As usual, Drake’s new album For All The Dogs is stuffed with guests, samples, subliminals, oversharing, and all manner of pop culture ephemera. One ingredient in the stew: About two and a half minutes into the Chief Keef collab “All The Parties,” Drake sings the chorus of “West End Girls,” the immortal Pet Shop Boys […]
Premature Evaluation: Drake For All The Dogs
This motherfucker. I woke up this morning, and I was upset. The energy around Drake has been truly dark lately. The anhedonia. The self-indulgence. The persistent dwelling on petty grievances. The open, vulnerable reveling in his own worst confirmed-dickhead-bachelor romantic tendencies. The endless diminishing-returns dominance. The too-big-to-fail corporate omnipresence. The fake accents. The wounded-bully demands […]
Stream Mil-Spec’s Excellent New Album Marathon
For my money, Toronto’s Mil-Spec have been one of the best hardcore bands on the map for years now. After a bunch of promising early records, the band released their full-length debut World House during the dark COVID days of 2020. The album was this huge, visceral, searching, ambitious thing, and it really lifted my […]
Bruce Springsteen Announces Rescheduled US Tour Dates For 2024
It’ll take more than a little peptic ulcer disease to keep Bruce Springsteen off the road. For most of this year, the Boss has been on a stadium tour with his E Street Band. The shows have been controversially expensive but reliably life-affirming spectacles. Over the past few months, Springsteen has been postponing shows for […]
The Wrens’ Charles Bissell Announces Debut Single From New Band Car Colors
For two decades, the Wrens’ Charles Bissell has struggled to follow up The Meadowlands, the forlorn and triumphant indie rock masterpiece that just turned 20 years old. Over the course of that time, a pattern emerged: Bissell would spend months and years tinkering with the recordings at home in New Jersey. Eventually, he’d promise he […]
Cher – “DJ Play A Christmas Song”
Cher’s career stretches back over 60 years, but she’s somehow never released a Christmas album. That’s about to change. Later this month, Cher will release a new LP with the creative title Christmas. It’ll be Cher’s first studio LP since her 2018 ABBA covers collection Dancing Queen, and it features an utterly baffling array of […]
Dear Catastrophe Waitress Turns 20
In 2015, I went with a friend of mine to see Belle & Sebastian play Radio City Music Hall in support of their great album Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance. It was a bit surprising that they were playing such a huge venue in the first place, but they’ve slowly developed a multi-generational cult […]
Jason Derulo Sued For Sexual Harassment, Shares Statement
Singer Emaza Gibson is suing veteran hitmaker Jason Derulo for sexual harassment. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gibson claims that Derulo signed her to his Future History label in 2021, promising to collaborate with her. Gibson says that Derulo spent some time working with Gibson but that he repeatedly pressured her to drink and have […]
Stream Paramore’s This Is Why Reworks Album Featuring Panda Bear, Wet Leg, Julien Baker, & More
Paramore returned in February with This Is Why, their first album in six years. Now comes the remix album — or something like a remix album. As the band recently explained: We’ve long wanted to recognize the connection we have with some of the artists who’ve influenced us as a band and/or who have cited […]
HEALTH – “Children Of Sorrow” & “Sicko”
The doomy, atmospheric LA rock trio HEALTH have been in the collaborative zone for years now. Their last two albums, 2020’s DISCO4 :: PART I and 2022’s DISCO4 :: PART II, are made up entirely of team-ups with artists like Nine Inch Nails, JPEGMAFIA, 100 gecs, and Soccer Mommy. They were awesome. Now, HEALTH are […]