Baz Luhrmann’s unparalleled, and some would say over-the-top production style works very well to present the arc of Elvis Presley‘s career. The story is told through the eyes of Presley’s mercurial manager, Col. Tom Parker, astutely played by Tom Hanks. The Oscar-winning actor draws us in with his conspiratorial voiceovers, and then we see Presley’s […]
Hidden beneath all the thumping revelry, newfound freedom, and summertime horniness of MUNA’s marvelous third album, there flows an undercurrent of irony. The Los Angeles trio released two albums, in 2017 and 2019, on RCA Records, a major label with all the resources a budding indie band could ever need to launch them into the […]
Maluma is spicing things up on his seventh album. The Colombian heartthrob channels the playful sex appeal in his new collection of romantic and risqué tunes. After teasing fans with a few steamy posts on Instagram, Maluma surprise-released his new LP The Love & Sex Tape. Across the eight-song album, he returns to his reggaeton […]
“Simple City” is the name locals gave to Benning Terrace, a housing project in southeast D.C. shouted out by local go-go artists and once recognized as one of the most active sites of gang violence in the country. Growing up a half-mile over the Maryland border, rapper IDK became childhood friends with a boy from […]
Since the release of his debut solo single “Sign of The Times,” Harry Styles has made it clear that the (one) direction he would be heavily inspired by classic rock. The McCartney-meets-Queen power ballad was just a jumping-off point—a marker of taste that was broader than his days as a One Directioner. All the while, […]
The tone for the evening was established early. Peter Murphy stormed the stage, scepter in hand, before the house lights could be dimmed. “Let’s get going,” he shouted at his bandmates. “Fuck the lights.” The occasion was the opening night of Bauhaus’ 2022 U.S. tour — a short run of dates that sticks to the […]
Fifty-nine seconds into “The Same,” the first track from The Smile’s debut release A Light for Attracting Attention, the unmistakable voice of Thom Yorke begins singing about how “we are all the same” atop a sci-fi pulse of piano, acoustic guitar, and analog synthesizers. There’s no easy release from the tension of the song’s slowly […]
A little over two decades into his career and approaching his 45th birthday, Pusha T is a veteran working in an industry constantly searching for new talent, and a genre redefining itself as quickly as it grows in popularity. Despite that, Pusha’s success comes from a discography decidedly contained by the single subgenre of “coke […]
Arcade Fire’s We — a project of resolute, zeitgeisty grandeur — is not only an album built for 2022. It reflects this week, this day, this moment. Why? Because it’s deliberate in its thesis that America is fucked beyond repair. There is no space for misinterpretation. And at this deeply troubling juncture in our history […]
Most people at rapper-producer redveil’s age are working on an identity outside a prescribed cycle of routines–at school, at work, at home–to ready themselves for the independence and uncertainties of early adulthood. On the Maryland artist’s latest project, learn 2 swim, released on his 18th birthday, this search has been a public as well as […]