Arcade Fire were already anointed. By 2010, their 2004 debut Funeral was already regarded as a modern classic, a flag in the ground for a new generation of indie musicians. In 2007, they followed it with the bombastic end-times gloom of Neon Bible, a sophomore outing that wrestled with concepts of America during a bleak stretch of American history. And while that album wouldn't become quite as breathlessly,...
In 1999, Thomas Andresen said the following to the Russian webzine Vae Solis: “[It was] a good name for us at that time.” You might recognize Andresen as a member of Algol, a Norwegian band that united ‘90s waves of death metal and black metal on its sole full-length, Entering The Woods Of Enchantment. Or, you might know him as the voice of the reconstituted Fester, another black-plus-death early...
Spotify's economic model has been widely condemned by musicians and songwriters for years, with critics claiming that the service pays out paltry royalties and gives major-label artists an unfair advantage via playlist placement and other promotional avenues. But according to CEO Daniel Ek, the problem is not Spotify, it's those lazy musicians! In an interview published Thursday, Ek told Music Ally,...
There should be a word for it: The thing before the thing. In the summer of 2000, rock music was in a weird place. If you wanted to hear exciting new sounds on the radio, you weren't listening to the rock stations. Most of the big names of the early-'90s alt-rock wave -- the ones who had survived, anyway -- where thrashing around at various levels of irrelevance. The people who'd taken over for them...
When we first met Fontaines D.C., they were already exciting. Between early singles like "Hurricane Laughter" and "Boys In The Better Land" and raw and exhilarating gigs in Dublin, everything seemed to point towards them being one of the best in a sudden swell of young guitar bands coming from the UK and Ireland. Still, nobody -- perhaps least of all the band themselves -- could've predicted quite...
Although response to Taylor Swift's folklore has been generally quite positive, there has been no shortage of jokes about the project's aesthetic, including half-serious quips that the cover art borrows heavily from black metal or could pass for something on Sacred Bones. One such allegation was a bit more serious, though, and it has resulted in Swift making a switch. The first single from folklore...
A year ago, Lauren Morgan, one half of the Orlando-based indie rock duo SALES, shrugged off her hometown. As Morgan explained to an interviewer, the Florida city, home to over a dozen theme parks, did not significantly shape her band's identity. "More than anywhere we're from the internet," she said. For seven years, Morgan and bandmate Jordan Shih have been uploading music as SALES, building a fanbase...
Tonight, I’m going undercover as one of the 695 people in the Angel Olsen Cosmic Stream group chat. My code name? Virginia. My mission? Under normal circumstances, profiling an artist involves immersing oneself in their world. Maybe you visit their home, their haunts, the bar they used to frequent before they broke big. Maybe you ask them questions while they’re trying to eat before a chirpy PR...
When we first met Fontaines D.C., they were already exciting. Between early singles like “Hurricane Laughter” and “Boys In The Better Land” and raw and exhilarating gigs in Dublin, everything seemed to point towards them being one of the best in a sudden swell of young guitar bands coming from the UK and Ireland. Still,…
A year ago, Lauren Morgan, one half of the Orlando-based indie rock duo SALES, shrugged off her hometown. As Morgan explained to an interviewer, the Florida city, home to over a dozen theme parks, did not significantly shape her band’s identity. “More than anywhere we’re from the internet,” she said. For seven years, Morgan and…
Tonight, I’m going undercover as one of the 695 people in the Angel Olsen Cosmic Stream group chat. My code name? Virginia. My mission?
Jessy Lanza songs don’t stop moving. They’re rendered in twitchy shuffles, hypnotic little loops that operate like spinning tops. These kinds of songs were fully realized on her dementedly fun 2016 album Oh No, and four years later she’s refined them even more on her latest, All The Time. The album was predated by a…
My phone call with Patty Smyth is cut off just as the former Scandal singer starts talking about living on the same East Village street as her name-doppelgänger Patti Smith in the ’70s. “I was getting Patti Smith’s mail, and I didn’t know who that was at that time,” she says before the line abruptly…
If you know anything about Creed Bratton, you know he’s lived many lives. Most of us, of course, got to know him as the oddball scene-stealer on The Office. Bratton began as a background supporting character, playing a bizarro fictionalized version of himself. His character came close to being written off in the second season,…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
At any point during 2018 or 2019, do you remember thinking, man, it doesn’t get any better than this? “It feels weird to be nostalgic for anything that happened post-2016,” Sarah Tudzin jokes, but even if every year is indeed “the worst one ever, until the next one,” at least the slow-burn success of Illuminati…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
We’ve Got A File On You features interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.…
Anyone who has ever seen the Eurovision Song Contest knows that it’s a spectacle like no other. Between the elaborate special effects, outlandish costumes, and dramatic ballads and upbeat pop songs peppered with awkwardly translated English lyrics, the long-running European institution is ripe for parody. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga — starring…
The last time the Seattle doom metal duo Bell Witch released an album was in 2017, and chances are you could still be making sense of that music nearly three years later. The colossal, mind-expanding Mirror Reaper was one 83-minute song that completely warped your sense of time as it stretched everything out into a…
In 2017, Phoebe Bridgers released her debut Stranger In The Alps. With that album alone, she was already greeted as one of the most exciting, assured young songwriters newly on the scene. But in the ensuing years, Bridgers’ stature as a respected musician and generational voice has risen significantly, and quickly. The following year, she…
You could never question Jay Watson’s psych-rock bona fides. The man’s resume, of course, includes Tame Impala, the band that implausibly made the leap from being weirdo hallucinogenic rockers from western Australia to arena-conquerors worldwide. But all along the way, Watson also played in Pond, Tame’s sister band. And alongside that, he’s been putting out…
Aaron Dessner is always working on a ton of music. Quarantine has been no different. Recently, he’s had a couple projects germinating — one of which was a new song with none other than R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. It all sounds pretty idyllic in a way: If you’re going to have to be isolated from friends…
