Indie Rock
In Defense of Phoebe Bridgers Smashing Her Guitar on Saturday Night Live
This past weekend, Phoebe Bridgers made her eagerly anticipated debut as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. During the final moments of her performance of “I Know the End”, a track from her buzzy sophomore album, Punisher, Bridgers went out with a bang — literally — when she repeatedly smashed her guitar into a monitor onstage. Unfortunately, the Internet being what it is, Bridgers’ epic moment of punk euphoria was clouded by curmudgeonly chatter. A simple search of “Phoebe Bridgers guitar” on Twitter brings up a litany of comments wondering why “that woman” had the nerve to “damage expensive property.” Others called the act pointless and even poked fun at Bridgers for apparently not being strong enough to have done more physical damage to the instrument. No matter how much doom scr...
Song of the Week: boygenius Reunite on Julien Baker’s Confessional “Favor”
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. While several stories over the past few weeks have reminded us that the entertainment world can still be very much a boys’ club in the worst ways imaginable, on the artistic side of matters, we’ve seen an undeniable shift in the recognition women are finally beginning to receive within the music industry, especially in the rock genre. Studies have shown that young women are not only picking up guitars at the highest rates ever, but they’re actually learning to play them in larger numbers than their male counterparts. No doubt it’s been partl...
Rostam Shares New Solo Song “These Kids We Knew”: Stream
Last month, Rostam set Amanda Gorman’s now-famous Inauguration poem to music using piano arrangements. The former Vampire Weekend member is back today, this time with a dazzling original song of his own dubbed “These Kids We Knew”. Stream it below. This new offering revolves around a musical pulse meant to reflect the innocence of youth and the impermanence of stability. According to a press release, Rostam wrote “These Kids We Knew” in a “fever-dream state” in March of last year — during which he was recovering from COVID-19 — while reflecting on the push and pull of societal responsibility. “I was thinking of three generations while I was writing this song,” he explained. “There’s a generation of adults who don’t see global warming as their problem because they think they won’t...
SLONK Channels His Inner Blur on New Song “Colin”: Stream
Bristol-based indie rocker Joe Sherrin has been making music under the moniker SLONK for quite some time now, all while playing in other bands like Fenne Lily, Milo’s Planes, and Let’s Kill Janice. Today, he’s sharing a new song called “Colin” and it sees him changing gears from his typical sound to embrace the anthemic side of synth pop. “This song came about a few years ago at a temp job where I didn’t know (and still don’t) what I was actually doing there,” explained Sherrin in a statement. “I knew what type of thing I was supposed to be doing on the computer, but had no idea what it meant or what its purpose was. ‘Colin’ is about the idea staying there forever, told through the eyes of the characters who I worked there with.” As bleak as being trapped in a dead-end job may be, SLONK ma...
Shovels & Rope Enlist Sharon Van Etten to Cover The Beach Boys’ “In My Room”: Stream
Shovels & Rope (photo by Todd Cooper) and Sharon Van Etten (photo by Ryan Pfluger) Shovels & Rope have teamed up with Sharon Van Etten for a cover of The Beach Boys’ “In My Room”. The track is part of an upcoming covers collection called Busted Jukebox Volume 3 that’s loosely inspired by the act of parenting. The first two installments of Shovels & Rope’s collaborative series arrived in 2015 and 2017, respectively, and both of those projects were loaded with guests like Brandi Carlile and Shakey Graves. Volume 3 has the cheeky alternative titled Busted Juicebox because all of the guests musicians are parents themselves, and the songs they chose to cover — from lullabies and American songbook standards, to R.E.M. and Janis Joplin cuts — are emotionally relate...
Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not Takes Us Back to Their Garage Days
Editor’s Notes: Consequence has been around long enough that so many of the new albums that originally turned us on to music are now celebrating their first milestone anniversaries. As we begin to reflect on these records, you can catch our updated assessments here. “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes,” Arctic Monkeys’ vocalist Alex Turner sings on the opening line of Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. It’s a somewhat ironic statement. The Sheffield indie rockers’ most recent album sounds nothing like The Strokes, especially the opening track “Star Treatment”. The 2018 record is infused with a lounge-jazz, yacht-rock persona with songs that follow Odyssean orbits rather than traditional verse-chorus patterns. With the Arctic Monkeys that fans are familiar with now, going back to their 20...
