Reviews
Tom Petty’s Wildflowers & All the Rest Faithfully Fulfills a Legend’s Vision: Review
The Lowdown: Few creative efforts ever reach the finish line without compromise. In the case of Tom Petty’s 1994 solo album, Wildflowers, the final product barely scratched the surface of the artist’s intended vision. While Petty originally mapped out a sprawling 25-song double-album, executives at new label Warner Bros. thought such a massive collection might send sales freefalling. The suits weren’t necessarily wrong. The relatively quiet and reflective album would go on to sell more than three million records domestically in the face of grunge, and many would consider it Petty’s last great studio effort. Still, fans were left to wonder what might’ve been … until now. [embedded content] Wildflowers & All the Rest fulfills Petty’s vision and then some. In addition to the 2014 remaster...
Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You Boldly Looks to the Future: Review
The Lowdown: Even bosses get writers’ block sometimes. Such was the case for Bruce Springsteen in early 2019. Facing down 70 and preparing to release Western Stars (his best-reviewed record in nearly a decade and one of our top 50 albums of 2019), Springsteen wasn’t totally sure what might come next. On his 20th studio album, he answers that question on both a micro and a macro level. Much like Western Stars found Springsteen exploring bygone California sounds from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, Letter to You also discovered its inspiration in the not-yet-faded past. In addition to a newly vital set of songs devoted to aging, death, and legacy, Springsteen also resurrected three tracks written before his 1975 debut and reconvened the E Street Band for their first full-length studio collaborat...
Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You Documentary Sheds Light on What Drives The Boss: Review
The Pitch: It’s not every day that you record the 20th studio album of your half-century career in music. When that time does come, it’s worth memorializing. Such is the case with Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, the new making-of documentary now streaming on Apple TV+. Shot last November at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey during a four-day recording session with the E Street Band, the film does more than simply capture a veteran band making a hard job look easy. It also gives Springsteen a chance to expand upon and espouse the thoughts on legacy, time, and the creative process that animate the new record’s material. New Jersey in Winter: While it’s unlikely that Springsteen and his crew opted for a late fall recording date to maximize the potential for cinematic poignancy, that ...
Stevie Nicks, Foo Fighters, Adam Sandler and More Toast Tom Petty at Virtual 70th Birthday Bash: Review
It’s not surprising that Tom Petty’s passing came to inspire an annual birthday festival. Anyone who ever attended a Heartbreakers show knows that infinite feeling and suspicion that a summer night and a favorite song might somehow go on forever. That may not have turned out to be quite true, but artists, friends, and fans have been flocking to Gainesville since Petty’s death to hold on as tightly as possible to what the man and his music meant to so many of us. This year, of course, posed additional challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that didn’t stop Petty’s family and friends from piecing together a heartfelt tribute that not only celebrated what would’ve been the artist’s 70th birthday but raised money for several notable, music-related causes. <img aria-describedby="c...
Jeff Tweedy’s Love Is the King Conquers Anger and Fear with Happiness: Review
The Lowdown: Who in 2020, a year defined almost exclusively by fear, hate and unprecedented political division, has the nerve to release a record called Love Is the King? That might sound a little too optimistic for Jeff Tweedy, but while the Wilco frontman doesn’t always paint a rosy picture in his songs, he knows how to offer calm reassurance in dark times. Few songwriters possess such an acute ability to make sense of the craziness around them, and if Tweedy’s latest solo endeavor proves anything, it’s that sometimes that’s good enough. [embedded content] The Good: There was a time when recording a record amid such social or personal turmoil would have sent Tweedy down the path toward artful rancor. But Love Is the King is the latest in what has been a string of relatively calm releases...
Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You Is a Prayer of Strength and Resilience in the Face of Death
In 2018, Bruce Springsteen stood at the bedside of George Theiss. He’d come to say goodbye to his lifelong friend, the guy who’d dated his sister, Virginia, and in 1965 had encouraged him to join his first band, the Castiles. In Springsteen’s 2016 autobiography, Born to Run, he’d described George as “both Elvis and Paul McCartney (the King AND a Beatle, the true double whammy!)” who “was our resident lothario.” They’d made music together for three formative years, blasting it out at high school dances, union halls, and nightclubs around the Jersey shore. This experience had set Springsteen on his way to becoming the legend we know today. Now Theiss was dying of lung cancer and leaving Springsteen behind as the sole surviving Castiles member. Nostalgia and death have always been central the...
