Green Day’s Rebel Anthems
September 25, 2016

Green Day’s Rebel Anthems

Right in the wake of Kurt Cobains tragic death in 1994, Billie Joe Armstrongs rascally sneer became a regular fixture on MTV. Green Days stoner punk was ripe to flourish in such a bummed-out climate—they channeled the angst and malaise of grunge through scrappy, jittery old-school punk, threw in a little sardonic silliness, and knitted it all together with some undeniably delicious pop hooks. Throughout the 90s, the Bay Area trio embraced the idea of being rebels without a cause (and with nothing to do: see "Longview"), but by American Idiot—released just prior to the 2004 presidential election—they again captured the cultures growing unease, this time in a nation that looked and felt vastly different than it did a decade prior. "American Idiot" may be their greatest rebel anthem ever, but it certainly hasnt stopped them from unleashing more seething, politically-charged pop-punk that has been just as timely. -- Stephanie Garr

Suicidal ‘70s Pop
December 5, 2016

Suicidal ‘70s Pop

When Winfred “Blue” Lovett gravely intones, “This has got to be the saddest day of my life,” in the intro to The Manhattan’s 1976 hit “Kiss and Say Goodbye,” you believe him. But compared to some of their contemporaries, the group might as well have been crooning “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” The rampant introspection of the “me decade” helped make it a boom time for songs that filled the schedules of suicide hotline volunteers to overflowing. When somebody wasn’t dying in a ‘70s hit, like the protagonist in Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun,” the horse fancier and her steed in Michael Martin Murphey’s “Wildfire,” or a freakin’ dog in the Henry Gross hit “Shannon,” they were at least at the brink of oblivion. In retrospect, it’s amazing that Harry Nilsson made it to the end of “Without You” alive. The real masters of ‘70s melancholy managed to suck you in by making their songs sound deceptively cheery—check the opening flute riff of Albert Hammond’s angst fest “It Never Rains in Southern California” for proof—but by the time you get to the undeniably catchy chorus you’re hailing the nurse for your meds.

Phantogram and the Art of Post-Everything Pop
October 10, 2016

Phantogram and the Art of Post-Everything Pop

Whenever I try describing Phantogram’s music to a friend I find myself stringing together an absurd number of genre tags: Indie pop, electro-pop, dream pop, shoegaze, dance pop, electronica, and even that dusty, old relic known as alt-dance have all been uttered at one time or another. Phantogram aren’t alone in their ability to mix and match genres with what seems like algorithmic complexity. A new generation of post-everything artists have emerged in recent years, and they’re laying waste to music categories that for decades seemed fixed in place. Of course, some of these musicians are more indie-based (Glass Animals and Young the Giant come to mind), while others, Frank Ocean and The Weeknd included, are more rooted in R&B, yet the result ultimately is the same. Are we witnessing the death of genre? Probably not. But the map certainly is getting redrawn in some very fundamental ways.

20 Songs Inspired By Films
June 26, 2015

20 Songs Inspired By Films

You can download the new Nicolas Jaar album right here. Its based on the excellent 1968 Sergei Parajanov film the Color of Pomegranates. To mark the occasion, heres a playlist of 20 songs inspired by films.Editors note: out of respect to good taste, weve replaced Deep Blue Somethings "Breakfast At Tiffanys" with Vampire Weekends Walcott, which is based on The Lost Boys.Artist/Song: Pixies – Debaser (from 1989’s Doolittle)Film: Un Chien Andalou (1929)Artist/Song: Deep Blue Something – Breakfast At Tiffanys (from 1995’s Home)Film: Roman Holiday (1953)Artist/Song: Bertie Higgins – Key Largo (from 1982’s Just Another Day In Paradise)Film: Key Largo (1948)Artist/Song: Bob Dylan – Brownsville Girl (from 1986’s Knocked Out Loaded)Film: The Gunfighter (1950)Artist/Song: alt-J – Matilda (from 2012’s An Awesome Wave)\Film: Léon: The Professional (1994)Artist/Song: Regina Spektor – Fidelity (from 2006’s Begin To Hope)Film: High Fidelity (2000)Artist/Song: R.E.M. – Imitation Of Life (from 2001’s Reveal)Film: Imitation Of Life (1948)Artist/Song: "Weird Al" Yankovic – Jurassic Park (from 1993’s Alapalooza)Film: Jurassic Park (1993)Artist/Song: NIN – Only (from 2005’s With Teeth)Film: Fight Club (1999)Artist/Song: Iron Maiden – Man On The Edge (from 1995’s The X Factor)Film: Falling Down (1993)Artist/Song: Scott Walker – The Seventh Seal (from 1969’s Scott 4)Film: The Seventh Seal (1957)Artist/Song: The Ataris – So Long, Astoria (from 2003’s So Long, Astoria)Film: The Goonies (1985)Artist/Song: Aerosmith – Walk This Way (from 1975’s Toys In The Attic)Film: Young Frankenstein (1974)Artist/Song: The Clash – Red Angel Dragnet (from 1982’s Combat Rock)Film: Taxi Driver (1976)Artist/Song: The White Stripes – The Union Forever (from 2001’s White Blood Cells)Film: Citizen Kane (1941)Artist/Song: Georgie Fame – The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde (1967)Film: Bonnie And Clyde (1967)Artist/Song: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bad Moon Rising (from 1969’s Green River)Film: All That Money Can Buy (The Devil And Daniel Webster) (1941)Artist/Song: Fugazi – Walkens Syndrome (from 1993’s In On The Kill Taker)Film: Annie Hall (1977)Artist/Song: Big Audio Dynamite – E=MC2 (from 1985’s This Is Big Audio Dynamite)Films: Performance (1970), Walkabout (1971), Dont Look Now (1973) and The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)Artist/Song: The Wombats – Kill The Director (from 2007’s The Wombats Proudly Present: A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation)Films: The Holiday (2006)

