of us to believe that her long-expected album rollout was about to begin. Today there's been some chatter about new music or information at 2PM EDT -- at the peak of the eclipse, smh -- and now Swift herself has tweeted out this 10-second lo-fi video clip. It appears to be a snake (a reference to her reputation?) or perhaps...
LCD Soundsystem's final show at Madison Square Garden -- or, in any case, the band's final show for about five years -- entered into the annals of New York rock legend almost as soon as it was announced. And James Murphy has talked before about how nobody expected his band to sell out the historic New York venue. In Lizzy Goodman's book Meet Me In The Bathroom, he mentions how some business types suggested...
Residents of Hudson, NY have a way of noticing outsiders. It’s a small town, so that’s reasonable enough, but they always seem to know when someone’s wandered up the river from New York City for a weekend. It takes them approximately two sentences to guess. Maybe because there are always city-dwellers fleeing up two hours…
It doesn’t take long for my conversation with Cloakroom frontman Doyle Martin to turn apocalyptic — this was about a week ago, back in the days of old when “threatening World War III with North Korea” seemed like a mortal lock for this month’s most nightmarish nadir of American societal decline. “I think it’s always…
Welcome to the second installment of “Tracking Down,” a new Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Rainer Maria’s new album technically took 11 years to make — hell, longer than that, given that some of the writing sessions go so far back, they were captured on a MiniDisc. And yet, the trio talks about S/T as if it was almost effortless, nothing short of a telepathic miracle. Both bassist/vocalist Caithlin De…
When they first appeared in the early ’00s, Death From Above — then without the “1979,” once more without the “1979” today — drew attention for the singular nature of their lineup: a duo featuring Sebastien Grainger and Jesse F. Keeler, a vocalist/drummer and a bassist, respectively. Bass as a lead instrument is unique enough,…
Even at the height of R.E.M.’s success, guitarist Peter Buck didn’t like to take breaks. During his free moments, Buck would play with Warren Zevon in the Hindu Love Gods, gig with Robyn Hitchcock and the Minus 5, and joined the instrumental group Tuatara, among others. After R.E.M. ended their 30-year career in 2011, Buck…
Last year’s 25th anniversary Lollapalooza was overall pretty solid. I saw Radiohead, and Malia Obama, and got a contact high at Flatbush Zombies. The annual Chicago event unsurprisingly has a lot to offer in an increasingly crowded festival season, but one unexpected new amenity was the elaborate, indoor merchandise store, a walk-in retail experience that…
About a minute after a car drops us off in the heart of one of the older, scenic neighborhoods in Lisbon, Benjamin Booker sees a church across the street and says we should go inside. It’s one of those sudden, accidental moments of beauty you come across randomly on old European streets, a building that…
Few bands sound like they’re having more fun than Partner. Lucy Niles and Josée Caron have mastered the art of triumphant alt-rock songs about the everyday lives of queer goofball stoners. The Windsor, Ontario duo have been honing that creative chemistry for years, both as friends and as collaborators in two previous bands, the hardcore…
Welcome to the first installment of “Tracking Down,” a new Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute. We’re kicking off this series with Harvey Danger’s Sean Nelson, whose classic single “Flagpole Sitta” turns 20 years old tomorrow. Enjoy!…
The music of Gillian Welch exists outside of time. When she first started performing under her own name in the ’90s, she was singing dirges and ballads and rambling cautionary tales in a voice that harkens back to folk songs you’d be more likely to hear in the Library Of Congress’ archive than anywhere else.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Ben Gibbard’s favorite band is Teenage Fanclub, another ostensibly alt-rock-identified bunch of formalist squares whose records are as crafty and delicately layered as Death Cab For Cutie’s. But his new solo take on the entirety of their 1991 power-pop landmark Bandwagonesque (out this week via Turntable Kitchen) is still quite…
“Pursuit of fame is as deadly as any narcotic I have ever used,” proclaims the header of Bobby Jameson’s blog. He started writing entries in 2007, after a silence so long his former peers in the music business thought he must be dead. That’s because, until he left it in the 1980s, he was known…
Stereogum’s annual Song Of The Summer contest is still anyone’s game, and who better to assess this year’s competitors than Michael McDonald? This fall the golden-throated, oft-imitated singer/songwriter will release Wide Open, his first album of original tunes in 17 years. The R&B legend famously lent his chops to hits by Steely Dan and the…
Before we see Dawn Richard play Pitchfork Festival’s Blue Stage, we see what she’s built for us: three jagged peaks made of neon tubing rising up from the floor. They’re the latest iteration of her personalized set design, which previously has taken the shape of a single neon triangle yawning nine feet high behind her.
