In 2008 — the same year another one-name British soul-pop singer called Adele arrived — Estelle made her own splash with “American Boy.” Although her fourth LP lacks a killer Kanye collaboration like that one, she doesn’t need it. Tracing the stages of a relationship, the album is split into themes including… Source: RollingStone Link: True Romance
Let’s give Imagine Dragons credit where it’s due. On their multiplatinum 2012 debut, Night Visions, the Las Vegas act found a way to reheat old-fashioned arena-rock catharsis for the segmented pop world of the 2010s — fusing Coldplay’s heart-hugging balladry, Arcade Fire’s darkly heroic surge, neon Killers synths and elements of… Source: RollingStone Link: Smoke + […]
Taking cues from the Twilight and Hunger Games soundtracks, this companion to Fifty Shades of Grey is a blockbuster in its own right. Sexing up the affair are new songs by artists like Sia and Ellie Goulding, a couple of hot Beyoncé remixes and the occasional classic (Rolling Stones, Frank… Source: RollingStone Link: Fifty Shades […]
Over the past two years, Rhiannon Giddens has become one of the most promising voices in American roots music. The frontwoman for adventurous string-band trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops, she’s taken show-stealing turns on T Bone Burnett-helmed projects like last year’s New Basement Tapes, doing retooled Bob Dylan tunes alongside… Source: RollingStone Link: Tomorrow Is […]
It’s been 14 years since “Thong Song” Lothario Sisqó released an album — he’s kind of like D’Angelo, if everyone forgot to remember he was gone. In the intervening years, Sisqó has released a couple of albums with his Nineties R&B group Dru Hill and appeared on shows like Celebrity Big… Source: RollingStone Link: Last Dragon
Singer-songwriter Josh Tillman debuted “Bored in the U.S.A.” — a highlight of his ornate second LP as Father John Misty — on Letterman with a Celine Dion-worthy string orchestra, a wayward laugh track and prankster soulfulness. “Save me, white Jesus. . . . /They gave me a useless education/And a subprime loan on a Craftsman home,”… Source: RollingStone Link: I Love […]
Originally conceived on a stoned bus ride in San Francisco in 1964, composer Terry Riley’s groundbreaking In C drew on John Cage, modal jazz and the repetitive structures of African music. It went on to become a minimalist touchstone whose influence stretches from the Who’s “Baba O’Riley” to Berlin techno……. Source: RollingStone Link: Presents…Terry Riley's […]
Something is rotten in the suburbs of Maryland. Could it be the smell of teen spirit? “Life’s a twitch and then you die,” Two Inch Astronaut’s Sam Rosenberg sings on “Part of Your Scene,” sounding like he’s simultaneously scribbling in someone’s yearbook. The band’s second album is about life passing…… Source: RollingStone Link: Foulbrood
This Ohio band’s second release of 2014 bursts with thick guitar riffs, gutsy solos, hummable melodies and the occasional head-scratching lyric. (Example: “Step on my head and press it down/Chew on my bread, it’s on the ground,” from the start-stop grinder “Blankets on the Sun.”) Since rising from the ashes of…… Source: RollingStone Link: Fireball of […]
Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward’s She and Him have always been fundamentally rooted in musical nostalgia for sunny Sixties pop. For their fifth album – a covers record composed largely of pre-rock standards popularized by singers like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald – the duo shift focus to the Forties…… Source: RollingStone Link: Classics