Indie Rock
IDLES Offer Up “A Hymn” of Shame and Love: Stream
Ultra Mono is the third album from post-punk group IDLES, due out this fall through Partisan Records. The effort, which comes two years after Joy As An Act of Resistance, is being previewed today with “A Hymn”. While previous singles “Mr. Motivator” and “Grounds” the Bristol natives ferocious and snarling as always, their newest offering opts for an entirely different mood. “A Hymn” rolls out slowly and steadily, almost in a drone-like fashion. “I want to be loved, everybody does/ I find shame in the crack-like corpse un-cadaver reign… I find shame gripped tight like your withering fame,” sings frontman Joe Talbot, with an equally monotone cadence. The fixed churn of it all echoes the backstory for “A Hymn”, which according to a tweet from the band ” rejoices in the sinister flesh-eating v...
beabadoobee Announces Debut Album Fake It Flowers, Shares “Care”: Stream
Filipino-British indie rock wunderkind beabadoobee has announced her debut album, Fake It Flowers. As a first look at the highly anticipated project, she’s sharing a new single called “Care”. According to a statement, Fake It Flowers is due out sometime later this year through Dirty Hit Records, the English indie label home of The 1975, Wolf Alice, and former Artist of the Month Rina Sawayama. The full-length follows last year’s Space Cadet, an EP that contained the Pavement-referencing single “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus”. The forthcoming album’s lead single “Care” picks up where that project left off, but is also a welcomed continued evolution of her lo-fi bedroom style, which has drawn comparisons to The Moldy Peaches. Her vulnerability here is noticeably more raw, as the 20-year-...
Fender Launches New Player Offset Electric Guitar Models
Fender has announced new additions to its Player line of entry-level electric guitars. The Offset models are designed especially for aspiring guitarists playing “styles that thrive on nonconformity.” The Offset collection features some of Fender’s most bold and eccentric body styles, featuring the Mustang, Mustang 90, Mustang Bass PJ, and Duo-Sonic. Fender fans will recognize these shapes from the guitar company’s stable of iconic designs, but the Offset series brings a new level of accessibility. With their budget price point and smaller, lightweight bodies, the guitars are targeted toward beginner-to-intermediate level guitarists and female players, according to a Fender representative. “Each model delivers the signature Fender sound that has dominated the guitar scene for more than 70 y...
Yo La Tengo Drop Five-Minute New Song on Bandcamp: Stream
Lo and behold, Yo La Tengo have joined Bandcamp. Or at least one that’s being managed by their label Matador Records. To celebrate, the veteran indie outfit have dropped a five-minute new track that’s titled — breathe in, breathe out — “James and Ira demonstrate mysticism and some confusion holds (Monday)”. Why this spirited jam? What’s the story here? Allow Ira Kaplan to explain: “In late April, with the outside world weighing on everybody, we determined that the three of us could assemble in Hoboken without disobeying the rules laid out by Governor Murphy, and resumed . . . ‘practicing’ hardly describes it, because we’ve done no practicing per se, and anyway what would be practicing for . . . playing. James set up one microphone in the middle of the room in case we stumbled on something ...
Sufjan Stevens Unveils New Song “My Rajneesh”: Stream
Last week, Sufjan Stevens shared a magnificent 12-minute epic called “America”. Now he’s back with the B-side, and it’s a gorgeous song about a strange moment in American history: “My Rajneesh”. The Rajneesh movement was a cult in the 1970s and ’80s led by the Indian mystic Baghwan Shree Rajneesh. He founded a controversial sect of Hinduism that emphasized materialism and fornication. After getting run out of India, Rajneesh established a utopian community in the American state of Oregon. Thousands of followers flocked to the compound, and the Rajneesh community took over entire Oregon towns, which they then renamed after their charismatic leader. They also patrolled their territory with Uzis, which did not sit well with the Oregonian government. As tension escalated, Rajneesh cultists gre...
My Morning Jacket Release New Album The Waterfall II: Stream
After a half decade wait, My Morning Jacket have finally unveiled The Waterfall II. Stream it below via Spotify and Apple Music. For a high-definition listening experience, you can sign up for a 60-day free trial of TIDAL HiFi. The Waterfall II arrives five years after the band’s last album, The Waterfall. Both collections were recorded during what have become known as the Panoramic House Sessions, which MMJ laid down between 2013 and 2014. Similarly, both were produced by frontman Jim James alongside Tucker Martine. James decided to revisit the 10 tracks that make up The Waterfall II when he stumbled upon opener “Spinning My Wheels” while listening to music on a walk early in the pandemic lockdown. The lyrics about being “hypnotized from doing the same old thing” felt very relev...
