I only saw Pulp once. A few weeks after they released This Is Hardcore, the much-anticipated follow-up to their critically beloved and UK-conquering breakthrough Different Class, Pulp came to America to play at the second day of the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, DC. That was a day full of enormous names, and a football stadium full of kids there to see those enormous names. Nobody was there...
The first thing I notice when I walk into Kacey Musgraves’ hotel room is a pair of heeled metallic boots. It feels like the perfect welcome. Like country divas before her, Musgraves is known for rocking rhinestones and all things sparkly, and though her new look has gotten definitively more space-aged on her Golden Hour promotion kick, the way Musgraves turns out onstage hasn’t changed. She’s...
Hails. This is...gonna be long. Sorry. If you want to skip to the tunes, do a find for "10." In 2014, Steve Albini gave the keynote address at Melbourne, Australia's Face The Music. The speech, which you can read as an edited version here that I'll be using as a source for subsequent quotes, is still interesting nearly four years on because it captures an older insider's atypically optimistic view...
The Los Angeles-based FYF Festival has announced its 2018 lineup. It features Janet Jackson, Florence + The Machine, My Bloody Valentine, St. Vincent, the xx, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Future, the Breeders, the Internet, Kali Uchis, and more. It'll take place at Exposition Park on 7/21 and 7/22. It's the first iteration of the festival following last year's sexual misconduct allegations against its founder...
Once upon a time, Abel Tesfaye operated in some kind of indie-R&B; auteur space. He probably could've kept going in that lane and had a rich and long career, but his vision was a bit too big for that. Working at a semi-furious clip in recent years, he kicked off his pop takeover with two inescapable singles from 2015's Beauty Behind The Madness, and then followed that with the similarly gigantic Starboy...
Caleb Scofield, longtime bassist for the Boston trio Cave In, has died after a catastrophic car accident. NECN reports that Scofield crashed his car into a toll booth yesterday in New Hampshire. Scofield was 39. Scofield joined Cave In in 1998, shortly before the band released their debut album Until Your Heart Stops. The band came from the hardcore circuit, but their sound was heavy and emotive and...
It takes real talent to create a song based on the premise that Chris Brown is the man and end up with something likable. For three minutes and 36 seconds -- or 5:21 if you're watching the music video, as more than 57 million people have so far -- that's the illusion "Freaky Friday" successfully sells. The track, which just debuted at #9 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, is humorous, catchy, and...
And lo, there came a time when deep up in Heaven, the sainted Lester Bangs plied God with enough cough syrup to be allowed to create the perfect rock band. And when Bangs heard Iceage's 2011 debut, New Brigade, he smiled, for he knew that it was good. Iceage were henceforth known as the Lord's Favorite. And boy, don't they know it. There's always been a heightened, romantic quality to Iceage. A roving...
The first thing I notice when I walk into Kacey Musgraves’ hotel room is a pair of heeled metallic boots. It feels like the perfect welcome. Like country divas before her, Musgraves is known for rocking rhinestones and all things sparkly, and though her new look has gotten definitively more space-aged on her Golden Hour…
And lo, there came a time when deep up in Heaven, the sainted Lester Bangs plied God with enough cough syrup to be allowed to create the perfect rock band. And when Bangs heard Iceage’s 2011 debut, New Brigade, he smiled, for he knew that it was good. Iceage were henceforth known as the Lord’s…
When she was a teenager, Frances Quinlan wanted to be as famous as Conor Oberst. She rolls her eyes as she says this, knowing how ridiculous it all sounds now.
If you’ve done so much as read this website today, odds are you’ve experienced the emotional polarity of modern music consumption — the giddy thrill of having instantaneous access to virtually every note of popular recorded music, countered by the much more powerful dread of realizing just how much of it you’ll never get to…
Lindsey Jordan feels like a jaded old man. She tells me this after ordering a burrito to-go, because she has a bunch of appointments after this one and isn’t all that hungry right now. Photoshoots, interviews, meetings, what have you; she’s ping-ponging between them, and I happen to have an hour with her at a…
Since adopting the Mount Eerie moniker almost 15 years ago, Phil Elverum’s mostly remained in the same place. In the early 2000s, he returned to his island hometown of Anacortes, Washington after spending five years in Olympia making music as the Microphones, and borrowed the name of the island’s tallest peak. Outside of tours and…
Spend any amount of time with Patrick Stickles, and you will often feel like you are in a movie where the voice-over narration, provided by Patrick Stickles, and the commentary track, also provided by Patrick Stickles, are playing at the same time.
Chatting with Nikki Sisti, Shari Page, and Kate Black of THICK feels like being at a slumber party. They laugh and talk over each other, rehashing stories of drunken memories and past relationships around an assortment of chips and beer. Mismatched clothes are strewn about Black’s bedroom for a makeshift photoshoot. “Would you rather be…
There’s a specter that hangs over Brianna Hunt’s first album as Many Rooms. Occasionally, it can be beautiful, but more often than not it’s looming and omnipotent. The Texas-based artist makes the kind of music that allows enough negative space for totalities — doubt, hope, fear, desire, and the lack of all the above. Or,…
Over the last few years, starting with 2014’s Zentropy, Frankie Cosmos has become less the sole outlet for Greta Kline and more a shifting coterie of musicians that are pulled into her orbit. Kline’s songs have become more confident and dexterous with time, and her third full-length, Vessel (out at the end of March), is…
Being the change you wish to see in the world isn’t as easy as it sounds, primarily because there’s no how-to guide. The Melbourne-based punk trio Camp Cope knew Australia’s music scene wasn’t exactly what they wanted it to be, but they weren’t sure how to change it. To be fair, they weren’t looking to…
The great podcast U Talkin’ U2 To Me is billed as “the comprehensive and encyclopedic compendium of all things U2.” It’s a claim as bold and bombastic as the band being documented, and — to be perfectly fair — it’s a designation with which one might quibble, if one were feeling a bit pedantic. For…
Elizabeth, New Jersey is as quintessentially suburban as it gets. There’s two main roads, the standard convenience store and fast food chains, and the laundromat Marissa Paternoster, guitarist and vocalist for Screaming Females, used to hang out behind during high school. “I have fond memories of the smell outside,” she says as we drive from…
Back in the summer of 2007, I fielded an email request from SNL’s Fred Armisen on behalf of him and his friend Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. Brownstein’s band had broken up the year prior and she and Armisen had been filming some short comedy videos, which they thought Stereogum would like to debut. They called…
Since its inception, Fever Ray has been as much of a visual project as it has a musical one. Karin Dreijer — who makes up one half of the legendary Swedish duo the Knife — introduced her solo endeavor in 2009 with a self-titled debut album. Fever Ray introduced us to Dreijer’s spectral new persona;…
