What’s This Playlist All About? The lead singer of influential alt-rockers The Jesus and Mary Chain takes a quick break from his band’s tour with Nine Inch Nails to put together a mix of his personal favorites.What You Get: A mix full of hidden gems from underrated cult heroes, alongside the best of the best (i.e. John Lennon, Neil Young, The Kinks, Nirvana). Find some of the snottiest old-school punk from The Snivelling Shits, the most transcendent folk from Vashti Bunyan, the creepiest post-punk from Cabaret Voltaire, and the most poignant beauty from Lennon’s solo material.Greatest Discovery: Fellow Scottish noise-pop band Honeyblood and their infectious “Babes Never Die.”How Does This Playlist Stack Up Against Psychocandy? Even with the likes of Lou Reed, Sinatra, and The Beatles, we’d still argue Psychocandy reigns superior—if you’re going for overall ambience and flow, that is.
What’s This Playlist All About? NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital wants to keep you alive with a banging list of songs to save lives too. Per their description, all songs are 100 BPM, “the right beat to perform CPR.” And, no, The Fray is thankfully nowhere to be found.What You Get: If you’ve had the pleasure of mumbling through “Stayin’ Alive” while pushing down on a dummy in CPR class, you’ll be happy to know that those Red Cross trainings could get a little more exciting. Like the Bee Gees’ go-to anthem, you’ve got some seriously apropos selections here, like Gloria Gaynor’s triumphant “I Will Survive,” Marvin Gaye’s silky “What’s Going On,” Beastie Boys’ fidgety “Body Movin’” and The All-American Rejects’ bratty “Gives You Hell”—a good choice for those more stubborn hearts.Biggest Surprise: Norman Greenbaum’s spiritually uplifting rocker for afterlife bliss, “Spirit in the Sky.”Will This Playlist Save Your Life? There’s no telling how effective it may be if an unfortunate emergency arises, but at least it stands as a pretty kickass playlist on its own.
What’s This Playlist All About? The Prodigy’s formidable frontman picks his “choice cuts” from his band’s catalog in anticipation for the release of their seventh studio album, No Tourists, out November 2.What You Get: A whole lot of gritty, grimy stadium destroyers, starting with a big peek into their newest release with skittery singles “We Live Forever,” “Fight Fire with Fire,” “Need Some1” and “Light Up the Sky.” The crucial ‘90s cuts for us old folk come a little later with tracks like “Smack My Bitch Up,” “Poison,” “Firestarter,” and “Breathe.”Best Surprise: The buzzing belligerence of “The Day is My Enemy,” gloriously infused with siren Martina Topley-Bird’s smoky reciting of Cole Porter’s "All Through the Night."What Did He Miss? We have a soft spot for older tracks from albums like Music for the Jilted Generation, especially “Voodoo People” with its slippery beats and sly use of Nirvana’s “Very Ape” riff.
What’s This Playlist All About? Marcus, Ben, Winston, and Ted of British alt-folk band Mumford & Sons handpick their favorite travel tunes as they prepare for the release of their fourth album, Delta, and their big world tour to follow.What You Get: Semi-regularly updated since 2016, the mix goes deep with fellow collaborators like Maggie Rogers and Gill Landry and up-and-coming singer-songwriters like Elijah Wolf, before navigating some charmingly weird psych-pop from Soft Hair, a little sweet folk from Bowerbirds, irresistible garage-punk from Twin Peaks, slippery hip-hop grooves from Ghostface Killah, and plenty of legendary cuts from The Beatles, Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, and U2.Greatest Discovery: The smoky atmospherics of “The Blame Game” by Australian duo HVOB and Mumford member Winston Marshall. It throbs to the rhythm of the road, making it ripe for a reflective journey along lonely highways.Based on This Playlist, Would You Want to Be on the Road with These Guys? While several of the band’s selections do make for quality road music (Tom Petty! Springsteen! Oasis!), it all seems a bit too serious—lighten up, guys! That said, some select cuts like T. Rex’s “Jeepster” and LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean” may have us jumping right on their bandwagon.
What’s This Playlist All About? The dance-pop heroine returns with her first new album in eight years, Honey, and unveils the source material behind its transcendent throbs and euphoric post-disco grooves.What You Get: An eclectic cornucopia of old and new master works, starting with an understated piano sonata from Mozart, before kicking into silky smooth disco classics from underrated artists like George McCrae, Sylvester, and Kiki Gyan. In between is iconic cuts from Bowie, Prince, and MJ; mind-warping beats from DJ Koze, Aphex Twin, and DJ Q; and crate-digging treasures from Idris Muhammed, Mary Clark, and Bicep. There’s also ‘80s house track “French Kiss,” which Robyn samples on Honey song “Send to Robin Immediately.”Greatest Discovery: There are so many good nuggets in here, so we’re going to go with Robyn’s own signee Zhala (who also appears on Honey’s “Human Being”) and her cosmic dance-floor experiments like “Aerobic Lambada.”How Well Does This Playlist Reflect the Music of Honey? This here is required listening for Advanced Robyn Studies. You get pop’s most definitive eccentrics mixed with the underground’s most subversive innovators. Robyn distills these influences into refined electropop pumped with both existential despair and limitless hope on the wonderful new Honey.
