Singer-songwriter Mitski Miyawaki’s breakthrough LP bubbles with poignant black humor. “I will retire to the Salton Sea/At the age of 23/For I’m starting to learn I may never be free,” she confesses in “Drunk Walk Home,” before screaming into a void of distorted guitars. A folk record at its core,…… Source: RollingStone Link: Bury Me […]
For all his world-is-a-vampire nihilism of years past, Billy Corgan has been sounding shockingly well-adjusted lately. Still, the Great Pumpkin’s deep dive into synth pop on Monuments to an Elegy – the latest installment in his band’s multi-album cycle Teargarden by Kaleidyscope – is a surprise. Corgan’s characteristically acidic vocals make sure that songs…… Source: RollingStone Link: Monuments to […]
Deerhoof have been making outrageously inventive ADD noise rock since the Nineties – songs that zip between musical styles, melodic ideas and time signatures while Japanese bassist Satomi Matsuzaki sings in a giddy whirl. Naming their 13th album after a Madonna hit single is pretty funny, since radio pop is…… Source: RollingStone Link: La Isla […]
Pitbull’s latest opens on the streets of Brazil, flipping a local dance hit into an EDM banger that could work anywhere on the planet. Taking his own advice, the Miami rapper never stops the party, pulling together a set of inspirational hip-hop, wedding-ready pop and even Florida Georgia Line-style country…… Source: RollingStone Link: Globalization
On perhaps her most potent record since 1979’s raw Broken English, rock survivor Marianne Faithfull declaims like a dystopian queen of England, surveying a damaged empire with a cold eye and a magnificently wracked but indomitable voice. She draws excellence from star collaborators: Steve Earle co-wrote the withering title track;…… Source: RollingStone Link: Give My […]
All nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan have finally joined forces for their first album in seven years – but it sounds more like one of RZA’s soundtrack projects gone haywire. Glutted with live instruments and tricky structures, the production is heavy on grind-house twists – Ennio Morricone gone electro…… Source: RollingStone Link: A Better […]
It’s hard to think of a better person than Lorde to pick songs for the soundtrack to a Hunger Games movie – and not just because everything about her suggests she’d be dynamite with a crossbow. Before the 18-year-old singer’s tough, witchy musings from the dark end of teenage wasteland…… Source: RollingStone Link: 'The Hunger […]
Classic recordings from Hank Williams, John Prine and Neil Young are among the 27 inductees into the Recording Academy’s Grammy Hall of Fame for 2015. Their inclusion will bring the grand total of titles in the Hall of Fame to 987. (See the complete list of 2015 Grammy Hall of…… Source: RollingStone Link: Hank Williams, […]
Reissues are now, more and more, like airplane flights: an à la carte experience. Historical releases this year by Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came in multiple iterations, with the level of bells, whistles and deep tracks varying according to price. The best scholarship of…… Source: RollingStone Link: 20 Best […]
Willie Nelson and Billy Joe Shaver stopped by The Late Show with David Letterman last night, bringing with them more than 95 combined years of renegade attitude and trend-bucking country music. Backed by a lean band cobbled together from Shaver and Nelson’s touring outfits, included harmonica wiz Mickey Raphael, the two traded…… Source: RollingStone Link: Watch Willie […]