Reviews
Spoon Make Up for Postponement with Flawless Set in New York City: Photos + Setlist
No matter how careful or vaccinated we are, touring during the pandemic still isn’t easy. Spoon were recently forced to postpone a trio of shows after members of their party tested positive (and their current opener, Margaret Glaspy, had to pull out of a number of other shows for the same reason). When they finally did get back on track, Britt Daniel’s voice started to give out, causing yet more delays. It’s just not easy out there for touring bands right now — which makes shows like Spoon and Glaspy’s Friday, May 6th gig at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom all the more special. The show was one of those three aforementioned postponements, rescheduled under the mini-tour title “Let’s Try This Again…” Spoon made up for the delay by delivering a ferocious set full of hits and surprises. They ...
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti Is Summer’s Swaggering, Flavorful Soundtrack: Review
After making history with his last album, Bad Bunny is taking a lawn chair to the beach and basking in his success with his new LP, Un Verano Sin Ti (“A Summer Without You”). Across a whopping 23 tracks, the Puerto Rican superstar celebrates the music of the Caribbean with his signature emo flow. In addition to the usual suspects of reggaeton and Latin trap, he explores influences that include merengue, bomba, and dembow music. He continues to push reggaeton forward with alternative acts like The Marías and Bomba Estéreo, adding touches of Afrobeat and house music in mix. With his most fun and colorful album yet, Bad Bunny is ready for the summer season. The rapper released a trio of albums in 2020, culminating in El Último Tour Del Mundo making history as the first all-Spanish language al...
On WE, Arcade Fire Raise the Stakes Higher Than Ever, But to Mixed Results: Review
“It’s an age of doubt/ and I doubt we’ll figure it out,” sings Win Butler on the first line of “Age of Anxiety I,” the opening track of Arcade Fire’s sixth studio album, WE (out Friday, May 6th). From the very start, things are bleak and contradictory; the song essentially describes a full-on panic attack, even though the music beneath it is synth-covered, electrifying dance-rock, and as the track comes to a close, Butler trades repetitions of the phrases “It’s all about you” and “It’s not about you.” The latter contradiction is a crucial one in the context of WE: There is a deep consideration from the band about the all-or-nothing cultural mentality that we find ourselves in in 2022, and the separation of “I” and “We” is what makes up the core of the album. The first half o...
Pusha T’s Patience Pays Off on It’s Almost Dry
A little over two decades into his career and approaching his 45th birthday, Pusha T is a veteran working in an industry constantly searching for new talent, and a genre redefining itself as quickly as it grows in popularity. Despite that, Pusha’s success comes from a discography decidedly contained by the single subgenre of “coke rap,” and featuring a small, consistent set of collaborators. On It’s Almost Dry, his fourth studio album, the Virginia rapper preaches the values, triumphs and losses of patiently walking this narrow path that has made his name synonymous with sinister raps about selling cocaine, and listed it among some of the most iconic artists of the past 10 years. For the first decade of his career, Pusha was half of hip-hop duo Clipse, alongside his brother Malice. The two...
Pearl Jam Mark Return to Road with Joyous Three-Hour Concert in San Diego: Recap + Setlist
“I’m not gonna talk this much at other shows, but this feels like home, and I missed ya,” Eddie Vedder told the San Diego crowd on Tuesday night. The first time I saw Pearl Jam, it was December 1991 and they were the relatively unknown openers for Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. My friend had bought a Pearl Jam shirt before the concert (even though the “cool” thing was to get Nirvana merch), when suddenly a long-haired Vedder ran up from somewhere and thanked her. More than 30 years later, Vedder is still filled with this kind of enthusiastic gratitude. He showed plenty of tokens of it throughout Pearl Jam’s nearly three-hour set at Viejas Arena in the city he said “feels like home,” the place where he lived before moving to Seattle. Advertisement Related Video This was the first stop i...
Black Star’s No Fear of Time Proves Even 24 Years Is Just a Number for Hip-Hop Greats
Time is crazy, right? It’s the one thing we never have enough of and, sometimes, can’t wait to have in the rearview mirror. Time is on the mind of Black Star, the duo who surprised hip-hip 24 years ago with a debut album still spoken about in hushed tones today. Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (f.k.a. Mos Def) capitalized on that success with their own solo careers. Still, fans kept asking — sometimes incessantly — where’s the next Black Star album? After two decades, the day finally arrived as the Brooklyn group released their sophomore album, No Fear of Time (currently only available on Luminary). While mere mortals might quake in their boots simply thinking about the prospect of releasing a new record so many years after a landmark debut and finding a way to match those lofty expectations, K...
