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

The first American Football album presents an image on its cover that has long remained in my mind. This image, a photo of the side of a Midwest house on a cloudy night, is conjured up from my unconscious and displayed on the projection screen of my mind’s eye every time I hear Mike Kinsella’s voice. American Football sounds like that photo looks: inviting, mysterious, and decidedly more complex than the surface would lead one to believe. The past few years have seen a renaissance in American Football’s emo/math rock aesthetic, with numerous young indie bands taking up the torches of sincerity and despair, displaying their emotions cleanly and clearly on distortion-tinged canvasses that recall the side of that house from the American Football album cover. And yet as the emo revival seems robust and healthy, I recently saw online that the house—which resides in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois—is for sale. Some things come full circle, it seems, especially with the release of a long-awaited second American Football album. But many things do change: people move away, houses fall apart, neighborhoods fall into dilapidation. Perhaps if the house is to be a metaphor for the resurgence of emo, it must be taken both as a memory and a state of disrepair that tasks the present with its rebuilding.

Jim James’ angelic falsetto floats above his soulful jams like that of a mezzo-soprano in an operatic aria, flowing to and fro through the grooves and harmonies. A heavy sense of chill exudes from nearly every track, from the hard-hitting bangers to the tender ballads. It isn’t just his voice, but his whole attitude that makes his songs great. He rides the slow build of My Morning Jacket’s “Smokin’ from Shootin’” like a focused surfer, while “Golden” sees him glide over its percussive shuffle like a leaf in the wind. Singing and guitar are far from his only strengths—the Monsters of Folk album featured his work on guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, percussion, and electronics. All these talents come together cohesively and effectively in his solo work, such as 2013’s celestial Regions of Light and Sound of God, whose tracks saw him moving into more vulnerable thematic territory (“A New Life”) while still maintaining his trademark chill vibes and occasional funkiness (“Know Til Now”). Eternally Even’s “Here in Spirit” continues the trajectory, acting as a masterclass in James’ eternally solid vibes. Whether shredding on guitar, vocals, or other, the man is in a class of his own when it comes to contemporary jam theory.

Sometimes I wish I’d had a cooler childhood. Many of my friends have neat stories about discovering The Smiths at age 13 or getting drunk and listening to Springsteen (which I certainly do, but it’s for a different reason when you’re 30). My experiences were a little different. Sure, my dad used to play Electric Light Orchestra and Supertramp vinyls when we would clean the house and Paul Simon and B.B. King cassettes when we went on drives, which was awesome and formative, but most of my meaningful early experiences with music were with the classical music my grandparents and teachers would tell me about.A lot of my childhood was spent alone at the piano. After school, on weekends, when I would fake being sick so I could stay home alone with it, I revelled in the time I had with the instrument. I would play whatever I could get my hands on, as long as I liked it. My grandparents, who were very passionate about all kinds of music, would buy me CDs of famous works performed by illustrious pianists and conductors, and I would fall in love with certain sonatas or movements, sometimes buying the scores but usually printing them out from illegal sheet music sites in my high school library, daydreaming about them until I could go home and work on them. I loved Chopin’s nocturnes and Beethoven’s sonatas, Joplin’s rags and Ravel’s chamber music. I grew to love Serkin, Horowitz, Rubenstein, Bernstein, Goode, Abbado, Toscanini—so many great pianists and conductors.In addition to the piano I began playing saxophone when I was about 10. When I entered high school I decided to start taking lessons and I somehow made it into the studio of the St. Louis Symphony bass clarinet player James Meyer. Mr. Meyer taught me a tremendous amount about a whole range of cool things, such as zen meditation, martial arts defense moves, how to select and prepare reeds, and, most importantly, how to think about music. He exposed me to jazz, playing me my first real jazz record. It was Oliver Nelson’s 1961 Blues and the Abstract Truth, a hard bop masterpiece with unreal orchestration and elegant solos. I remember very clearly feeling like it was the dopest shit I’d ever heard. I bought the CD the following day at Borders. He also taught me about modern and postmodern music, from Debussy to John Adams. We played through everything we could.One summer Mr. Meyer was playing in the pit orchestra for a production of John Adams’ excellent 1987 opera Nixon in China. He showed me some of the sheet music and explained what post-minimalism was about. He said it was one of the hardest pieces he had ever played. I knew nothing about Adams or opera, but when I told my grandparents about it, they insisted that I have the opportunity to see it. My grandfather and I went to see Nixon in China a few weeks later—I found it exhilarating, new, and inspiring, but as a lifelong Puccini and Verdi fan, he did not like it very much at all. To this day I sing arias from that opera to myself when I am alone. Maybe it’s not as cool to some people as singing Springsteen, but I still think it’s pretty fuckin’ rad.

