Rock + Alternative

Click here to add to Spotify playlist!The party line among rock historians is that 70s progressive rock was a uniquely British phenomenon, with minor prog annexes popping up in America and elsewhere. While its true that prog found its footing in England, the idea that it was the musics only—or even main—stronghold is a patent falsehood.While there were active prog scenes all across Europe in Germany, Sweden, France, and other regions, Italy became as much of a hotbed for it as England, if not more so. As in the UK, Italian prog grew out of psychedelia, with fuzzy guitars and organ solos giving way to swooping synths and complex suites. But Italian prog had a distinct sonic fingerprint that set it apart from its British cousin.Aside from the obvious fact that most of the lyrics were in Italian, the countrys prog bands—with some important exceptions—tended toward a lush, symphonic sound that embraced classical influences and eschewed the blues modalities that popped up in the music of their British counterparts. The influence of Italian folk was also crucial, making for a more pastoral feel than commonly found in British prog.The big stars of Italian prog—the handful of bands who ever performed or had records released outside of their homeland—included Premiata Forneria Marconi (PFM for short), Banco, and Le Orme (pictured at top). But at various strata beneath that tiny top tier were countless other bands who were as equally inventive. Though the likes of Biglietto Per LInferno, Metamorfosi, and Celeste didnt gain much attention in other countries, theyre a vital part of Italys proud prog legacy. The presence of contemporary bands like La Maschera Di Cera and Nuova Era, who are overtly influenced by their forebears, attests to the staying power of this singular sound.

Khyam Allami, Ola Saad, and 47Soul are just some of the names associated with a rising generation of rockers, singer-songwriters, and electronic producers creating alternative music in the Middle East and North Africa. While Western news headlines tend to focus on the struggles of Syrian refugees and the protracted fight against ISIS, the past decade in the region has seen a paradigm shift in the fields of art and music. From Cairo to Tehran, artists have looked beyond borders and mass-market media sources, adopting wifi, social media and home production programs like Pro Tools to establish new networks of collaboration and distribution.Among the talents are the band 47Soul, who capture the spirit of Arab youth culture and speak to their Palestinian roots with their analog synthesizers, political lyrics, and Levantine dabke rhythms. There’s Khyam Allami, an artist of Iraqi descent who runs the influential label Nawa Recordings, who made avant-garde punk on the soundtrack for the 2015 Tunisian indie film As I Open My Eyes/À peine jouvre les yeux and explores the boundaries of Arabic oud with the avant-garde group Alif (which features members from Egypt and Lebanon). And there’s producers like Ola Saad, who engages with her surroundings through provocative ambient electronic music and sound art.There’s a long tradition of cross-cultural collaboration and avant-garde exploration in the Middle East and North Africa, but this music today is fundamentally unique — reflecting a time of conflict and global division but also of trans-national enrichment and creative possibility.

Few television shows in recent memory have managed to blend poignant social commentary with a delicate treatment of everyday lived experiences quite like Master of None, the brilliant Netflix comedy-drama created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang. For their second season, the creators have developed another 10 episodes that easily stand alone as individual vignettes. But in each instalment, music always takes center stage. Ansari and music supervisor Zach Cowies 69-song compendium mirrors this seasons emotional arc and sharp sense of humor, looking beyond the expected indie soundtrack choices for an eclectic array that includes John Fahey, Dorothy Ashby, and even the Vengaboys.Even if you havent watched this season, you can sense the extreme contrasts between episodes through this playlist—the neo-classical film scores of Ennio Morricone (which accompany the season’s black-and-white premiere) give way to the pristine Italo-disco of Ken Laszlo and Mr. Flagio that accompanies the technicolor vibrancy of the second episode. However, the playlists most sublime selections benefit from onscreen recontextualization. When Dev (Ansari) and Navid (Harris Gani) skip Ramadan prayer to attend a pork-filled barbecue to the tune of Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time,” the track instantly morphs into their personal elegy for religious obedience. Strangely enough, it’s a very smart choice. Master of None has done much to rewrite the narrative surrounding the onscreen representation of people of colour, and Ansari and Cowie have discovered that mission extends to musical choices as well—regardless of how cringe-worthy they may seem. Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

It’s been one of music’s longstanding dichotomies: the Beatles were formalistically experimental pop musicians disguised as zeitgeist-teasing idealist, while the Stones were barroom bluesman who fetishized apocalypse and Malboros. Never the twain shall meet, or so the narrative went. Which means that a certain type music critic -- the ones tilting towards counter-narratives -- have spent the past six decades explaining that, yeah, they’re not really that different -- it’s a narcissism of small differences, or a talisman against the idea of monoculture, take your pick. Consequence of Sound, as part of their video series that highlights the five best things of a given subject, weighs in on this with their five best Beatles tracks that sound like Rolling Stones songs. It’s not a great list. They stick to the hits -- “Helter Skelter,” “Come Together,” “Hey Jude,” etc -- it’s fun to imagine “Come Together” as a Stones song (though it’s hard to imagine Jagger singing “Hey Jude”), but that’s about it.

