New Music
Dropkick Murphys Announce New Album, Turn Up That Dial, Release ‘Middle Finger’
It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, and even if the world is still heavily locked down in some places, the Dropkick Murphys want you to celebrate accordingly. Not only are the punk veterans planning a massive free livestream for the holiday (aptly titled Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick’s Day Stream 2021…Still Locked Down Presented By Pega…Sponsored By YOU), but they’ve also just announced a new album due out in April. Turn Up That Dial may not come out until April 30 (via Born & Bred Records), but the band aren’t making fans wait two months to hear the new tunes. “Middle Finger” is out right now, and brings the classic Celtic-tinged punk rock that people have come to expect from the band. Check out “Middle Finger” below. [embedded content] And for those of you who can’t wait until Ap...
Twitch’s DMCA Problem Shines as Official Channel Hilariously Censors Metallica Concert With 8-Bit Video Game Music
Over the course of the last pandemic-filled year, Twitch has become the go-to place for a lot of musicians to perform and interact with fans without breaking quarantine. The fact that it was actually designed for livestreams (unlike Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube) made it a natural fit for those who weren’t looking to play awkward drive-in concerts or other “socially distanced” shows. Unfortunately, the platform’s surge of popularity within the music world also exposed one of Twitch’s biggest problems, which is the ongoing battle over streaming music rights all centered around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (better known as the DMCA). To make an extremely long story that you can read elsewhere short, Twitch has an algorithm that automatically mutes streams (or portions ...
Haim Release Women in Music Pt III Expanded Edition With Taylor Swift and Thundercat Collaborations
Despite 2020 being a pretty bad year, Haim did alright. Women in Music Pt. III was a success, spawning a number of great songs and several Grammy nominations, including for Album of the Year, the first time an all-female rock group got tapped for the nod. Now, the Haim sisters are back with an expanded version of that album and a little help from their close pals. Taylor Swift and Thundercat appear on new versions of “Gasoline” and “3 AM” respectively. Listen to Haim’s remix of “Gasoline” with Swift below. [embedded content] Late last year, Haim released their own take on “Christmas Wrapping,” which addressed the crazed chaos that was 2020 and also featured Thundercat. Haim’s “The Steps” was named one of our best songs of 2020. You can read our July 2020 cover story on them ...
Haim Release Women in Music Pt III Expanded Edition With Taylor Swift and Thundercat Collaborations
Despite 2020 being a pretty bad year, Haim did alright. Women in Music Pt. III was a success, spawning a number of great songs and several Grammy nominations, including for Album of the Year, the first time an all-female rock group got tapped for the nod. Now, the Haim sisters are back with an expanded version of that album and a little help from their close pals. Taylor Swift and Thundercat appear on new versions of “Gasoline” and “3 AM” respectively. Listen to Haim’s remix of “Gasoline” with Swift below. [embedded content] Late last year, Haim released their own take on “Christmas Wrapping,” which addressed the crazed chaos that was 2020 and also featured Thundercat. Haim’s “The Steps” was named one of our best songs of 2020. You can read our July 2020 cover story on them ...
Crowded House Returns With New Single From First Album Since 2010
For the first time in over a decade, New Zealand natives Crowded House are back with a brand new single from their upcoming album, Dreamers Are Waiting (June 4 via BMG). Perhaps even more impressively, the non-dream-themed song, “To The Island,” also comes with an announcement of the expansion of Crowded House’s New Zealand tour for next month. The “To The Island” tour now contains 12 dates spread across a few weeks in March and should be a good reminder of what’s possible when a country takes pandemic safety measures seriously. “We were fortunate to be recording in the studio right before lockdown and so began this album with band tracks recorded live in a room, all brimming with character and energy,” said founding vocalist Neil Finn in a statement.” We then spent our strangest...
Mike Doughty-Led Ghost of Vroom Drops Single From Upcoming Album
Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty and collaborator/bassist Andrew “Scrap” Livingston have shared “I Hear the Ax Swinging,” the first single from their upcoming Ghost of Vroom album, Ghost of Vroom 1. It’s out through Mod y Vi Records on March 19. The video, directed by humorist/cartoonist David Rees, will debut later this month. Produced by Doughty and Mario Caldato Jr. (Beastie Boys, Jack Johnson, Seu Jorge), you can check out “I Hear the Ax Swinging” from the album below. [embedded content] The album follows last summer’s debut EP, Ghost of Vroom 2 with the tunes “Rona Pollona,” “Chief of Police” and “1918,” all accompanied by animated music videos streaming now at YouTube. Doughty first created Ghost of Vroom after the release of his 2016 solo album, The Heart Watch...
