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)
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
This one is for the fearless protesters in Charlottesville and Boston and Vancouver and everywhere else who are confronting the hate head-on; for the people who shouted down the bigots and ran them out of town; for Heather Heyer; for the journalists venturing behind enemy lines and silencing the propaganda; for the DIY statue-topplers; for the enterprising pranksters trolling racists with tubas and bananas; for all the woke Juggalos.As their efforts have shown, the best way to combat those espousing hate and lies is to make a bigger noise. Here are some songs to add to the din.
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
This is a constantly updated playlist of (mostly) new songs that the Dowsers’ Sam Chennault loves (or at least finds interesting). They span all genres, but it focuses on hip-hop, R&B, pop and electronic. Be sure to subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.
Sometimes music is a solitary endeavor. After recording technology advanced to the point of making it possible for one person to construct an entire album all by themselves, hermetic whiz kids started turning out solo albums in the truest sense of the word, in which they played and sang all or nearly all of the parts. Some of them may have been control freaks eschewing additional musicians out of monomania, but others were studio geniuses who crafted entire worlds all on their own, and thats what were looking into here.A few are former band members who ran with the chance to operate unencumbered, such as Paul McCartney and John Fogerty, who had some of their most memorable songs sans helpmates, like "Maybe Im Amazed," from the ex-Beatles 1970 solo debut, McCartney, and "Centerfield," from the CCR frontmans 1985 comeback album of the same name. Some became famous as youthful mavens of multitracking, as Prince did with his first hit, "I Wanna Be Your Lover," as well as Mike Oldfield with his first album, Tubular Bells, known forevermore as the spooky soundtrack music of The Exorcist.More and more artists are going it alone as digital technology has drastically increased the ease and options in creating one-person projects. Sometimes theyve obscured their solitary stances by adopting aliases that could be taken for band names, such as Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), Grimes (Claire Boucher), and Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner). Whether they tip their hands or not, the next Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder could be out there right now, just waiting for the right time to pop up with a new, strictly solo masterpiece.
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
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.
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.
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.
