Alternative Rock
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis Offer a Tender Glimpse of Hope on the Beautiful Carnage: Review
The Lowdown: In 1997, Nick Cave sang about a “Kingdom” whose light was so bright that “All the world’s darkness can’t swallow up/ A single spark.” On The Boatman’s Call, Cave yearned for this kingdom through a mist of tears born from what he’d later call “a convergence of events that felt so calamitous at the time that I could not find a way to write about anything else.” In the midst of a similarly calamitous convergence of events in 2020 — when it felt impossible to think on anything but widespread sickness, white supremacy, and the fractured state of our society — Cave found himself drawn yet again to the pursuit of this kingdom of light. Carnage, Cave’s new record alongside longtime Bad Seed and soundtrack collaborator Warren Ellis, beautifully and devastatingly documents their pursuit...
Robert Fripp, Toyah, and a Real-Live Snake Take on Foo Fighters’ “Everlong”: Watch
Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox are joined by a member of the animal kingdom in their latest “Sunday Lunch” performance video. The married couple tackle Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” as Toyah handles as real-live slithering snake. Fripp, the founding guitarist for prog pioneers King Crimson, and Toyah, a new wave singer with a series of UK hits in the ’80s, have taken on the role of rock’s most entertaining couple during the lockdown. Their “Sunday Lunch” series sees the pair offering quirky takes on rock classics. Their new performance features Fripp playing the unmistakable guitar riff from Foo Fighters’ “Everlong”, with Toyah singing the song with a good-sized snake slithering in her hands. At the very end, as if on cue, the snake turns around and makes face-to-face contact with Toyah. D...
Song of the Week: Jay Som and Palehound Choose the Bachelor’s Life and Debut “Anything at All”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, two longtime friends form a new band and find a new sound. The past year of our lives has taught us that loneliness comes in several shades of blue. It can feel like total isolation, separation from dear friends, or even the tedium of seeing the same faces every single day. Those among us who have fared best have either found ways to beat the loneliness (a little Zoom went a long way there for a while, didn’t it?) or embrace it as a chance to remain in the moment and accomplish something. Jay Som (Melina Duterte) and Palehound voc...
Tomahawk (Mike Patton) Unleash New Song “Dog Eat Dog” with Brutal Music Video: Stream
The Mike Patton-fronted alternative metal act Tomahawk has unveiled the second single from its upcoming album Tonic Immobility, due out March 26th. The new song, titled “Dog Eat Dog”, comes with a brutal music video. The track is another crisp slice of heavy melodies, following the sound outlined on the previous single “Business Casual”. The inexhaustible Patton is never one to skimp on his vocal performances, and he delivers another strong outing on “Dog Eat Dog”. Lyrically, the new song offers a humorously pro-canine stance, with Patton stating, “Dogs patiently wait, obediently, for humans to snuff each other out…so they can take over the world. Dogs rule!!!!” The accompanying video, directed by Eric Livingston, takes a more serious look at the inherent competition in our society — ...
Guided By Voices Announce New Album Earth Man Blues, Share “Free Agents”: Stream
Guided by Voices released three albums in 2020, and it looks like they plan on continuing that impressive pandemic pace in the new year. The legendary indie rockers have just announced another new record called Earth Man Blues, due out April 30th via Rockathon. Earth Man Blues is the 33rd studio album (!) of Guided by Voices’ career. It’s comprised of songs from the past decade that were never used on previous LPs and organized here to create an overall theme. After realizing it sounded like a musical stage production, Robert Pollard decided to lean into that style and named the album after his elementary school’s theater playbill. “I was blown away that I had discarded them,” Pollard said of the tracks in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Anyway, I combined some of them and created new ar...
Song of the Week: serpentwithfeet Gains Traction with Soulful “Same Size Shoe”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, serpentwithfeet gains traction with “Same Size Shoe”. There are two types of hype in the music business. One type makes it feel like an artist has the primal forces of nature behind them, controlling all media and advertising to make it seem like their next album will not only be the next canonical masterpiece to change music forever, but also the antidote to all that ails our suffering species and planet. And, then, there’s the type of hype that seemingly finds root in the tiniest speck of soil imaginable and slowly grows from th...
