Genres

Source: Andy Beta, PitchforkA Guide to Dallas Rap ; Listen for free at bop.fmAndy Beta gives a quick overview for the uninitiated of Africas influence on modern dance music. Its very basic, and it only focuses on a few artists -- the section on Mark Ernestus takes up a third of the article -- but there are some jewels in there as well. Ive aggregated a sampling of some of the tracks that Andy discusses.

Don’t try looking up pop-mosh on urbandictionary.com. It’s so street that only those kids deep into everything Warped-related use it to tag tracks in their music libraries. It refers to the recent explosion of metalcore and post-hardcore bands who add melodic vocals, big room synths, and/or thumping beats to their gutter howls and bruising breakdowns. While some of the groups, A Day to Remember and Of Mice and Men among them, still sound very crunchy and riff-centric, others, including The Amity Affliction and I See Stars, are inching closer to an aggro brand of art pop. Then there’s Bring Me the Horizon and Issues: These party monsters are so down with EDM they may as well be hanging with Steve Aoki and Skrillex at Ultra. -- Justin Farrar

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!First things first: While jamgrass certainly is progressive bluegrass (a form of it, at least), not all progressive bluegrass is jamgrass. More than a few music critics, and even fairly serious fans, tend to use the tags interchangeably, but there exist key differences in their attitudes toward experimentation. Even at their most outré, progressive bluegrass’ core outfits—Nickel Creek are a prime example—still retain a string-band flavor that, however faint, reaches back to the genre’s more traditional iterations. This isn’t the case with jamgrass acts, who, in addition to pouring their improvisational chops into extended workouts, think nothing of cutting their ’grass with funk grooves, bouncy ska, swinging jazz, Indian microtonality—even polka accordions!This certainly is the case with The String Cheese Incident’s latest full-length, Believe. In keeping with the band’s mischievously anarchic spirit, the music hops across Irish-kissed folk rock, porno disco, reggae, and riff-crunching power pop. Half the time they don’t even remotely resemble front-porch pickers and grinners. Jamgrass’ other key outfits are equally audacious: Where Railroad Earth can follow up a down-home mountain ballad with Phish-style funk, Greensky Bluegrass have been known to insert Bruce Springsteen and even Michael Jackson covers into their live shows. Leftover Salmon are so maddeningly eclectic, they’ve come up with their own genre tag: polyethnic Cajun slamgrass.Obviously, the neo-hippie jam band movement—Phish, Col. Bruce Hampton and The Aquarium Rescue Unit, Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, et al.—looms large over jamgrass. But a more direct lineage leads back to the highly influential Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, who, in the ’90s, used bluegrass instrumentation to create what essentially is acoustic-based jazz fusion and world music. Fleck, in turn, built his sound upon innovations made by bluegrass-based groups orbiting around the Grateful Dead in the ’70s and ’80s—Old & In the Way and the clutch of other collaborative albums released by Jerry Garcia and mandolinist David Grisman are notable for sure. But it’s the latter’s other project, The David Grisman Quintet, who are the most vital. The blend of virtuoso picking, hot jazz, and folk music documented on their 1977 self-titled debut is the tree that would go on to seed all future jamgrass.

