Before we start, a note: There really is no precedent for what Taylor Swift is doing. Sure, artists have re-recorded bits and pieces of their catalog over the years. Frank Sinatra, Def Leppard, DMX — they’ve all redone at least some of their greatest hits due to prior contract disputes or other financial incentives. In […]
Strength has always been at the core of Evanescence. Since the group’s 1995 beginnings, vocalist/pianist Amy Lee has used her voice to reclaim something—usually herself—being loud, disruptive and bold in the process. With the release of the band’s first original album in nearly a decade, The Bitter Truth, that strength is clearer than ever, and […]
By moniker alone, Chemtrails Over the Country Club would be considered a worthy new chapter in Lana Del Rey’s ongoing subversion of classic (see: myopic) American fantasies. Chemtrails spell conspiracy and doubt; country clubs conjure our obsession with wealth, status and all things Instagram braggadocio. One looms above the other, further threatening the golden-era glamor […]
$mokebreak, the second project of hip-hop duo Pink Siifu & Fly Anakin, trades the rich worldbuilding of their first album for a fast-paced exhibition of their underground styles. On their debut, FlySiifu’s, the entrancing back-and-forth of emcee Fly Anakin’s earnest flows and rapper-singer Pink Siifu’s slick-talk was fictionalized as the efforts of blunted employees in […]
The opening lyrics to Glitterer’s sophomore studio album Life Is Not a Lesson sound as if they’re straight from an old philosophical text written in miniature poems: “In between a thought and being / Try to rid myself of feeling / Want to be objective, true / A body’s got nothing to prove.” But that’s […]
When Julien Baker toured in support of 2017’s delicately devastating Turn Out The Lights, her audiences stood suspended in time. No cheers or sing-alongs, just several hundred bodies frozen in arrest, observing the solo songwriter as she wailed tunes of broken love, tattered faith and crumbling mental health. While much of Baker’s new LP, Little […]
TYRON, the sophomore album of UK rapper Tyron Frampton—aka slowthai—takes the scathing perspective of his debut, Nothing Great About Britain, and turns it on himself. Even as he searches through a turbulent childhood and a sudden rise to fame for jewels of wisdom, slowthai keeps his brash satire and disregard for public standards. Also returning […]
With her surprise LP, Flowers For Vases/Descansos, Hayley Williams has forgone further pop experimentation, instead clinging to a raw recitation of profound, suffocating sadness. The Paramore singer’s sophomore solo effort, released on Friday, employs little more than austere acoustic guitar and piano interludes across its 14 new tracks, which lament well beyond the waves of […]
After 25 years—and 10 big ol’ rock albums—the only concerning factor regarding new Foo Fighters material should be this: How will it play live? Can the skyscraping choruses be sung by 40,000 fans at Dodger Stadium — even those who haven’t picked up a new Foos record since 2005? Is there space for Dave Grohl, […]
Somehow. Somehow, as the most psychologically daunting year of our lives refuses to loosen its grip, Taylor Swift continues to create with abandon, relentlessly surprising a fan base that hangs on her every tweet and emoji. Somehow, the pop monolith has done it almost entirely in isolation, sharing heaps of digital files with her latest […]