Apart from being the best album of the year, The Life of Pablo is an encyclopedia of contemporary culture. More than any other album in 2016, it is about bourgeois subjectivity. It’s about religion, sex, family, friends. It’s about medication, entrepreneurship, loneliness, and fame. But more than anything, it’s about what it means to be human today. Over the course of the album’s 20 tracks, Kanye explores the far reaches of his conscious mind, ever teetering between faith and despair, confidence and suffering. It has become popular to dismiss Kanye as crazy when taking into account his social media presence and public antics; however, an analysis of The Life of Pablo’s contents show him not only as sane, but vulnerable, in-touch, and acutely reflective.Part of its vast cultural reach is the fact that The Life of Pablo is infused with with a heavy dose of popular music history, from Nina Simone to Desiigner. Its author’s impressive use of Arthur Russell’s “Answers Me” anchors one of the greatest beats on the album (“30 Hours”), while his rhythmic and thematic interpolation of “Jumpman” by Drake and Future is the lifeblood of “Facts (Charlie Heat Version),” a song completed by Kanye’s imitation of Future’s vocables and his use of sound bytes from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. These references aren’t merely references—they’re so thoroughly woven into the music of The Life of Pablo that they could not be extricated without compromising the totality of the album. In this sense, the album is a monumental achievement.It’s difficult to excerpt any single song or reference as exemplary from an album that nods to everything from Lexapro to Albert Einstein, so the goal of this playlist is to highlight a few great songs on the album and to intersperse them with some of its most interesting samples and musical references.

To be totally honest, I haven’t spent much time listening to Linkin Park lately, and I’m not familiar with their most recent albums. My Linkin Park phase was in high school—Hybrid Theory (2000), Reanimation (2002), Meteora (2003), and Collision Course (2004) came out during that time. At that point in my life, I was mostly a classical, jazz, and rap fan—I wasn’t into heavy rock or metal, so Linkin Park was the most intense thing I listened to in my teenage years. And as I think back on it, it seems bizarre that I liked the band so much, because they really didnt fit with anything else I was listening to. But it makes sense now, because the reach and scope of their music were powerful enough to grip people outside the typical realm of nu metal. There’s something almost transcendental about early Linkin Park. They were too anthemic to be fully nu metal (à la Korn, Limp Bizkit, or P.O.D.), too hip-hop to be rock, and too emo and mainstream to be “cool,” at least as far as what was considered cool among my peers. Theirs was a profoundly relatable music that flipped the script on what it was supposed to be. Their lyrics had a radically human core, one that embraced and tried to work through longing and alienation. These people were dealing with complex emotions like guilt and shame when the Dave Matthews Band—probably the most popular band in my community—was singing about getting high and ejaculating. And the actual music of Linkin Park was very intriguing, boasting intelligent percussion, authoritative washes of reverbed guitar, disciplined use of electronics, and methodical pacing. Listening to Meteora as an adult now, I’m still moved by its quality, its musicianship, and its acuity. Growing up before social media, in a fairly bland, conservative suburban community, I didn’t know a lot about the world of music. I don’t remember too much of what I listened to back then, but I do remember relating to the angst and hopelessness of Meteora in a powerful way. Linkin Park were basically my Smiths, and I’m fine with that. They were the therapeutic outlet that was available to me, and I’m glad they were. It’s sad that Chester Bennington is dead, because his music always pointed, more than anything, toward a desire for deliverance from pain. I don’t know whether he achieved that in the end, but I do know that his music was there for countless lost teenagers like myself.