Gorillaz Continue to Exude Colorful Chemistry on Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez: Review
The Lowdown: Ever since they first stole our hearts about 20 years ago, Gorillaz — the genre-splicing virtual band spearheaded by Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett, and now Remi Kabaka Jr. — have provided about as much visual flamboyance and experimentation as musical. In other words, they’ve always made exceptional use of things like music videos, 3-D concert projections, and web-based gimmicks to not only enhance the impact and mystique of their albums and lore but also to push the limits of what modern, multimodal artistry can achieve in a broader sense. Earlier this year, they announced arguably their most ambitious endeavor yet: Song Machine, a web series wherein each “episode” features a new song/music video that encapsulates Gorillaz’s trademark tongue-in-cheek bizarreness, stylistic flex...
Benny the Butcher Flexes His Street Cred on the Star-Studded Burden of Proof: Review
The Lowdown: Despite how prolific Griselda have been in 2020, it has been a full year since we have gotten a solo Benny the Butcher project. In that time, Griselda have signed a Roc Nation management deal, dropped a group album, performed on Fallon, and tested the limits of how many solid albums a collective can drop in a short period of time. People have been waiting on Benny ever since 2019’s The Plugs I Met, an EP that brought him to a higher level of fame for its coke tales, OJ comparisons, and 38 Spesh’s lamb and stick. Benny is a man of history. The East Buffalo-bred MC has studied the game to a tee and has all of the co-signs that other rappers spend a whole career wishing they could boast. Growing up on the infamous Montana Avenue, he has spent a lifetime waiting for this moment to...
Run the Jewels Debut RTJ4 Live with Zack de la Rocha, Josh Homme, and Others: Review
GOTV Meets WFH: We’re eight months into a global pandemic and 17 days away from the strangest presidential election in modern memory, so it’s no huge shock that this year’s get-out-the-vote efforts look drastically different than past cycles. Mostly, that’s meant a shift away from performing at rallies and towards ensuring that all votes get counted safely and fairly. Those efforts have taken various shapes that conform to our current isolation, from the swing state organizing of Justin Vernon’s for Wisconsin initiative to charity Bandcamp compilations like Talk-Action=Zero Vol. 2 and Good Music to Prevent the Collapse of American Democracy to weary remote testimonials shared in a recent Pitchfork feature. Enter Run the Jewels. The Atlanta hip-hop duo of Killer Mike and El-P already owned ...
50 Rappers Who Changed the World Celebrates Hip-Hop’s Rich History: Review
The Lowdown: Public Enemy’s Chuck D has long advocated that the history of Black music in America — from the blues and R&B to soul and hip-hop — is inextricably linked to the history of the Black community. To understand, for instance, the origins of hip-hop — its power to give a voice to the once voiceless and shine light on both the cultural richness and profound systemic suffering found in urban communities — is to know something vital about the Black experience in America. Candace McDuffie’s new book, 50 Rappers Who Changed the World, does a service to both the history of a genre and of a people by paying tribute to the game-changing emcees from rap’s earliest days right up through artists topping present-day charts. <img data-attachment-id="1077449" data-permalink=&qu...
Artist of the Month beabadoobee Unleashes the Raw and Gutting Fake It Flowers: Review
The Lowdown: If you’ve ever scrolled TikTok, you’ve heard beabadoobee’s sweet single “Coffee”. It — plus a song that samples it — has been used to soundtrack almost every clip that includes any of the following: a nausea-inducing relationship montage, a racoon (or other wild animal) doing something kind of cute, or a craft project that you will absolutely never do but bookmark anyway. “Coffee” had taken off even before it made its way onto the omnipresent app, when it was posted by 1-800-LOVE-U, a popular YouTube channel with 700,000-plus subscribers. Characterized by a soft, almost dissolvable voice, the song is just under two minutes of simple guitar chords, doughy lyrics, and pleasant feelings. It’s charming, the equivalent of a gentle hug and kiss on the forehead. If, at times, the son...
Tom Petty’s Wildflowers & All the Rest Offers an In-Depth Look Into One of His Finest Moments
By the early 1990s, Tom Petty was enjoying his second big wave of success. He’d spent two high-flying decades making hits and touring with his band, the Heartbreakers. He’d released two platinum albums as part of the Traveling Wilburys, a supergroup featuring Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and ELO’s Jeff Lynne. And, with Lynne as producer, he’d crafted two critical and commercial monsters: 1989’s solo debut Full Moon Fever and 1991’s full-band effort Into the Great Wide Open. Creatively, the sky was the limit but personally, his life was a shambles. His marriage to first wife and partner since his teenage years, fellow Florida native Jane Benyo was falling apart. It was time to move on. Wildflowers was Petty’s sprawling, sometimes painfully self-aware, and often idiosyncrat...