Madeline Kenney Reveals New Summer Quarter EP: Stream
Madeline Kenney has unveiled the Summer Quarter EP via Carpark Records. Stream it below using Apple Music or Spotify. The follow-up to 2020’s Sucker’s Lunch, Summer Quarter was recorded in the isolation of quarantine, at a time when Kenney had hoped to be touring. The indie songwriter used the extra hours to develop new skills — namely behind the boards. While her first three records were produced by Toro y Moi and members of Wye Oak, this time Kenney took on all the producing duties herself. As she explained on Twitter, “i recorded it in my basement and it’s my first release produced solely by me. it’s weird and different but i like it.” Editors’ Picks The four-track effort is headlined by “Wasted Time” which comes with a music video directed by Kenney. With the aid o...
Song of the Week: A Pixilated Rico Nasty Earns High Score in “LiLBiTcH” Video Game
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. Take a deep breath … we have a sane president, a history-making veep, and “Individual-1” banned from Twitter … exhale. That’s not to say that life is all good or that all the problems we face as a nation are suddenly solved. No, it takes a lot of work to undo a four-year con job. That said, it won’t hurt if we take a measly two minutes and sixteen seconds out of our stressful, cooped-up lives to relax and, in the parlance of my time, take a chill pill with, well, chillpill. For those unfamiliar, chillpill is the name of the 15-year collabora...
The Decemberists’ The King Is Dead and the End of the Americana Craze
Editor’s Notes: Consequence has finally been around long enough that so many of the new albums that originally turned us on to music are now celebrating their first milestone anniversaries. As we begin to reflect on these records, you can catch our updated assessments here. The first time I heard Mumford & Sons was at the 37th Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I was 14, had just finished middle school, and was in a band that played shitty covers of Audioslave and Death Cab for Cutie in our drummer’s basement. I wasn’t exactly a music doyen, but I remember everyone around me, even my parents — Telluride had become something of a family pastime — were impressed by the set. There was something undeniably endearing about Marcus Mumford’s gravelly baritone, his black vest (soon to become a stap...
The War on Drugs Perform “Arms Like Boulders” on Colbert: Watch
Live shows may temporarily be on pause, but they’ve hardly been forgotten. In fact, The War on Drugs recently released a live album titled LIVE DRUGS comprised of concert recordings from throughout their career. (The 10-track effort was reportedly “culled from over 40 hard drives,” so you can be sure the concert nostalgia was intense.) On Friday, The War on Drugs supported their new effort by playing “Arms Like Boulders” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The remote performance saw Adam Granduciel, David Hartley, Robbie Bennett, Charlie Hall, Anthony LaMarca all play along on guitar, while Jon Natchez handled a mandolin. Replay the performance down below. Editors’ Picks “Arms Like Boulders” originally appeared on The War on Drugs’ debut album, Wagonwheel Blues, as well as th...
Hiss Golden Messenger Share New Song “Sanctuary”: Stream
Hiss Golden Messenger are back with their first new song since 2019, “Sanctuary”. Written and produced by bandleader M.C. Taylor, “Sanctuary” isn’t exactly a political track, though it does engage with the national mood. “Feeling bad, feeling blue,” Taylor begins, “Can’t get out of my own mind/ but I know how to sing about it.” There’s a tension in the song between uplifting music and lyrical pessimism. At the chorus, backup singers join Taylor, and you might mistake the song for a sunny anthem if you didn’t listen to the words: “You want good news/ You want sanctuary/ But when you try to get real/ They break you on the wheel.” In a statement, Taylor explained how the song came together and paid homage to John Prine, writing, “Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we ...
CARM and Sufjan Stevens Collaborate on “Song of Trouble”: Stream
Contemporary classical ensemble yMusic has been dabbling with the indie rock world for over a decade now, working with everyone from Justin Vernon to The Tallest Man on Earth over the course of their career. CJ Camerieri, the group’s co-founder and horn player, is bringing that experience with him into CARM, his debut self-titled album under that solo moniker, due out January 22nd. Case and point: he got Sufjan Stevens to sing on his brand new single “Song of Trouble”. Co-written by both artists, “Song of Trouble” is a beautiful orchestral number that sees CARM wielding his horn in a way that’s typically reserved for guitars. There’s a sense of sadness that guides it as well as a subtle hopefulness. That feeling is drawn out all the more thanks to the lyrics Stevens wrote. “I called to eac...