When Black Rebel Motorcycle Club sang, "Whatever Happened to My Rock n Roll" on their 2001 debut, they were gazing upon a contemporary rock landscape overpopulated with backward red baseball caps and greasy grunge-oil salesmen, and lamenting the lack of raw, raucous, life-changing (and corrupting) devils music on the radio. In this case, the complaining actually worked: Within a year, BRMC found themselves standing alongside The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Hives, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, and many other disgruntled guitar-slingers, perched on the precipice of the last moment in history when the words "rock" and "revolution" could be uttered together with a straight face. And mobilizing right behind them were all the bands on this playlist——groups that may have enjoyed a few spins on Subterranean, earned a glossy magazine spread or two, got name-dropped by Jack White in an interview, or scored a prime opening slot on a Franz Ferdinand tour, but never quite achieved the same notoriety or longevity as the aforementioned acts.The early 2000s were, of course, a transformative moment in the music industry: The advent of mp3s and file-sharing opened up new portals for underground bands to achieve more widespread visibility; at the same time, old-school publications like NME and SPIN still wielded enough king-making power to anoint new rock saviors on a seemingly weekly basis, while labels were scooping up any band with unkempt hair and thrift-store blazers. The result was a cyclonic swirl of hype that sucked in MTV2-ready arena-indie acts (Longwave, Ambulance Ltd.), stylish post-punk revivalists (The Stills, Hot Hot Heat), unruly post-punk revivalists (Ikara Colt, Radio 4), unrulier post-hardcore miscreants (The Icarus Line, The Bronx), post-hardcore 70s-rock fetishists (Danko Jones, Rye Coalition), brainiac Brits (The Futureheads, Clearlake), seasoned garage acts gunning for a long-deserved close-up (Billy Childish with the Buff Medways, Mick Collins with the Dirtbombs), new-school misfits (The Ponys, The Gris Gris, Vietnam), and, thanks to The Hives surprise crossover success, an uncommon amount of Swedes (Sahara Hotnights, Division of Laura Lee, Mando Daio, The Concretes)——not to mention Canadians (The Deadly Snakes, Tangiers, The Marble Index), New Zealanders (The D4, The Datsuns), and Icelandians (Singapore Sling).Though a handful of these acts have managed to duke it out to this day, many didnt survive the 2000s. And a quick glance at this years Coachella line-up shows that the question posed by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at the top of this post has, in the long run, only become more existentially pertinent. However, if the early 2000s garage-rock uprising didnt alter the course of popular music in the way its adherents had hoped, its impact can still be felt in less tangible ways. The eras blurring of indie aesthetics and mainstream aspirations has become manifest in everything from satellite-radio formats to boy bands sporting skinny jeans and salon-sculpted messy haircuts to the sheer number of annual alterna-festivals that didnt exist before 2001. Meanwhile, Lizzy Goodmans recent tell-all oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom has effectively mythologized the Strokes heyday for a new generation just as Please Kill Me did with the 70s CBGB scene (with a documentary adaptation to come). And right on cue, several long-dormant early-2000s phenoms——including Franz Ferdinand, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and BRMC——are resurfacing with new albums and/or reunion appearances; you can also expect 2018 releases from Jack White, ex-Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithauser, and Julian Casabalancas garage-prog side band The Voidz.But here, we remember those bygone would-be hype magnets who are less likely to fire up newsfeeds in 2018. Just as Lenny Kayes 1972 compilation Nuggets commemorated the countless short-lived garage bands that formed in the wake of the mid-60s British Invasion, this playlist forsakes the most hyped and heavily rotated bands of the 2000-2005 era to focus on the forgotten phenoms, unsung instigators, and steady-as-she-goes survivors who, in their own little ways, intensified the hysteria of that moment. (It also excludes groups like The Kills, The Black Keys, and Gossip, who, while still relatively under-the-radar at the time, would go on to much greater success. You may also note the absence of The Libertines, who quickly transcended their second-hand Strokes roots to spawn a landfill-indie legacy all their own.)This is a mix for anyone who actually bought a stellastar* single based on the NMEs recommendation, anyone who was momentarily convinced The Mooney Suzuki (pictured at top) were the future of rock n roll, and anyone who thought Elefant would be as big as Elephant. Our Cheap Monday jeans may not fit anymore and our once fulsome shag cuts may have given way to receding hairlines, but lets do a bump for old times sake——this bathrooms got your choice of 50 stalls.

A spark that connects the feminine spirit with its masculine counterpart can create an undeniable musical dynamic. And it doesnt always come from a place of lust or romance (though, lets admit, any sort of sexual tension or frustration can inspire incredibly timeless art—just see Rumours). This idea has especially taken hold among a generation of indie folk and pop couples and collectives, who, coincidentally, have been inspired by bands like Fleetwood Mac in creating homespun tales that reveal universal truths of love and heartache via big pop hooks—and sometimes some serious fiddle. Male/female harmonies are a key ingredient when creating the best type of clap-happy sing-alongs (Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes), cathartic bursts of banjo-infused rock (The Head and The Heart), and acoustic ballads so intimate it feels sinful just to listen to (The Civil Wars). And, yes, some of these tracks do reflect real-life fireworks—or their dwindling remains—between certain band members (we miss you, Rilo Kiley!). -- Stephanie Garr

The party line is that electronics first entered the rock realm via prog rock in the early to mid ‘70s, but in fact, synthesizers were already on the scene when a psychedelic haze was still hanging in the air. Though The Monkees were often derided as prefab pop stars, they were actually the first to employ synths in a mainstream rock context, using one of the earliest Moogs on two of their trippier tracks, “Daily Nightly” and “Star Collector.” The Beatles got their licks in as well, from the big fat synth tones on “Because” to the screeching, Moog-generated white noise that builds up in the coda of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Even the blues-rooted Stones took an electronically assisted sojourn into outer space with “2000 Light Years From Home.” Of course, there were plenty of underground acts incorporating synths into their sound, from the Velvet Underground-goes-electronic vibe of the United States of America to the visionary Silver Apples and their homemade gear. It was an era when anything seemed possible; actor/singer Anthony Newley even teamed up with Dr. Who composer Delia Derbyshire for what was probably the first (and freakiest for its time) electronic pop song, “Moogies Bloogies.” Ultimately, all the aforementioned artists were innovators in electronic rock. With the counterculture in ascendance, the sky wasn’t the limit — the stars were.