Arcade Fire’s We Is a Sign of the Times
Arcade Fire’s We — a project of resolute, zeitgeisty grandeur — is not only an album built for 2022. It reflects this week, this day, this moment. Why? Because it’s deliberate in its thesis that America is fucked beyond repair. There is no space for misinterpretation. And at this deeply troubling juncture in our history — pick a reason why — nuance is no longer a luxury we can afford. If you have something to say, you better say it now — the scroll of horrifying headlines and Met Gala memes will resume momentarily to numb us anew. But even as subtlety is stampeded by the constant demands of our self-imposed digital captivity — such was the crux of Everything Now, Arcade Fire’s polarizing 2017 LP; remember the lyric “infinite content, infinitely content” — this new album’s soapbox approach ...
Jessica Biel Can’t Help Hulu’s Confused Candy Coalesce: Review
The Pitch: The story of Candy Montgomery is almost too gruesome and eerily-timed to feel true: On Friday, the 13th, one June in 1980, a pleasant, well-liked suburban housewife in a bucolic northeastern Texas town went over to her friend and neighbor Betty Gore’s house, and murdered her with an axe. She slashed her 41 times, 40 of them while her heart was still beating. Then, she took a shower in Betty’s home to clean off the blood, and drove back home to continue her day like nothing had happened… with Betty’s newborn infant crying in her dead mother’s home for thirteen hours before the body was found. Even crazier than that? Candy would end up being found not guilty. Naturally, it’s the kind of lurid true-crime story that would spawn not one, but two miniseries in our murde...
Better Call Saul Recap: There’s Proving and Then There’s Knowing
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 4, “Hit and Run.”] Case Summary After last week’s seismic installment, Episode 4 of Better Call Saul was a bit more easygoing, even if things grow more and more uneasy for everyone. As the old saying goes, it’s not paranoia if someone is actually out to get you, and while things actually do seem to be going pretty well for Kim Wexler and Saul Goodman, attorneys-at-law, Kim at least is not sleeping easy these days. The centerpiece scam this time focused on Jimmy and Kim’s ongoing campaign to ruin Howard Hamlin’s reputation, which pays off last week’s key-copying adventure. While a blissfully ignorant Howard sits down for therapy, Jimmy uses his duplicate key for Howard’s car for a wild little bit of sketch...
Redveil Comes of Age on learn 2 swim
Most people at rapper-producer redveil’s age are working on an identity outside a prescribed cycle of routines–at school, at work, at home–to ready themselves for the independence and uncertainties of early adulthood. On the Maryland artist’s latest project, learn 2 swim, released on his 18th birthday, this search has been a public as well as a personal journey. He’s overcome struggles with insecurity and self-doubt while attempting to build his own unique sound across the self-produced album. His first album, Niagara, was released in 2020 when he was just 16. An abstract hip-hop mashup of noisy samples and soulful vocal loops with earnest and introspective raps, redveil launched himself into conversation with his older, more established peers–including his personal inspiration Tyler, the ...
Florence + the Machine Dazzles at Intimate Los Angeles Show: Recap + Setlist
Florence Welch is almost always moving when she performs. With the exception of the occasional sip of water or a dramatic pose at the end of each song, the bewitching British singer-songwriter is constantly on her feet, her body nimbly maximizing as much space on stage as humanly possible, all while singing with unshakable gusto. Many were lucky enough to both witness Welch’s captivating moves and hear her signature guttural mezzo-soprano alongside her backing band The Machine at the 2,000-capacity Los Angeles Theatre on Friday evening (April 29th), the first stop on her 2022 North American tour. Of course, Welch’s flailing, skipping, twirling, and air punching served more than just a function of spectacle. Florence + the Machine’s upcoming record Dance Fever (out May 13th) drew inspiratio...
Paul McCartney Kicks Off His Tour in Spokane With a Little Help From His Friends
The emotion started welling up during, of all songs, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” Something about the sight of a gaggle of teen girls, singing the nonsense chorus of that White Album classic started to crack my critical resolve. By the time Paul McCartney hit the chords of “Hey Jude,” already two-plus hours into the opening night of his 2022 American tour, the tears were soaking into my face mask. This was not the reaction I anticipated having after a long drive to Spokane, Washington to be on hand for the kick-off of this 16-date run of shows. Going into the evening, I was carrying with me a not-too-small amount of Macca fatigue. Even during a global pandemic, the man was everywhere. Unpacking his career amid artful lighting with Rick Rubin. Straining to keep his former band together while...
