Over their nearly three decade-long career, Spoon have continually refined their legacy within indie rock. They have maintained an instantly recognizable sound, yet the stylistic distance between A Series of Sneaks and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and Hot Thoughts is significant. This summer, in a move befitting their elder statesmen status, they'll sum up their output so far with a greatest hits album called Everything...
It sounds like a mantra, a Zen koan: "We pop out at your party, I'm with the gang / And it's gon' be a robbery, so tuck your chain." The cadence is a mocking singsong, a playground taunt. But the voice delivering that taunt is flattened and desiccated: "I'm a killer, girl, I'm sorry / But I can't change / We ain't aiming for your body / Shots hit your brain." He's young. That much is clear. But he's...
Five years ago, the Hold Steady released Teeth Dreams, their last album. That was the last time they functioned like a regular band. Since then, the great word-spewing Brooklyn rockers have switched things up. Where they once toured relentlessly, they now settle into a single city for a quick residency, playing a bunch of shows in one location. And where they once cranked out classic albums, they've...
There's an outdoor pool up the street from my house, and the swim teachers there are pleasantly leathery middle-aged guys who like to play Eagles and Bob Seger songs on weekend afternoons. This weekend, though, "The Weight" faded out, and some familiar spindly guitar notes came in. The boy sitting near me -- blonde, cornfed, maybe 12 -- suddenly jerked his head up. About 100 yards away, some of his...
Mannequin Pussy operate in extremes. Their self-released debut album, 2013’s GP, was hard and fast punk, 10 songs in under 20 minutes with names like “Pissdrinker” and “Clit Eastwood” and “Meatslave.” It was reissued by Tiny Engines in 2014, and two years later, the label released the band's sophomore album, Romantic. On that LP, Marisa Dabice sang about falling in and out of negative...
In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. *** Harry Chapin - "Cat's In The Cradle" HIT #1: December 21, 1974 STAYED AT #1: 1 week Father/son dynamics are complicated things. When you're a father, you feel this ingrained pressure to provide for your family. That's...
It would seem that the musicians of the world have declared war against the cellular telephone. Last month, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford kicked a phone out of a fan's hand while performing. Last week, FIDLAR leader Zac Carper slapped a phone out into the crowd when a fan tried to take a mid-performance selfie, and then he explained his "no selfies while I'm performing" policy on Reddit. Right...
Right now, James Corden's Late Late Show is recording episodes in London, a place where James Corden seems to still be more famous than he is here. And in his neverending quest for virality, Corden pulled out his biggest guns for last night's show, staging a US vs. UK celebrity dodgeball showdown. Former First Lady Michelle Obama, who already did Carpool Karaoke with Corden (and Missy Elliott) on the...
“Method Man,” the lead single of Detroit-based rock musician Stef Chura’s new album, Midnight, paints a picture of a dude whose condescension is dreadfully magnetic. Driven by an fervor and fixation similar to that that fuels the type of relationship it describes, Chura’s vocals and the accompanying instrumentals speed up and intensify as the song…
Carlos Santana has a lot to celebrate in 2019. It’s the 50th anniversary of his band’s self-titled debut album, which was released on August 30, 1969. Two weeks before that, the band gave a legendary performance at the Woodstock festival in upstate New York. They’d been a popular live act in San Francisco, but their…
The rain can force us into unexpected places. Sometimes, it’s for the better. Such is the case when I meet Welsh musician and novice furniture maker Cate Le Bon in New York City during a torrential downpour. We take refuge in the Guggenheim, as our expected coffee shop has been overtaken by others also finding…
Trevor Shelley de Brauw is a pretty busy guy. In addition to being the guitarist in Pelican and RLYR — and releasing an excellent solo album, Uptown, in 2017 — he’s also a father and works full-time as a music publicist. (Full disclosure: de Brauw did press for my band United Nations’ last full-length in…
Do you remember being small in a big confusing world? Do you remember feeling excitement for the first time or being cognizant of how clothes fell on your body for the first time? Not many people do, or most of us don’t dare to think back on it. For shoegazey Madison rockers Slow Pulp, this…
(Trigger warning: this article contains discussion of sexual assault.)
In 2015, Charly Bliss had self-released a three-song EP called Soft Serve and were more than content to play tiny Brooklyn venues whenever the opportunity arose. “We were crushing it,” says drummer Sam Hendricks. “Spike Hill on a Tuesday.”
You can call Holly Herndon a doctor now. When I meet the experimental composer in lower Manhattan in April, she’s just arrived from the Bay Area, where she successfully defended her dissertation at Stanford’s Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics. Now that her PhD program is behind her, Herndon has moved from California…
Part of Sass’ origin took place at a party in a Minneapolis apartment complex turned personal palace that has 35 rooms and seven bathrooms, all lavishly dedicated to the 1960s. (Really, it’s quite something.) It was in one of those rooms that Stephanie Murck met Willem Vander Ark. Murck had been involved with some other…
“Let’s do the whale.”
It’s impossible to step into the American Museum Of Natural History and not feel a sense of childhood wonder. For anyone who grew up in New York City or the surrounding area, it was the site of class field trips and sugar-rushed weekends where it seemed like the entire…
Not many people would cackle as their house goes up in flames, but that image perfectly illustrates the kind of person and artist Yola is. Named for that tragic experience, her debut album Walk Through Fire came out in February. Its seamless blend of triple fiddles, steel, and shimmering tremolo guitars feels superbly refined, making…
The Get Up Kids were looking for a job and then they found some jobs. After the beloved Kansas punk band went on hiatus in 2011, main songwriter Matt Pryor became a farmhand — “I picked radishes and tomatoes and shit and it was awesome.” Guitarist/vocalist Jim Suptic went back to school and landed with…
In the first half of the decade, the Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture made their name with a mixture of dream-pop, soft rock, and folk leanings — and became a Stereogum Band To Watch in the process. Across their first two albums, 2013’s Moon Tides and 2015’s Pray For Rain, the couple of Daniel Hindman…
If you were a rock photographer in the mid-’60s, being invited to photograph Bob Dylan was perhaps the best thing that could happen to you. You’d get a front-row view to the then-burgeoning countercultural revolution. You’d get to trade wisdom with the tousle-haired genius who wrote “Visions of Johanna.” And, if all went well, you’d…
La Dispute were in a rut. After playing together (give or take a few members) for close to 15 years, the post-hardcore experimentalists were too stuck in routine and familiarity with each other to come up with ideas for their upcoming album. In search of something — anything — to jump-start their songwriting process, bass…
Admittedly, the name Intellexual is a bit of a forehead-slapper, but hear me out here: The record is good. Like, really good. You’d expect as much from Nico Segal and Nate Fox, guys who played a key role in crafting Chance The Rapper’s euphoric sound and who count Frank Ocean (“U-N-I-T-Y”), Kanye West (“Ultralight Beam”),…