On Vic Mensa’s debut album, The Autobiography, the young Chicago rapper’s personal travails come sharply into view. He raps about his very public struggles with addiction, occasional troubles with the law, a complicated relationship with his hometown’s hip-hop scene, and stray thoughts about ending his life. Yet somehow, his musical identity lies just out of reach.That’s not surprising for a teenage prodigy whose first group, Kids These Days, was profiled in the New York Times when he was just finishing high school. The hip-hop/emo-pop band yielded many of the players who have driven the Windy City’s current renaissance, including trumpeter Nico Segal (a.k.a. Donnie Trumpet of The Social Experiment). Their rise preceded that of Chance the Rapper, who guested on the band’s EPs—and co-founded the SaveMoney crew with Mensa—before embarking on his own stellar career. But while Chance is now widely known as a good kid who connects a secular post-millennial generation with its spiritual potential, Vic has experimented as a solo artist, sometimes fitfully. His best single so far is arguably “Down on My Luck,” a terrific hip-house number from 2014. Like so many next-gen rappers, his work with electronic producers like Flume and Kaytranada is second nature, not a cross-genre gimmick. Yet he’s also tried to translate his industry buzz into songs with Kanye West (2015’s “U Mad”) and Gucci Mane (“What It Takes”), with little crossover success.Much of The Autobiography opts for an airy emo-rap sound typical of recent big-budget hip-hop like Logic’s Everybody and G-Eazy’s When It’s Dark Out. But Vic’s too sharp of a stylist to drown in the indistinct mainstream beats that mar some of his debut. He works real magic with Pharrell Williams and Saul Williams on “Wings,” and his collaboration with controversial South Side iconoclast Chief Keef on “Down 4 Some Ignorance (Ghetto Lullaby)” is long overdue. Then there are those diary-like lyrics, which range from comic tales like the Weezer-assisted “Homewrecker” to anguished meditations on blackness like “We Could Be Free.” Throughout, he remains an engaging performer, even if we’re not always sure where he’s leading us.

If you’re hoping for a historically astute overview of grunge’s evolution, you’re listening to the wrong playlist. You won’t encounter a single song from Green River (who kickstarted the movement), and the only Mudhoney tune is “Suck You Dry,” from their (gasp) major label debut. Oh, and another thing: not one but two Stone Temple Pilots songs, “Sex Type Thing” and “Plush,” make the cut, inclusions that are sure to piss off those Sub Pop-era grunge fans steadfast in their dismissal of STP as corporate knockoffs.Why all this sonic sacrilege? Because this playlist (put together after Chris Cornell’s death got me thinking about his crazy-intense impact on my youth) reflects how I encountered grunge as an early-’90s teenager. Growing up among the dying factories of Syracuse, New York, I wasn’t a skate punk or alt-rock kid. Independent record labels like Sub Pop and SST were not anywhere near my radar. I was a classic-rock fan who discovered the music through videos on MTV, four in particular: “Man in the Box,” “Alive,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and “Outshined.” And let me tell you, they blasted my worldview into smithereens. The widely held belief that the grunge revolution overthrew hair-metal dominance overnight is more myth than reality (the shift was, in fact, gradual), but goddamn, it sure as hell felt like it. Kids one day were sleepwalking through life to a soundtrack of Bon Jovi and Firehouse hits, and the next they were stage-diving at Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains concerts. It was heady.The radical cultural upheaval that grunge unleashed was maybe more important than the music itself. Though the movement barely lasted three years (1991 to 1994), it transformed me, my friends, and a shit-ton of folks my age. And I’m not just talking about the addition of flannel and Doc Martens to my wardrobe. All this thrillingly angry and aggressive music hit me at a time when I was beginning to question society, mainstream culture, and especially my high-school teachers and their shitty conservatism. It’s no exaggeration to say the music pushed me to become intensely sarcastic, caustic, and irreverent towards the status quo. On top of all that, there was a lot of mind-expanding exploration. When grunge pierced mainstream consciousness in 1991, I was just discovering weed; by early 1994 I was dropping acid and blasting the hellishly damaged In Utero. It, more than any other album from the time, nails the deep biting contempt I possessed for just about everything on this planet, a quality that still lurks inside me (thought largely dormant) over 20 years later.I wish I could say it was Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, five days before my 19th birthday, that severed my ties with grunge, but it wasn’t anything that romantic. I had simply moved into the deeper corridors of indie rock. I did have a fling with Pearl Jam’s No Code, an album that possesses a meditative, post-grunge comedown vibe. But by the time of its release in 1996, I was already thinking of PJ as something from my past. Grunge, meanwhile, had become something to be rejected—which I think the musicians would’ve been fine with. The last thing a grunge band wanted was to be worshipped.Revisiting this music now, in the weeks after Cornell’s death, I’m blown away by the sheer amount of downer vibes oozing from it. Pearl Jam excluded (their lifeforce has always had some lift to it), Nirvana, AIC, and Soundgarden all released a lot of deeply painful music. “Rape Me” is absolutely chilling; so is “Down in a Hole.” Layne Staley is straight-up drowning: “Down in a hole, feeling so small/ Down in a hole, losing my soul/ Id like to fly, but my wings have been so denied.” Back in my teens, I didn’t pick up on all the fragility; I was too busy using the music as high-decibel anthems for my own alienation. As I dig deeper into my 40s, however, it’s hard to expose myself to the pain. It makes me wonder: Has there ever been a pop fad (and it most certainly was a pop fad) as depressingly fatalistic as grunge? I doubt it.At the same time, I wouldn’t swap my youth for anything. It was a thrilling time to be a rock ’n’ roll teenager (especially the concerts, which were sweaty, chaotic, and euphoric). For a brief moment, grunge actually managed to throw a monkey wrench in the gears of corporate-determined youth culture. As my friend Chloe recently said of those days, “I think the best part of the whole scene was the rejection of how things were. It was cool to be different. To be yourself. To be into whatever you wanted. To reject the corporate lifestyles we were sold.” For that we owe these artists, both surviving and fallen, a big thank you.

