Credit: Adela Loconte/WireImage
In September 1996, Weezer released their sophomore album, Pinkerton. It was, in many ways, the turning point in Weezer's story. Following up an acclaimed debut with some already decade-defining songs to their name, Weezer were approaching their sophomore album as so many big-name bands have in the past. There was a lot riding on this. And the initial reaction wasn't good. Pinkerton is one of those...
The first time I ever saw anyone do a backflip in a moshpit was at a Converge show. The Boston hardcore veterans have always been that type of band -- the type whose furious, roiling blasts practically demand new forms of physical expression in response. For more than a quarter century, Converge have taken aggression and anxiety and rage and fear and blurred them into one ferocious whole, a kind of...
Like many teenagers, Patty Schemel started playing music because it made her feel like less of an outsider. She grew up a working-class, awkward kid in a town outside of Seattle and secretly identified as gay as an adolescent, a fact she did her best to hide from her peers. The daughter of recovering alcoholics, Schemel's family considered AA to be church, the 12 steps to be scripture. Though that...
Sorry to spook you, but: You'd better put on an ugly sweater over your Halloween costume because it's Christmas time again! It must be, or else all these musicians wouldn't be releasing Christmas albums already. That's the only explanation for such a phenomenon, really. Perhaps you can't yet feel the Christmas spirit in the air this All Hallow's Eve, in which case I don't know what to tell you except...
Björk has been giving us a slow drip of information about her upcoming album these past few months. First we learned it was her "Tinder album" and that it dealt with learning to love again after the heartbreak depicted on Vulnicura. We later heard lead single "The Gate" and saw its mesmerizing video. Along the way we also learned it would be called Utopia. And now, in a new post on Björk's Twitter,...
As a music lover, it’s hard to have a “scary” Halloween costume. You can only be “ghost Dave Grohl” so many years in a row before the initial terrifying shock of your costume wears off, and now you’re just a sheet with drumsticks. “Oh, I guess she’s ‘ghost Dave Grohl.’ ...Again.” Nobody screaming at the sight of you anymore, nobody running away. People come to expect it. With...
This past weekend, the Growlers, the band that formerly curated the California music festival Beach Goth, headlined their own Growlers Six festival at the Los Angeles Waterfront. The Growlers headlined both days of the festival, and artists like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Modest Mouse, Dan Auerbach, and Danny Brown performed. But during yesterday's set from LA punk band the Regrettes, it appears that a fan...
The last time we heard from Karin Dreijer, she was excoriating modern society on the Knife's most overtly political album, Shaking The Habitual, which apparently also served as that project's farewell note. But four years after that album and eight years after her debut as Fever Ray, Dreijer has returned with a new solo album that's just as searing and incisive as anything she's done. Plunge turns...
Like many teenagers, Patty Schemel started playing music because it made her feel like less of an outsider. She grew up a working-class, awkward kid in a town outside of Seattle and secretly identified as gay as an adolescent, a fact she did her best to hide from her peers. The daughter of recovering alcoholics,…
When the Danish trio behind Efterklang — Casper Clausen, Rasmus Stolberg, and Mads Brauer — embarked on a new collaboration with their touring drummer, Finnish percussionist Tatu Rönkkö, none of them initially thought it would extend beyond a one-off project. That was back in 2015. Since then their new band Liima released a debut album,…
The interior of the church was painted solid white; against this backdrop, a spidery figure sat at her nine-foot Steinway, casting enormous, foreboding shadows across the deconsecrated altar of Saint Thomas The Apostle in Harlem. Her fingers flew across the keys, and from her throat issued a blood-curdling shriek, her voice overlapping itself again and…
One sunny afternoon in Charlottesville, the singer-songwriter Julien Baker is excitedly chatting about her guitar pedals when a local homeless man walks up and asks her for some money. Baker hands him a dollar and then apologizes for not having more cash than that. Then she asks him if he’s hungry, and she gets up…
One of John Maus’ favorite pop songs is “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. I know this because he sang the chorus for me a few weeks ago at a park on a crisp, fall afternoon in Brooklyn. Maus revealed his love for this song toward the end of a long conversation about his new album, Screen…
Dive through the sea of sounds that emerged from of the 1980s and you’ll find the material that pulls on your senses the strongest. Maybe it’s metal or new wave or R&B. Perhaps you even quietly, unironically dig Huey Lewis And The News. But if there’s one act with the ability to unite all consumers…
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…