What’s This Playlist All About? The CIA believes these nine songs can be so damaging to the psyche that they have the power to break down any prisoner. This music was played repeatedly at maximum volume at detention centers around the world, including Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This mix has been floating around the web for several years now, but it’s sifted back up into our consciousness after Harper’s magazine published an excerpt from the new book The Penguin Book of Hell, which “takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation,” and was subsequently retweeted by a proud Marilyn Manson.What You Get: A blend of sexually fueled pop from old Disney cohorts Britney and Xtina, mainstream Satanic rock from Marilyn Manson and Drowning Pool, death metal groans from Deicide, and a loveable children’s gem from Barney and Friends. One of Nine Inch Nails’ most rattling soul dissectors, “Somewhat Damaged,” also got plenty of play (Trent Reznor has already voiced his disgust at its disgraceful use). Oh, and don’t forget those terrifying kittens from The Meow Mix commercial.Biggest Surprise: We understand how Queen’s “We Are the Champions” could really be cruel in such a hellish situation, but how could they ruin Freddie for us? How?!Think You Could Take It? The biggest hazard of writing about music is getting to hear some truly awful stuff, so these selections seem rather tame and unimaginative to us. Then again, that Meow Mix could really be our downfall.
What’s This Playlist All About? Just as the title states, the Swedish trio treats us to three new singles from their eighth studio album, Darker Days, one written by each member, followed by their own personal picks (5 each).What You Get: A taste of each member’s sweet pop proclivities. First up is Peter Moren’s swinging pop groove “One for the Team,” followed by his personal picks, including the fragile indie rock of Tiny Ruins and the melancholic charm of Palehound. Then comes John Eriksson’s “Gut Feeling,” supported by his varied favorites, like Les Big Byrd’s swirling pop and Nick Cave’s ominous meditations. Finally, Bjorn Yttling shares his bouncy earworm “Every Other Night,” plus his own choice cuts, including the jazzy jams of The Fabulous Three and Black Sabbath’s spaciest head trip.Greatest Discovery: The dreamy confection “Love is a Vicious Drug,” a Bjorn pick, from fellow Swedes BC Unidos, featuring producer Patrik Berger (who has worked with Robyn and Charli XCX) and singer/songwriter Markus Krunegard.Which Member Has the Best Taste? Isn’t that like asking which child is our favorite? (Ok, maybe Bjorn?!)
What’s This Playlist All About? While the playlist itself comes with no context, we can only assume it represents the tastes and sounds of spicy pop quartet Little Mix and Sharaya J, the Hawaiian rapper and Missy Elliott protege featured on the group’s new single “Strip” from their fifth studio album LM5.What You Get: Just like the material on LM5, expect plenty of female fierceness, starting with the album’s first single, “Woman Like Me,” featuring the omnipresent Nicki Minaj, then a few of Sharaya J’s recent singles, including the brazen and totally badass “Say Less.” They sit alongside an impressive list of cuts from iconic ladies like Ms. Lauryn Hill, TLC, Janet, Sheila E., and Salt-N-Pepa, who come strutting in with the playlist’s most defining track—the empowering “Independent.”Best Surprise: Sharaya J’s killer cover of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” which she effortlessly performed on the reality show The Four: Battle for Stardom. Seriously, this has got even LL shakin’ in his boots.What’s This Playlist Missing? With all those female warriors represented, we’re wondering where Missy is?!
What’s This Playlist All About? The author behind such modern-day classics as Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a well-known music fanatic. In fact, he recently announced he would be donating his entire vinyl collection of some 10,000 records to Tokyo’s Waseda University. To showcase his voracious musical appetite, one of Murakami’s faithful followers has taken on the task of compiling songs that the writer has mentioned in various interviews and Q&As, as well as on a website no longer available called, Murakami San No Tokoro.What You Get: Murakami’s collection is almost exclusively jazz; he did, after all, open a jazz bar in Tokyo well before he began writing novels. So, here, you can dive into nearly 250 hours (and counting) worth of jazz titans like Sonny Rollins, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, and Thelonious Monk, alongside classical masterpieces from great minds like Mozart, Bach, and Chopin.Best Surprise: Hearing a few Beach Boys gems (from 1965’s The Beach Boys Today!) between all that heavy-hitting jazz and classical is a nice little distraction. But this also makes us wonder: Where are The Beatles?Where Does One Even Start With This Playlist? Since there seems to be no organization to this mix, it’s probably best to just press play and let it shuffle. And if you’re looking to write your own novel, this may be your perfect writing companion.
What’s This Playlist All About? “America’s greatest living composer” and minimal music pioneer Steve Reich compiles a few of his favorite tracks to celebrate the return of his landmark Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint to vinyl for the first time in more than 25 years via Nonesuch Records.What You Get: Phenomenal sax work from John Coltrane balanced by stunning trumpet soloing from Miles Davis and plenty of majestic compositions from his oft-cited greatest influence Igor Stravinsky. There’s also a classic Dylan cut (“Maggie’s Farm”) and Radiohead’s most alien masterwork (“Everything In Its Right Place”).Greatest Discovery: Male vocal quartet The Hilliard Ensemble performing composer Perotin’s haunting four-part version of “Viderunt Omnes,” an 11th century Gregorian chant.What’s This Playlist Missing? Frankly, we’d love to see a much more comprehensive playlist featuring all of Reich’s major influences over his long, impressive career.
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
