Next week, Amber Bain is releasing a new album as the Japanese House, In The End It Always Does. She’s shared a bunch of singles from it so far, including “Sunshine Baby,” which featured backing vocals from the 1975’s Matty Healy, who until earlier this year was a creative director at Dirty Hit, the label […]
Hear Betty Davis’ Previously Unreleased “Crashin’ From Passion” From New Reissue Series
The legendary funk and soul musician Betty Davis passed away a little over a year ago. This year, her self-titled debut album celebrates its 50th anniversary, and the archival label Light In The Attic is celebrating with a new series of Betty Davis reissues. (They previously reissued Davis’ albums in the late ’00s.) In addition […]
Rhys Langston & Pioneer 11 – “On My Own”
Experimental hip-hop Artist To Watch Rhys Langston has teamed with the duo Pioneer 11 on a new album called To Operate This System. We heard its lead single “Amber Deception” last month, and today they’re back with a languid slow-creep called “On My Own.” Langston is in sing-song mode for most of this one. Choice […]
Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” Cover Might As Well Be AI
Last summer, I dedicated this column to talking about how a now-historic TV-to-music sync — Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” via Stranger Things season four — vaulted the famously camera-shy singer back onto the Billboard charts. That column mainly focused on “bringback culture,” or the instance of an older piece […]
Fat Tony & Taydex – “Spectacular” & “Don’t Tap In / Contusion”
Last we heard from Houston underground rapper Fat Tony, he teamed up with New York producer Blockhead on the track “I’m Thinking ‘Bout Moving,” which dropped in May. Today, Fat Tony is announcing a new album, and it has a great title: I Will Make A Baby In This Damn Economy. Produced by Taydex, it […]
Sunshine Convention – “Dawned On Me”
Sunshine Convention is the project of Brooklyn’s Jake Whitener. Like Dazy’s James Goodson, he has worked as a music publicist among other behind-the-scenes roles, and like Goodson, he’s so good at churning out ultra-catchy guitar-pop tunes that he was bound to step into the spotlight himself at some point. Over the past three years, starting […]
The Magnetic Fields Announce 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary Tour With Full 1999 Band
In 1999, Stephin Merritt released his magnum opus. Merritt and his Magnetic Fields might’ve considered the triple-disc masterpiece 69 Love Songs to be an experiment in sentimentality and factory-style songwriting, but the songs themselves are so good that they’ve continued to resonate for the past quarter-century. In 2000, Merritt and the Magnetic Fields performed 69 […]
Stream Blu Anxxiety’s Freaky New Synth-Punk Album Morbid Now, Morbid Later
There’s no easy way to categorize the New York band Blu Anxxiety. They come from the DIY punk underground, and they play shows with punk bands, but they aren’t exactly a punk band. Instead, Blu Anxxiety’s sound is a janky, disorienting, aggressive form of synthpop. At various points, Blu Anxxiety’s sound recalls early-’90s rave, lo-fi […]
Liz Phair Shares Previously Unreleased “Miss Lucy” Studio Recording For Exile In Guyville 30th Anniversary Today
It’s anniversary season for Liz Phair. This weekend, her self-titled pop crossover move turns 20, a milestone we already acknowledged with a retrospective. Today, her iconic debut album Exile In Guyville turns 30, and she’s sharing a previously unreleased outtake to celebrate. “Miss Lucy” previously appeared in demo form on the Girly-Sound Tapes, the series […]
Liz Phair Turns 20
When Liz Phair released her 2003 self-titled album 20 years ago this Saturday, many people viewed it as a Shakespearean betrayal of her indie roots. A decade removed from her lo-fi rock opus Exile In Guyville, Phair had gone to the dark side — the Top 40 — and was collaborating with slick writing and […]