The National’s Matt Berninger Shares New Song “Let It Be”: Stream
Last year, The National’s Matt Berninger released his debut solo album Serpentine Prison. The record was delivered to streaming services with 10 songs, but fans who scooped the limited-edition double vinyl LP were treated to an additional six bonus tracks. Now, Berninger is giving everyone the opportunity to hear those extra cuts, starting with an original tune called “Let It Be”. Next month, the indie-rock veteran will include the bonus tracks in a proper deluxe edition of Serpentine Prison, which will be available both digitally and physically. The extra goodies include “Let It Be”, another original song, and four covers of tracks by Eddie Floyd, Morphine, Bettye Swan, and The Velvet Underground. Like the majority of the album, “Let It Be” is a soft and gentle track that moves at a ...
Vicky Cornell Is Suing Soundgarden Over a Buyout Offer
The ongoing legal disputes between Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, the widow of the late Chris Cornell, have managed to get even messier. Vicky is now suing Soundgarden over a buyout price for Chris’ share of the band. Vicky claims that the surviving members of the band offered her just $300,000 for Chris’ stake, according to documents obtained by TMZ. Essentially, Vicky feels she is being lowballed by Soundgarden, suggesting that they were offered $16 million from an outside investor for the masters — equating to $4 million for each member of the quartet. Vicky’s latest suit asks a judge to value Soundgarden’s assets. A representative on behalf of Soundgarden responded to TMZ regarding the suit: “As requested by the Estate of Chris Cornell and as required by the laws of the State of W...
The White Stripes’ From the Basement Set Streaming on YouTube for First Time: Watch
The White Stripes have finally uploaded their 2005 From the Basement performance to YouTube. The 16-minute set features five tracks from their album Get Behind Me Satan and a cover of the Captain Beefheart song “Party of Special Things to Do”. Last May, Nigel Godrich’s independent music performance program From the Basement announced that their full archive was going to be gradually uploaded to YouTube. The series kicked off with Radiohead’s beloved studio performance of The King of Limbs, which was followed by archived sets from Sonic Youth and PJ Harvey later that year. When news of the YouTube releases first broke, part of the set from Jack and Meg White was uploaded as a teaser. Now, the entire performance is officially available for digital viewing for the first time ev...
Jimmy Eat World on the Phoenix Sessions and the Future of Streaming Concerts
A typical album cycle for Jimmy Eat World finds them playing about 150 shows. For their latest album, Surviving, they got in 27. They had a big summer trek all mapped out, but when touring shut down do the pandemic, what could they do? They, like everyone else, were stuck, and their fans would have to impatiently wait to hear the new material live. That opportunity finally came last month when the band launched their Phoenix Sessions concert film series (don’t call it a livestream) with a full-album performance of Surviving. Futures followed two weeks later, and this week on February 12th, they’ll close it all out with their classic Clarity. Each show came with a virtual pre-show, meet-and-greet opportunities, and exclusive merch, approximating the real concert experience as much as possib...
Kings of Leon Share New Song “Echoing”: Stream
Kings of Leon are in the process of rolling out their first album in five years, When You See Yourself. The full record arrives next month, but today they’re giving fans another taste of what’s to come with a new song called “Echoing”. Last month, the Nashville-bred band announced their first full-length since 2016’s WALLS by sharing two promising singles, “The Bandit” and “100,000 People”. The former was a brisk and rattling rocker in the vein of their 2008 mega-hit “Sex On Fire”, while “100,000 People” was took more of a slow-burning ballad route that still featured a satisfying build. “Echoing”, which is the second-to-last song on the tracklist, falls somewhere in the middle between those two sounds. It begins with a tense and lively drum beat that revs in the background the whole time ...
Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett Are Finally Releasing Their Score to Spike Jonze’s Her
In 2013, Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett wrote the score for Spike Jonze’s Oscar-nominated film Her, which starred Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. For whatever reason, the soundtrack was never properly released either digitally or physically, but next month that’ll finally change. The Canadian-turned-New Orleans indie-rock institution and their frequent collaborator have announced that they’re officially issuing the Her (Original Score) on digital, vinyl, and cassette formats in mid-March. The soundtrack, which was nominated for “Best Original Score” at the 2014 Oscars, will be broken up into 13 songs and come packaged with a unique album cover that’s not a mere crop of the film’s promo poster. Her was a strange sci-fi tale about a man who falls in love with a...
