For one cruel moment it felt like we had David Bowie back. He went silent for nearly a decade after suffering a heart attack during a performance in Prague in 2004, resurfacing in 2013 with The Next Day, a strong collection of songs that felt like a comfortable, but not revelatory, coda to a multi-decade-long […]
From 1969 to 1979, a series of field recordings appeared on the Atlantic label under the title Environments. Song titles included “The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore” and “Dawn in New Hope, Pennsylvania” (which would have made a dynamite title for a Ween album), presenting painstakingly recorded sonic representations of places and the sound-worlds they produce. The […]
Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and has a handful of public screenings through Sept. 14, needs a subtitle, like “Why Elvis Was The King?”. The Elvis busts, Elvis impersonators, velvet Elvis, Elvis weddings, gaudy Graceland interior décor, later-life health struggles, pill dependency, […]
When electronic-ambient-new age pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre was working on 1976’s Oxygene, in his makeshift home studio, he often had to tape down two preset buttons of his Korg drum machine to achieve the effect he wanted. Thanks to the breakout success of that record and its winning blend of bright keyboard melodies and warped analog […]
“Sorry, I was thinking about something else.” These are the first words you hear on the Beths’ latest, Straight Line Was A Lie, apologizing for the opening track’s false start. At first, it feels like a cute, self-deprecating peek behind the curtain from the celebrated New Zealand band, but upon reflection, it’s actually a fitting […]
“‘Dark Star’ is always playing somewhere. All we do is tap into it,” Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh supposedly said. Grayfolded, John Oswald’s epic collage of the Dead’s hallmark longform jam, assembled from fragments of more than 100 different performances spanning the band’s 30-year career, could be seen as an attempt to simultaneously channel every […]
Lucero keeps Ben Nichols busy. The Memphis-based collective has been going strong since 1998, touring constantly and releasing acclaimed albums, such as their 12th LP Should’ve Learned by Now (2023). Earlier this year, Nichols and Rick Steff put out Lucero Unplugged, a collection of stripped-down favorites from the band’s vast discography. It’s no wonder that […]
Though the final Talking Heads album came out in 1988, the band never really went away. Unlike defunct groups trapped in a cycle of rediscovery every generation or so, Talking Heads have remained indelible, hip with both the folks old enough to remember and art-damaged youngsters seeing David Byrne in an oversized suit for the […]
Being Funny in a Foreign Language is the sound of the 1975 no longer selling their own myth. They sound relieved. After a decade of playing the self-referential and pop-minded rock band – frontman Matty Healy’s famous “a millennial that baby-boomers like” lyric can still summarize why people love and hate him – the British […]
Let’s talk about Blue Rev. Not the new Alvvays album, but the booze for which it’s named, because this is some deeply, deliciously Canadian shit. The niche nostalgia play is fitting for a Toronto band largely defined by backward glances: to past loves and the jangly post-punk of C-86 bands like Primal Scream and the […]