INTERVIEWS
Boys Noize Breaks Down His New Album +|- (Polarity) Track by Track: Exclusive
Our Track by Track feature sees musicians revealing the stories and inspirations behind each song on their latest album. Today, Alex Ridha — a.k.a. Boys Noize — dissects his new album, +/- (Polarity). Berlin-based DJ Alex Ridha has released his fifth album as Boys Noize. +/-, pronounced “polarity,” today (September 24th). The record arrives via his own Boysnoize Recordings, and you can stream it below via Apple Music. For an artist like Ridha, who derives much of his influence from Berlin’s bustling club scene, the solitude of the pandemic offered an opportunity for him to fully embrace the different genres that inspire him. “The album dives into the polar tension between the musical styles and worlds I find myself in,” he tells Consequence in a statement. “When you combine opposites,...
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine on Collaborating on A Beginner’s Mind: There Was “Mutual Trust and Respect”
For fans of both Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, it might come as a shock that it’s taken them until 2021 to put out a collaborative album together. The two prolific indie-folk titans have been associates of sorts since at least 2017, when Stevens proposed releasing De Augustine’s second LP, Swim Inside the Moon, on his own Asthmatic Kitty Records. De Augustine, whose featherlight vocals and gently-plucked acoustic guitars echo those found on Stevens’ beloved 2015 album Carrie & Lowell, is such an on-the-nose disciple of Stevens’ that it was only natural for the duo to pair up on their new album, A Beginner’s Mind (September 24th). With each track inspired by a film they watched while holed up at an upstate New York cabin together — ranging from Bring It On ...
Mac McCaughan Gets A Little Help From His Friends on The Sound of Yourself
Mac McCaughan has done it all. For three decades he’s toured the world as the singer-guitarist in revered indie rock band Superchunk. He’s made music in a host of other projects including Portastatic, Bricks, Seam, and Go Back Snowball (with Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard). And, he co-founded the venerable indie label Merge Records with Superchunk bandmate Laura Ballance. Together they helped redefine the American musical landscape by releasing hundreds of albums by legendary artists like Neutral Milk Hotel, The Magnetic Fields, Spoon, and Arcade Fire. But when the pandemic hit in early 2020, McCaughan was faced with an entirely new experience. “I couldn’t write a song for like eight months,” he told SPIN over the phone. “I had been working on songs before that and then once we went into...
Laura Jane Grace Surprise Released Her New EP Because Nothing Is Normal Anymore Anyway
Laura Jane Grace released a new EP today, but you wouldn’t know it if you weren’t paying attention. At a point in time where society, punk rock, and everything in between is more online than ever before, Grace stealth-dropped At War With The Silverfish (via Polyvinyl Records) like her fellow cultural icon, Beyoncé, did for her 2013 self-titled album. On one hand, it takes a certain amount of courage and understanding of your fan base to release a new project without any kind of prior promotion or announcement (beyond the occasional cryptic tweet). On the other, it’s not like anyone really has a “How to Release an Album During a Global Pandemic” playbook drafted up yet, so why not just go with it? “These are certainly unprecedented times that we’re living in, so the normal way of putting ou...
partywithray on His Sultry, Party-Starting New EP: “The Dance Floor Is the Heart”
When you opt to embed the word party in your name, you have an obligation to put the “fun” in “function.” That is exactly the goal of #Partystarters, a seductively kinetic EP that partywithray hopes will cover dance floors from LA to Berlin with sweat. The Los Angeles-based producer recently unveiled the record, a song-cycle of frisky dance music designed for club hedonism. #Partystarters is a breakneck locomotive of steamy swag house. partywithray shows out on its four tracks, each of which drip with the down-and-dirty élan of a neon-swathed club floor. ZHU makes an appearance on the EP’s opener, a come-hither banger called “Lil Mama” that finds the Grammy nominee providing a flirtatious topline over a sultry arr...
Padres & Airwaves: A Baseball Game With Tom DeLonge
Tom DeLonge knows everyone at Petco Park — or at least everyone at Petco Park knows Tom DeLonge. As the rare celebrity who considers himself a San Diego Padres fan, he’s a fixture at the stadium. As a season ticket holder for some of the plushest seats in the ballpark, he knows the stadium inside and out. It’s one of his favorite spots in his hometown, and it’s really the little things that he’s proud to point out as he walks through the concourse — like the composite floors around the concession stands to prevent the typical sticky concrete, the way the upper deck provides complete shade for many seats even during day games, and the hidden locations for the trained marksmen who watch over every game in the event of a security threat. When DeLonge walks through the crowds waiting for overp...
