News, Interviews, Reviews & More
Many films have been made about hip hop culture, but none have really made an attempt to shine light on one of its most acclaimed and worldly impacting elements: rapping. Eminem’s 8 Mile is the only film mainstream audiences have that somewhat captures the nature of the lyrical art form. This coming June, veteran rapper [...]
There’s no denying Bethany Cosentino and her Best Coast multi-instrumentalist cohort Bobb Bruno have indelible knacks for big melodies and melatonin-soaked moods. Cosentino, Bruno and producer extraordinaire Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Punch-Drunk Love soundtrack) can conjure a simple hook on a whim. They support such hooks with sturdy rhythms or semitropical flourishes effortlessly. There truly [...]
Rock & roll torchbearer Gentleman Jesse has triumphantly returned with Leaving Atlanta, a blazing fireball set of thirteen blistering tunes chocked full of swagger, boogie, earworm hooks and immensely winning garage-pop confection. This time around Jesse has dropped the & His Men moniker, but no confidence or musicianship was lost in the name change. Leaving [...]
The possibility exists that you have never really dug into Shearwater, the perpetually under-the-radar Austin-based princes of chamber pop, at any point over the past decade. Perhaps you have, but if that’s the case chances are you know what’s coming. If you haven’t, however, now is as fitting a time as ever for your formal [...]
Wazu is a two-piece darkwave band transplanted from Sydney, Australia to New York City. Its members, Matt and Rizz, met in college and previously played together as Australia-based Captains. I don’t know if it’s because the duo has only released singles since the formation of Wazu or not, but I completely missed the release of [...]
Will, Matt and Michael sit down to talk about the Jacksons coming back to music, going undercover in the “dark parts of the internet” and finish up with a review of Weather Systems by Anathema. Podcast timeline: 0:00 – 08:45 – We discuss the return of the Jackson family to music, and their timing 08:45 [...]
Chairlift’s second LP release, Something, which came out in January, proved itself a definite Moulder-pop-polished followup to 2008’s Does You Inspire You. But the followup was long-awaited, and the new tour and the new hype and the drive of it all were turning my head around – ‘lifting,’ if you will, the band up the [...]
A Jack White solo album at first appears like a head-scratching contradiction – a paradox assembled of guitar hero/anti-hero antimatter. White has never released music outside of a group context, be it The White Stripes’ dynamic-duo axis, The Raconteurs’ twin-headed frontman/songwriter monster, or The Dead Weather’s quasi-indie supergroup vibe, or his stint in Detroit garage-rockers [...]
Let’s Be Friends!