Neil Young has to be rock’s most unconventional guitar god. Nobody sounds like the guy. Instead of scorching hot licks and Keef-style riff swagger, he’s all about piercing, one-note solos, fuzzy stoner-drift, and rhythm playing slathered in distortion squall that ripples through the atmosphere like shockwaves. On top of all that, his playing is shot through with a primitive, minimalist sensibility, a quality that has inspired J. Mascis, Thurston Moore, Curt Kirkwood, and dozens of other alt-rock guitarists who worship his eccentricity. Rust Never Sleeps, from 1979, generally gets the nod as Young’s heaviest guitar album, but don’t sleep on 1991’s Weld; his tone is so dirty and gnarled it sounds as though he kicked a hole through his amplifier. While the bulk of the cuts on our playlist feature Young front and center, a handful of other guitarists pop up, including his old pal Stephen Stills, Frank “Poncho” Sampedro and the late Danny Whitten, both of Crazy Horse, and Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. Young is no stranger to the long-ass guitar jam; best to buckle in and enjoy the epic ride.

“I go on describing this place / And the way it feels to live and die.” — Mount Eerie, “Through The Trees, Pt. 2”I once heard a professor say that Robert Schumann’s music only makes sense if you’re in a certain part of Germany. I tend to disagree with those kinds of claims, but I’d also be lying if I said that Phil Elverum’s music doesn’t strongly evoke the magic, mystery, and feeling of the Pacific Northwest. And it’s not just me, it’s a common point made about his songs: it’s in the imagery of the music, between the trees and the ocean roars, through the black metal interludes, behind the Twin Peaks synths and references; his music is about space and feeling, and the spaces are particular.His early work as The Microphones was bombastic, experimental, and seriously affecting, capturing through music and lyrics exactly how it feels to be a young person and to embody a wild existence. If you’re like me and this music has been with you for a while, you probably straighten up in your seat and unfocus your eyes a bit when I mention The Glow, Pt. 2. It’s real.As Elverum transitioned from The Microphones to Mount Eerie, his songs became a little clearer, a little more adult, and a little more enveloping. His 2012 releases form a perfect snapshot of his tremendous ability to evoke all things at once: The intimate, almost trembling Clear Moon fuses airy guitars and shuffling percussion to create distinctly breezy-yet-serious tableaus, while Ocean Roar is an explosive, electronic-infused synthesis of post-rock and black metal. Taken together, these albums represent the complex essence of Mount Eerie.The initiated and uninitiated alike can prepare themselves for Elverum’s newest work, the haunting and raw A Crow Looked At Me, which deals with the tragic loss of his wife, musician/artist Geneviève Castrée, from pancreatic cancer in July 2016. In this intensely personal album, he pursues brave, new paths of truth and sound, while still sounding like classic Elverum. Get brought up to speed with this playlist of his work as Mount Eerie and The Microphones.