Welcome to the third chapter of our Thrash 101. This feature was produced in partnership with GimmeRadio, your free 24/7 metal radio station hosted by heavy-music experts like Megadeths Dave Mustaine and Lamb of Gods Randy Blythe. Get more metal here.Thrash is all about feeling. It’s about low-register riffs that hit you in the gut, high-flying solos that make you throw those devil horns in the air, and gravelly singing imbued with a sense of purpose and meaning. It’s about raging against the powers that be with everything you’ve got in you. The “Big Four” of thrash defined these traits. Once they hit the scene some 30 years ago, the earth truly shook.Technically from L.A. but more commonly associated with their adopted home of San Francisco, Metallica is the Big Four group with the widest appeal. Everyone loves Metallica—classic rockers who want to go hard; hard rockers and heavy metallers who want something precise and driving; punk rockers in search of a bigger, tougher sound. Metallica were the sum of diverse influences, a cauldron that had been slow-cooking an angry stew of punk, rock, classic heavy metal, and NWOBHM, finally overflowing and creating something new: thrash. Metallica’s first two albums were great, but they really busted out of their shell with their third: 1986s Master of Puppets, the record that sent them on a skyward path. Above all, throughout their signature work, Metallica has displayed an unparalleled energy—a spark of cohesion and crispness thats rarely matched, even to this day.Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine was actually in Metallica for their first few years, but he was asked to leave in 1983 due to substance abuse and behavioural issues. Also from L.A., Megadeth’s a little thrashier than Metallica: Compared to the formers balanced, well-tempered aggression, Megadeth is wilder and more NWOBHM-influenced—which is to say they feel closer to the satanic howls, classic-style solos, and soaring riffs of Iron Maiden. Their second release, Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986), was one of the decades best metal albums, and it remains near the top of many critics’ greatest-metal-records-ever lists. That said, Megadeth’s catalog is pretty divisive—some prefer Rust in Peace (1990), others Countdown to Extinction (1992). In any event, Megadeth have been hugely influential, especially in the burgeoning genre of extreme metal.Satanism, serial killers, crime, violence… these are Slayer’s bread and butter. And their heavy topics elicit equally heavy music. There’s no other way to put it: Slayer slays. Formed by Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman, Dave Lombardo, and Tom Araya, Slayer hit the scene in ‘83 with Show No Mercy, which was pretty well-received. Like Metallica, though, it was their third album that catapulted them into the realm of greatness. When the Rick Rubin-produced Reign in Blood dropped in ‘86, it announced Slayer as one of the most formidable voices in metal. Its unhinged riffs and hellish yawps conveyed the feeling that the music was constantly going off the rails, a quartet of possessed musicians just jamming too hard and fast to ever stop. Reign in Blood was the beginning of an incredible run that also saw South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. Of the Big Four, Slayer is the most deranged—in a good way.Finally, we’ve got Anthrax, the only one of the Big Four from the east coast—New York City, to be exact. Anthrax has had something of a fluctuating lineup, but their core centers around guitarist Scott Ian, drummer Charlie Benante, bassist Frank Bello, and vocalist Joey Belladonna (who comes and goes). Oddly enough, their third LP was their big breakout, too. Among the Living (1987) was explosive among metalheads, and dealt with decidedly nerdy stuff like Stephen King novels, Judge Dredd, John Belushi, and, quite possibly, the film Poltergeist II. Anthrax’s music is built from big riffs and thundering drums—and compared to their Big Four peers, its not nearly as Satanic!

