art-rock
Top 25 Albums of 2020 (So Far)
Welcome to our Mid-Year Report. All week long we’ll be sharing the music, movies, and television that have helped us survive a strange and confusing six months. We start today with our Top 25 Albums of 2020 (So Far). It’d be fatuous to pretend that the first six months of 2020 have been like any other. All of us are facing difficult realities: the pain of injustice, the loss of a loved one, or even just the despair of looking out the window and not knowing what tomorrow will bring or when it will come. For the purposes of this list, then, maybe it’s equally foolish to think music impacted us the same way it always does. Then again, perhaps that’s what makes music so integral to our lives: that no matter what the world or our individual lives look like, music has the magical knack of provid...
A Perfect Circle’s Mer de Noms Escaped Tool’s Shadow 20 Years Ago
Outside of a few major examples — such as Dashboard Confessional, Audioslave, CSNY, Foo Fighters, Gorillaz, The Mars Volta, Cream, and Led Zeppelin — side projects, supergroups, and spin-offs are rarely as triumphant as the bands from which they originate. Of course, Californian troupe A Perfect Circle — founded by Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan and former Tool guitar tech Billy Howerdel — must be added to that list. Over the past 20 years, and through four studio albums and numerous major tours, they’ve amassed a following that rivals those of any of the members’ outside endeavors. (Some fans even prefer APC to Tool, and for understandable reasons.) True, their subsequent records offer stronger hooks, more decorative instrumentation, and a greater emphasis on overtly political and/or ...
The Residents Announce New Album, Share “Die! Die! Die!” with Black Francis: Stream
The veteran art-rock collective The Residents have announced a new double-disc album called METAL, MEAT & BONE: The Songs of Dyin’ Dog. The first single, “Die! Die! Die!”, comes with a Trump and coronavirus-inspired music video, along with unhinged vocals from Black Francis of Pixies. METAL, MEAT & BONE arrives July 10th, and if you’re wondering, “Who’s this Dyin’ Dog?”, The Residents have provided a typically cracked answer. According to a statement, Dyin’ Dog was a bluesman from the 1970s born with the name Alvin Snow. Before his mysterious disappearance on January 13th, 1976, Dyin’ Dog apparently recorded a ten-song demo. As the story goes, The Residents were fortunate enough to rediscover this long-lost masterpiece, and have now used it as the basis for METAL, ME...
How Kraftwerk and David Bowie Paved the Way for Music As We Know It Today
In 1976, David Bowie introduced his bravest new world yet. Zig-zagging across Europe and North America to promote his 10th studio album, Station to Station, he set the scene, night after night, with spliced footage from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou. It was a strange yet enthralling scene for fans, but had the artist, then known as The Thin White Duke, had his way, four motionless Germans would have graced the stage instead. The request, of course, was made, but a firm yet friendly “nein danke” from Kraftwerk later led musical history to opt for another course. Midway through the Station to Station live run, also known as the “Isolar Tour”, Kraftwerk co-founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider met with Bowie at their Kling Klang Studio in their h...