Jim James Says My Morning Jacket Have a “Completely New Record” Ready For Release
Today marks the return of My Morning Jacket, who have just released their new album, The Waterfall II. The album isn’t entirely “new,” though, as it was recorded at the same time as 2015’s The Waterfall. As it turns out, fans hoping for the rockers’ true return from hiatus are in luck, as frontman Jim James has revealed MMJ do in fact have a fresh full-length all ready to go. After touring behind The Waterfall, MMJ took a break, only playing a handful of shows in 2018 and 2019. It was during those “reunion” gigs last year that the band found themselves “re-energized,” as James told Kyle Meredith with… on the latest episode. “So we went in the studio, and we have a whole new record that we’re finishing,” James revealed. “A completely new record.” My Morning Jacket h...
Liza Anne Shares the Origins of New Song “Change My Mind”: Stream
Our new music feature Origins gives listeners a chance to get the inside scoop on an artist’s latest single. Today, Liza Anne explains what made her “Change My Mind”. Digging your heels in can be a sign of conviction, but also intractability. We all throw up walls when we’re challenged, which leaves very little room for growth (seriously, have you ever been in a Twitter debate?). On her new single “Change My Mind”, Nashville musician Liza Anne tries to keep a level head as she comes to grip with that sort of irked stubbornness. “This song holds hope of wanting the person on the other side to be there while you soften up, someone to challenge you to a place of connection, someone who is safe to grow in front of and with,” she explains in a press statement. “I am so sad that I ever learned c...
The Office’s Creed Bratton Shares New Song “The Ride”: Stream
Creed Bratton, the musician and actor made famous by The Office, has shared his new song “The Ride”. It’s off his eighth solo album, Slightly Altered, which hits shelves and streamers on July 17th. Within The Office, Bratton’s role was that of a spicy pepper, deployed sparingly but delivering potent flavor. But while he is best known for that iconic sitcom, he was first known as the lead singer and guitarist of The Grass Roots. Bratton fronted this American rock band from 1967 to 1969, and even had a pair of top ten Billboard hits. He spent the next three decades landing small film and television roles. But even before The Office made him a household name (literally — the character is named after him) Bratton had returned to his first love of music. Slightly Altere...
Illuminati Hotties Announce New Mixtape, Share First Single: Stream
Los Angeles “tenderpunks” Illuminati Hotties will release a new mixtape on July 17th. It’s titled Free I.H.: This Is Not The One You’ve Been Waiting For and follows their acclaimed 2018 debut album, Kiss Yr Frenemies. This forthcoming effort was written after a major fallout with their indie label, Tiny Engines, which was allegedly involved in shady royalty payment practices. As a result, the new material sees lead songwriter Sarah Tudzin & co. working through the aggression and hurt that came with their ensuing contract-related legal battles. (Hence, the Free: I.H. title.) That assertive bite bares its teeth on the mixtape’s latest single, the lengthily and bluntly named “will i get cancelled if i write a song called, ‘if you were a man, you’d probably be cancelled’”. It’s ...
Rising Rockers Advertisement Unleash Debut Album American Advertisement: Stream
Advertisement, the buzzworthy rock band band out of Seattle, have shared their debut album American Advertisement. Stream it below via Bandcamp. American Advertisement was recorded and mixed by Trevor Spencer and mastered by Jack Shirley. Musically, it’s both nostalgic and of-the-moment; nostalgic for the delight in guitar-driven rock and roll, but with modern lyrical concerns that recall Seattle as it exists today. The new LP also sounds post-legal weed, chilled out and occasionally psychedelic, but there’s an anger, too; a social awareness shaped by the tech-bro invasion and having witnessed the slick gentrification and dull luxury condos crowding out the waterfronts. While the overall vibe is sunny, life-affirming fun, American Advertisement is interrupted by flashes of p...
My Morning Jacket’s The Waterfall II Offers a Slice of Thoughtful Summer Escapism: Review
The Lowdown: In our diseased and never-ending present, 2015 feels like a hell of a lot longer ago than just five years. That April, My Morning Jacket released The Waterfall, a record that our Sheldon Pearce praised for its “stunning sonic scenery” and “perceptive, generation-bending kind of songwriting about lost love and nostalgia.” In addition to producing their best-received record since 2005’s breakthrough, Z, the sessions at Panoramic House in Stinson, CA, also produced a second album’s worth of material that Jim James and company decided to save until they needed them most. At the time, James told critic Steven Hyden in an interview for Grantland that “the two records aren’t related or anything” and that he “[didn’t] want to put it out as, like, The Waterfall 2 or anything like that....