Trap Sounds:  Gucci & Zaytoven’s Best
August 2, 2016

Trap Sounds: Gucci & Zaytoven’s Best

Gucci Mane became one of the south’s most prolific and influential rappers with the help of a deep bench of producers, and Xavier “Zaytoven” Dotson is first and foremost among them. A transplant from Oakland, California, who grew up playing church organ, Zaytoven brought a new set of textures and influences to the Atlanta trap sound with soulful keys, ornate piano runs, and squealing synths. That brighter array of tones helped Gucci stand out from his contemporaries on his early hits, and Zay soon began expanding his client base, working extensively with artists including Migos and Future. And after Gowop spent years in and out of prison, he linked up with his favorite beatmaker again to get back to work. -- Al Shipley

Dreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky Records
August 3, 2016

Dreamy Noise Sounds: The Best of Kranky Records

There is something special about Kranky Records. Amidst a sea of labels that release a consistent bill of fare, Kranky puts out everything from avant-garde electronic and ambient to noisy dream pop, going out of their way to shed light on original and imaginative voices. Since its founding in Chicago in 1993, Kranky has released albums for such visionary artists as Deerhunter, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tim Hecker, and more. In her time on the label, Liz Harris (Grouper, Mirrorring) has developed a wholly unique and prismatic aesthetic, while Bradfox Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound) took his bedroom pop project to its post-punk and shoegaze fruition. With hazy synths, towering guitars, impressionistic vocals, and a decidedly experimental sensibility, Kranky Records really does do it all. -- Adam Rothbarth

Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic Folk
August 2, 2016

Way Past Pleasant: A Guide to Psychedelic Folk

Here we have a playlist that’s super fun to listen to yet deeply flawed in regards to its educational mission. Part of Pitchfork’s Essentials series, the Grayson Haver Currin-curated guide would make a worthy soundtrack for a weekend of mountain hiking. The only problem is that it isn’t at all canonical. The playlist spotlights too many inconsequential outliers while shunning numerous artists central to psychedelic folk’s identity. These include Love, Tyrannosaurs Rex, Kaleidoscope, Donovan, and The Holy Modal Rounders. Since there’s nothing in the accompanying text suggesting Way Past Pleasant is an intentionally unconventional guide, we’re left wondering why a music critic would think Hiss Golden Messenger is more essential to defining psych-folk than Donovan, who it can be argued invented the genre. -- Justin Farrar

American Primitive Guitar
August 4, 2016

American Primitive Guitar

Traditional yet avant-garde, archaic but also modern, simple as well as complex—American Primitive Guitar is such a sublime unity of opposites that Heraclitus himself would’ve been a fan. Sprouting from the mercurial soul of bohemian, record collector, and fingerstyle genius John Fahey in the early ’60s, the movement generally revolves around solo guitarists molding scraps of country blues, drone, Indian music, and other exotic styles after their own maverick visions. Sometimes, the music sounds endearingly rustic; other times, wildly celestial. For several decades, American Primitivism behaved more like a secret society than recognized genre. Since the turn of the century, however, its ranks have swelled thanks to a new generation of explorers, including Six Organs of Admittance, Marisa Anderson, and the late Jack Rose. -- Justin Farrar

John Coltrane Live: The Playlist
August 3, 2016

John Coltrane Live: The Playlist

John Coltrane went insane sometime around 1960. Once he hit that perfect balance of drugs, free jazz, and ingenious sidemen, it was game over for vintage hard bop. The Village Vanguard concerts of November 1961 saw the beginnings of the classic quartet—Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones—and their search for visionary new sounds and modes. In many ways, Coltrane revolutionized the concert experience through his visceral and spiritual engagement with his music of that period. Through these live performances, ranging from Coltrane Live in Paris to his essential contributions to Miles Davis’ 1960 tour, Coltrane delivered, through both his saxophone and his leadership, some of the most potent expressions of the post-war existential crisis that would ever be heard.

Rapping in the Pews: Hip-Hop’s Gospel Slide
November 22, 2016

Rapping in the Pews: Hip-Hop’s Gospel Slide

Click here to subscribe to the Spotify playlist.One of the greater meta-narratives in hip-hop in recent years has been the genre’s embrace of gospel music. Kanye called his album Life of Pablo a “gospel album with a whole lot of cursing” and arguably hip-hops biggest new star, Chance the Rapper, has an album that unapologetically tackles themes of spirituality. Kendrick Lamar, meanwhile, has spent his career mapping out a space for spirituality amidst inner-city carnage.While it’s kind of unusual the degree that this thematic strand has risen to the forefront, hip-hop has been flirting with the sacred for nearly its entire existence. Outkast, Tupac and Mos Def have all skirted the spaces between the sacred and the profane. The tracks compiled on this playlist aren’t “Christian rap” exactly — as with Kanye, there’s some cursing on many of them — but they all tie back to the genre’s debt to gospel music. -- Sam Chennault

'90S THROWBACKS
Indie Rock Face-Off: Neo vs. ’90s

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.

The Year in ’90s Metal

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.

Out of the Stacks: ’90s College Radio Staples Still At It

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.