Thrash is all about feeling. It’s about low-register riffs that hit you in the gut, high-flying solos that make you throw those devil horns in the air, and gravelly singing imbued with a sense of purpose and meaning. It’s about raging against the powers that be with everything you’ve got in you. The “Big Four” of thrash defined these traits. Once they hit the scene some 30 years ago, the earth truly shook.Technically from L.A. but more commonly associated with their adopted home of San Francisco, Metallica is the Big Four group with the widest appeal. Everyone loves Metallica—classic rockers who want to go hard; hard rockers and heavy metallers who want something precise and driving; punk rockers in search of a bigger, tougher sound. Metallica were the sum of diverse influences, a cauldron that had been slow-cooking an angry stew of punk, rock, classic heavy metal, and NWOBHM, finally overflowing and creating something new: thrash. Metallica’s first two albums were great, but they really busted out of their shell with their third: 1986s Master of Puppets, the record that sent them on a skyward path. Above all, throughout their signature work, Metallica has displayed an unparalleled energy—a spark of cohesion and crispness thats rarely matched, even to this day.Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine was actually in Metallica for their first few years, but he was asked to leave in 1983 due to substance abuse and behavioural issues. Also from L.A., Megadeth’s a little thrashier than Metallica: Compared to the formers balanced, well-tempered aggression, Megadeth is wilder and more NWOBHM-influenced—which is to say they feel closer to the satanic howls, classic-style solos, and soaring riffs of Iron Maiden. Their second release, Peace Sells… but Who’s Buying? (1986), was one of the decades best metal albums, and it remains near the top of many critics’ greatest-metal-records-ever lists. That said, Megadeth’s catalog is pretty divisive—some prefer Rust in Peace (1990), others Countdown to Extinction (1992). In any event, Megadeth have been hugely influential, especially in the burgeoning genre of extreme metal.Satanism, serial killers, crime, violence… these are Slayer’s bread and butter. And their heavy topics elicit equally heavy music. There’s no other way to put it: Slayer slays. Formed by Kerry King, Jeff Hanneman, Dave Lombardo, and Tom Araya, Slayer hit the scene in ‘83 with Show No Mercy, which was pretty well-received. Like Metallica, though, it was their third album that catapulted them into the realm of greatness. When the Rick Rubin-produced Reign in Blood dropped in ‘86, it announced Slayer as one of the most formidable voices in metal. Its unhinged riffs and hellish yawps conveyed the feeling that the music was constantly going off the rails, a quartet of possessed musicians just jamming too hard and fast to ever stop. Reign in Blood was the beginning of an incredible run that also saw South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss. Of the Big Four, Slayer is the most deranged—in a good way.Finally, we’ve got Anthrax, the only one of the Big Four from the east coast—New York City, to be exact. Anthrax has had something of a fluctuating lineup, but their core centers around guitarist Scott Ian, drummer Charlie Benante, bassist Frank Bello, and vocalist Joey Belladonna (who comes and goes). Oddly enough, their third LP was their big breakout, too. Among the Living (1987) was explosive among metalheads, and dealt with decidedly nerdy stuff like Stephen King novels, Judge Dredd, John Belushi, and, quite possibly, the film Poltergeist II. Anthrax’s music is built from big riffs and thundering drums—and compared to their Big Four peers, its not nearly as Satanic!This feature is part of our Thrash 101 online course that was produced in partnership with the good rocking folks at GimmeRadio, a free 24/7 metal radio station hosted by heavy-music experts like Megadeths Dave Mustaine and Lamb of Gods Randy Blythe. Check them out here and sign up for the Thrash 101 course here.

It is commonly stated among music lovers that Radiohead are the best band in the world. Since forming in 1985, they have won countless awards and released numerous songs and albums to universal acclaim, advancing new avenues in sound and musical technique with each passing year. With its immaculately complex song structures and lyrical focus on the increasing integration of technology into social life, their 1997 masterwork OK Computer revitalized rock n’ roll in the ‘90s. Its follow-up, the cold, prismatic Kid A, with its otherworldly tones and its portentous, opaque text, frequently tops lists of the best albums of recent memory. Their live performances have gained an almost mythological status, mystifying audiences with the gargantuan sounds these five mortal beings can produce, from Jonny Greenwood’s pristine guitar solos and imaginative use of synthesizers to Phil Selway’s machinelike focus and intensity at the drums.

The black metal mythology is well known at this point, pored over by metalheads like the Greeks studied Homer: the church-burning, the murder, the suicide, the darkness. In Hyperborean black metal, as Liturgy’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix calls it, the nascent style focused on dark themes, Norse imagery, burst beats, and epic walls of sound built on distorted guitars. These albums often used lo-fi recording techniques as well; for Burzum’s seminal Filosofem, for example, Varg Vikernes selected the worst microphone possible, one from a headset. Newer black metal has maintained much of the core sound of Hyperborean black metal, yet newer bands like Ashbringer, Panopticon, Deafheaven, and False have begun to transform the game.Contemporary black metal often features more frequent tempo changes, lighter, thinner guitar tones, more uplifting climaxes, high-quality production, and brighter imagery. This isn’t necessarily to say it’s more optimistic—in a largely unchanged society, these musicians are as despairing as their predecessors. And yet the forms of expression they have come to use to channel that despair exists in a fundamentally different musical landscape, one that has seen the full unfolding of post-rock, grunge, and indie. Just as Gandalf returned to his followers in The Two Towers after what appeared to be certain death, black metal comes back to us now, appearing transformed and disfigured, beckoning with rippling beauty and crushing riffs. These are the complex and grand songs of the new wave.