St. Vincent released her truly excellent new album MASSEDUCTION yesterday, and late last night on YouTube she shared a bonus track from the Japanese version of the album. It's called "政権腐敗," which translates to "Power Corrupts," and it features Annie Clark actually singing in Japanese. (She repeats the titular phrase, pronounced "seiken fuhai," quite a bit.) Listen below. https://youtu.be/GYLCrGOY_eQ MASSEDUCTION...
Former Real Estate member Matt Mondanile, who records under the moniker Ducktails, has been accused of sexual misconduct. His alleged behavior is apparently what led to his departure from Real Estate in May of 2016. Mondanile co-founded the band alongside Alex Bleeker and Martin Courtney. When Real Estate announced Mondanile's departure, they said he was leaving to "[focus] on his own Ducktails project."...
William Benjamin Bensussen, who puts out music as the Gaslamp Killer, has been accused of drugging and raping two women in 2013. A widely-circulated Twitter post details the alleged sexual assault: "I've been suppressing my rape for 4 years and i'm finally ready to come forward to help myself heal and to prevent it from happening to other women in the future," it begins. "The Gaslamp Killer drugged...
I've always gotten the impression that Nimrod -- which turns 20 tomorrow -- is the Jan Brady of '90s Green Day albums. I don't have much to back this up other than a gut feeling and a lifetime of best-Green Day-album debates. But I have noticed that, over the course of said discussions, Nimrod conveniently fades into the background -- not unlike 2000's equally underrated Warning and the band's 2002...
MASSEDUCTION starts with a plane crash and ends with a suicide. The space between is occupied by day-glo demons that skulk in the shadows of Annie Clark’s songs and scare the shit out of her at every available opportunity. In several interviews, Clark has referred to this album -- her fifth under the moniker St. Vincent, not counting her collaboration with David Byrne -- as her most personal. “I...
A working theory: Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile recorded a whole album together mostly just so they'd have an excuse to hang out. It's hard having friends who live in different parts of the world, friends you might see once or twice a year if you're lucky. Barnett sings about just that on the new song "Continental Breakfast": "I cherish my intercontinental friendships / We talk it over continental...
Last year, an Adult Swim show called Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace was cancelled after one season when creator Sam Hyde was criticized for including coded messages promoting racism, sexism, and bigotry in the show, mostly through the sort of meme anti-humor that's commonly associated with the "alt-right." Throughout the only season of the show, several musicians were featured on it --...
Vincent Jamal Staples doesn't have to hide behind an MC name, middle name, or street name, at a time when most of his fellow rappers of the gangster tradition wouldn't be caught dead using their government name. That should let you know what Vince is about -- encompassing on wax all of the multidimensional personality contained within his lanky, 5-foot-6-inch frame. The third-generation Crip, quick-witted...
During the epochal period when Belle And Sebastian were making albums such as If You’re Feeling Sinister, Tigermilk, The Boy With The Arab Strap and winning hearts for their wistful melodies and lovelorn character studies, the Scottish indie pop group were also releasing EPs like Lazy Line Painter Jane and Dog On Wheels that allowed…
John Carpenter, the director of such genre-defining shockers as Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, and Christine, permanently scarred our collective childhood with his knack for spooky storytelling. Now, at the age of 69, he’s not only experiencing a deserved career Renaissance, he’s also embracing his status as — plot twist! — a recording artist.
“Hello, baby, how are you doing,” Princess Nokia greets me on the phone. Her voice is tender and genuine. She has been touring for the last year and a half and remains ridiculously busy, but in this rare free moment she’s chatting about 1992 Deluxe, Rough Trade’s expanded re-release of last year’s breakout mixtape 1992.
In the relatively short amount of time they’ve been a band, Toronto four-piece Weaves have garnered a good amount of well-deserved acclaim. Last year, we named them a Band To Watch ahead of their self-titled debut, a collection of bright, frazzled art-rock that wound up earning Weaves a ton of buzz and a nomination for…
Ten years ago, when R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People turned 15, Stereogum released a compilation of artists covering each song from the album (Drive XV is still available here) and, at the time, we got Mike Mills to talk a little bit about every track. Today, Automatic For The People turns 25 — an extensive…
It’s hard to place Faris Badwan. There’s the fact that his name alone sounds exotic. There’s the fact that his demeanor is some improbable mix of stoned, moody detachment and wired, up-all-night intensity. He speaks in a wispy, wandering murmur that could equally signal boredom, mild frustration, aloofness, or reflection. And, obviously, there’s the way…
Welcome to the fourth installment of “Tracking Down,” a new Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
When Jessica Lea Mayfield moved from Ohio to Tennessee a few years ago, it was not merely a professional decision. The relocation put her at the heart of the music industry in Nashville, but more crucially it gave a new start after some incredibly traumatic events in her life. A singer with a gracefully laconic…
Strike one for an indie band forming in 2009: playing “really bad, wussy emo rock 10 years after it was relevant.” Strike two: doing so in Willimantic, Connecticut, a city commonly known as “Heroin Town” in a state whose most renowned rock band to that point was probably Hatebreed. Strike three: call yourself the World…
Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz are twin sisters who make up the aptly named duo Ibeyi, which translates to “Twins” in the Yoruban language of West Africa. When I met up with them in New York, the two had arrived in the city an hour before — Lisa-Kaindé flew in from London and Naomi from Paris.
Someone hands Joe Casey another drink. He leans back, a smile breaking his reddened face as he observes it, his fingers now cradling an empty whiskey glass and a new apple juice/whiskey concoction, which looks pretty much just like whiskey. An unlit cigarette — the who-knows-which installment in a seriously endless lineage of pre-show smokes…
Rick Antonoff looks like he’s second-guessing this. Wearing a T-shirt and shorts, he’s perched on a board in a dunk tank, surveying the crowd gathered to watch as people take their shot at hitting the target — which clangs with a sound that immediately conjures state fairs and old carnivals — to send him into…
Michael Cera tends to come off as a music fanatic that occasionally moonlights as an actor. He played with Sex Bob-Omb in the film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and the indie-rock supergroup Mister Heavenly (featuring his friend Nick Thorburn) in the real world, played on a Weezer album, and even released a lo-fi folk…
Nothing about Moses Sumney is ordinary. When you set out to solve for x in the equation of two strict Ghanaian parents who also happen to both be pastors, the solution is usually not one acclaimed singer-songwriter operating at an intersection of genres. Especially one that has a B.A. in Creative Writing, a circle of…
There may be better places to see Zola Jesus than a desiccated upstate New York factory full of intense-looking art-goths, but there probably are not many. The bottom of the Mariana Trench, maybe? A deep-space probe? Adrift on an ice floe through inky-black nighttime water while the Northern Lights dance above you? Point is: There…