DijahSB Breaks Down New EP Tasty Raps Vol. 1 Track by Track: Exclusive
In our Track by Track feature, artists are tasked with sharing the stories behind each song on their latest album. Today, DijahSB takes us track by track through their new EP Tasty Raps Vol. 1. DijahSB is back today (September 17th) with their latest EP, Tasty Raps Vol. 1. Released independently, the six-track project features assists from Ray HMND and Mick Jenkins. Arriving just five months after their sophomore album Head Above the Waters, the new release marks the nonbinary rapper’s second release of 2021. It includes the lead single “New Balance” and the previously-dropped “Here to Dance.” Advertisement Related Video Kicking things off on the opening track “Earthtone,” DijahSB maintains their musical independence by declaring, “I’ve never asked for no handout/ I’ve always do...
Poppy on Seeking ‘Inner Peace,’ the Beauty of Cry-Driving, Focused New LP ‘Flux’
On 2020’s I Disagree, perpetual shapeshifter Poppy found catharsis within her “post-genre” chaos, utilizing whiplash transitions from djent-y metal to candy-coated electro-pop to many places in-between. Part of the thrill was submitting to the unknown of it all — like with “Concrete,” a song that somehow feels like a mash-up of Nine Inch Nails, the Beach Boys, Michelle Branch, Queen and System of a Down. But for an artist with a reputation built on surprise, perhaps the most startling U-turn is to stop swerving so wildly. Ironically, the singer’s fourth album, Flux, feels like the opposite of a flux. Working with producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, St. Vincent, M83) and tracking live with her touring band, Poppy wound up with nine tight, hook-focused songs that favor front-to-back c...
25 Years Into Their Career, Big D and the Kids Table Just Want You to Do Your Art
David McWane has been in Big D and the Kids Table for a real long time. For that matter, he’s been the Boston-based ska punk band’s vocalist and stabilizing force for longer than he hasn’t. The past 26 years of the 44 year old’s life have been dedicated to singing, shouting, and songwriting, and a month before the band’s latest album, Do Your Art (October 22 via SideOneDummy Records), he’s ready to recommit to it all over again. While they’ve never been the biggest band in the world — nor are they trying to be — Big D’s decades of existence are a testament to the enduring connection that McWane has built both with fans and musicians around him. Nine Big D albums into his career, the frontman, author and Northeastern University professor has pretty much seen every wrinkle the music industry...
Pool Hopping Through It All With Illuminati Hotties
It’s a perfect day for a swim in Los Angeles, but Sarah Tudzin is struggling to relax. The Illuminati Hotties frontwoman is trying and failing to find her balance on an inflatable tube in the deep end of my pool, clutching her sunglasses with one hand and a Tecate can with the other. “Wait, hang on, I got this,” she says as she splashes around on a 91-degree afternoon in June. The more she thrashes, though, the less the float wants to cooperate, like an aquatic, bucking rodeo bull. She’s tilted so far back that she’s almost upside-down, with the ends of her thick black hair starting to get wet. “Don’t put it in your article that I couldn’t do this. This is off the record!” Balance is something the 29-year-old has never quite been able to master, in the water or in life. She’s a textbook wo...
Artists Reflect on 20 Years of The Strokes’ Is This It
The release of The Strokes’ landmark debut album, Is This It, was anything but smooth, but once it made its way into the hands of rock fans, its impact was profound. After a staggered international release of the album beginning in August 2001, Is This It was set to arrive in the United States on September 11th on vinyl and September 25th on the then-more-popular CD format. For the US release, the cover artwork was changed from a woman’s naked hip and rear end to the less-risque image of subatomic particle tracks. While the vinyl did come out on September 11th as planned, that day’s horrific terrorist attacks forced the New York band and its label to rethink the release of the CD. The scathing tune “New York City Cops” was dropped from the tracklist of the CD version in the wake of the her...
Cage the Elephant on Covering Metallica’s “The Unforgiven”: “It’s Almost Like Their ‘Stairway to Heaven’”
Cage the Elephant were among the 53 artists to participate in the just-released covers compilation The Metallica Blacklist. Each act covered a track from “The Black Album,” with all proceeds from the release benefitting a charity of the artist’s choice and Metallica’s All Within My Hands Foundation. For their contribution to The Metallica Blacklist, Cage the Elephant took on the epic ballad “The Unforgiven.” Proof of the song’s universally captivating arrangement, Cage make it sound like their own song while preserving the grandeur and dynamics of the original. In an exclusive Q&A with Heavy Consequence, Cage the Elephant guitarist Nick Bockrath discussed the experience of covering “The Unforgiven,” the impact of “The Black Album,” and the legacy of Metallica. Advertisement Related Vid...