Gojira Share ‘Born for One Thing’ Single Ahead of Fortitude Album
French-born, New York City-dwelling metallers Gojira have shared the single “Born For One Thing” from their upcoming album, Fortitude. The LP, the band’s seventh and first in five years, arrives April 30th via Roadrunner Records. “We have to practice detaching ourselves from everything, beginning with actual things,” vocalist/guitarist Joe Duplantier said in a statement about the song’s anti-consumerist message. “Own less possessions, and give what you don’t need away, because one day we’ll have to let everything go, and if we don’t, we’ll just become ghosts stuck between dimensions.” Fortitude follows the quartet’s 2016 Magma album, which earned Grammy nods for Best Metal Performance and Best Rock Album. Produced by Duplantier at the band’s own Silver Cord Studio in Ridgewood, Q...
Kings of Leon Share ‘Echoing’ From Upcoming Album
Last month, Kings of Leon announced they’d be releasing their first album since 2016 with When You See Yourself. Previously, the group shared “The Bandit” and “100,000 People,” and today, Kings of Leon released “Echoing.” If the song sounds familiar, it’s because (like its predecessors) it sounds like vintage KoL. “It feels wonderful. It’s been a long wait sitting on this music, and it’s always difficult knowing that you have something that you’re really excited for everyone to get to hear, and then being told you have to sit on it for a minute was tough, but it also gave us a chance to live with it for a little while. And it’s still just as fresh today as it was on the first listen,” Kings of Leon’s Nathan Followill told Za...
Danny Elfman Releases New Song and Video, ‘Love in the Time of COVID’
If you’re at the stage in your life where you’re realizing that Danny Elfman has scored all of your favorite movies and you’re starting to discover his other music, then we have some great news for you. No, Oingo Boingo isn’t reuniting, but Elfman himself just released the follow-up to last year’s “Happy.” “Love in the Time of COVID” is Elfman’s take on the struggles and monotony of the current pandemic, and it comes with a surreal (but all too relatable) video that displays pretty much the exact level of weirdness one would expect from the famous composer. “There’s certainly nothing light-hearted or funny about COVID, but I can still poke a little fun at the crazy way social isolation has changed our lives in every way shape and form, and that’s what ‘Love in the Time of COVID’ is about,”...
Liz Phair Releases New Lou Reed Tribute Song and Puppet-Based Video for ‘Hey Lou’
Liz Phair is back with her first new song in two years, a tribute to Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson called “Hey Lou.” The track is pretty much exactly what you would expect from Phair at this point, featuring the intelligent lyrics, memorable chorus, and iconic guitar tones that have made her a legendary figure over the decades. It was produced by Brad Wood. “Have you ever wondered what love looks like for your favorite celebrity couple behind closed doors?” Phair said in a statement. “‘Hey Lou’ imagines a day in the life of two music legends, whose union was an inspiration for rock bands and a source of curiosity for die hard romantics.” The track also comes with a music video featuring strangely accurate puppet versions of Reed and Anderson, as one does when releasing music in the middle o...
X Release Two B-Sides From Last Year’s Alphabetland
In a year of chaos, one of the best things that happened was when L.A. punk veterans X surprise-released a new album with their original members. Alphabetland was the ripping album we needed in the early pandemic days and thankfully, a few new tunes from those sessions have emerged. On Tuesday morning, X revealed B-sides “True Love, Pt. 3” and “Strange Life,” with the latter song featuring none other than the Doors’ Robby Krieger on slide guitar. “Robby came down on our last day in the studio and played on ‘Strange Life’. How fitting and how wondrous! And can there ever be enough ‘True Love’?” Exene Cervenka said in a statement. “Writing this reminds me of how much fun it was being in the studio with Rob Schnapf. He is a great producer and really helped make Alphabetland&nbs...
Thurston Moore Releases Surprise New Instrumental Album, Screen Time
A day after his daughter Coco Gordon-Moore debuted in his ex-wife Kim Gordon’s video for “Hungry Baby” video, Sonic Youth singer-guitarist Thurston Moore dropped a surprise new 10-track instrumental album titled Screen Time. The Sonic Youth guitarist/singer shared the new music on Bandcamp in time for Bandcamp Fridays. He hasn’t been slacking during the pandemic. SPIN did a wide-ranging interview with Moore last year surrounding the release of his By The Fire album. Ahead of that album, Moore put out a 12-minute track called “Siren,” with an accompanying video-film that portrays a mermaid fantasy. Also last year, Moore appeared on a cover of The Stooges song “Fun House,” which had been recorded in 1997 with members of Mudhoney. It was originally slated to appear in...