Over the past few years, 1990s nostalgia has assumed many forms: Twin Peaks reboots, Trainspotting sequels, Tupac holograms, the ubiquity of A Tribe Called Quest and The Pharcyde on hipster-taco-joint playlists. But while we’ve grown accustomed to 20-year retro cycles reviving the sounds and iconography of our youth, there’s one seemingly outmoded 1990s phenomenon that’s made a surprising comeback: All your favorite indie-rock bands are signing to major labels again.The great promise of the internet was it rendered the traditional music industry unnecessary and irrelevant. Independent bands could mobilize their audiences online, while small labels could get music out to wider audiences than before. Certainly, the early-2000s ascent of bands like Arcade Fire and Spoon seemed to reinforce the idea that ambitious artists no longer had to trade up to a major record label in order to connect with a mass audience. The internet—and all the alternative media and new distribution channels it introduced—could provide a back road to stardom that allowed bands to bypass the usual soul-destroying music-industry machinations.Fast forward to 2017 and it seems that line of thinking has gone the way of the mp3 blog. Arcade Fire’s latest album, Everything Now, was released through Columbia Records, whose roster also now includes ex-indie darlings LCD Soundsystem, Vampire Weekend, and Amber Coffman (formerly of Dirty Projectors). The War on Drugs’ A Deeper Understanding bears the Atlantic Records logo. Death From Above 1979 just released Outrage Is Now!, their second record for Warner Bros. Grizzly Bear left Warp Records for RCA. So why are established indie acts more willing to make the leap these days? The most plausible explanation is these artists need major-label resources to retain visibility in the streaming era, just as their 90s forbears needed them to land rack placement at Walmart. But if the end goal—greater exposure and, ideally, revenue—is the same as it ever was, one aspect has changed: These days, when a beloved indie-rock band signs to a major label, no one bats an eye—if they even notice at all.Thirty years ago, signing to a major label wasn’t a mere gamble; it was an ideological purity test. By its very definition, indie rock drew a line in the sand between those who were committed to a self-sustaining musical ecosystem free of corporate interference, and those who were willing to ingratiate themselves to the marketplace. In courting a wider audience through a major-label deal, an aspiring band would effectively have to say goodbye to a chunk of their core fanbase, who would reflexively write them off on principle. Tellingly, writer Michael Azerrad’s ’80s indie-rock-history bible Our Band Could Be Your Life concludes the chapters on its major-label-bound subjects once they trade up, reinforcing the widely held belief those artists made their best music while on indies.However, Sonic Youth’s 1990 signing to DGC effectively heralded a new era where upgrading to a major came to be seen as a savvy, insurrectionary career move (and Steve Albini will never forgive them for it). Among the bands to follow their lead was, of course, Nirvana, and after their 1991 DGC debut, Nevermind, became the biggest rock album in the world, the hand-wringing over corporations co-opting the underground only turned more intense, as more and more major-label A&R reps infiltrated clubs to hand out business cards—and more and more indie bands actually called them back. To read the alternative-music press in the 1990s was essentially to be subjected to an endless series of articles featuring artists mulling over the choice between selling out or staying put. Before long, holdouts like Fugazi, and Superchunk were vastly outnumbered by the peers who signed on the dotted line. And if the majors couldn’t sign Pavement, they’d just scoop up a band that sounded exactly like them (hello, Sammy!).Sure enough, none of these ‘90s major-label hopefuls came close to putting up Nirvana numbers. And predictably, many of their stories proved to be cautionary tales—following their one ‘n’ done stints on a major, bands like The Jesus Lizard and Archers of Loaf unceremoniously returned to indie-land and never regained their footing, before eventually petering out. For the likes of Superdrag or Hum, the best they could hope for was to score their 15 minutes on 120 Minutes (or 30 in the case of Urge Overkill). Others, like Texan psych-rockers Sixteen Deluxe, simply went from obscurity to, well, even more obscurity.But in hindsight, there’s as much reason to celebrate the ‘90s major-label feeding frenzy as bemoan it. The moment yielded generational touchstones (Hole’s Live Through This) and cult classics (Drive Like Jehu’s Yank Crime) alike. It saw bands acquiring the means to boldly embrace their true calling—see: Cornershop’s evolution from Merge Records noise merchants to the sitar-psych visionaries of Woman’s Gotta Have It, or Shudder to Think stepping out as a math-rock Queen on Pony Express Record. For the likes of The Posies and The Melvins, it provided just enough over-ground exposure to nurture loyal fanbases that have stayed with them for decades. Or in the exceptional case of The Flaming Lips, it led to a long, wildly unpredictable evolution that continues on Warner Bros. to this day.This playlist is a chronological collection of 50-plus major-label dice-rolls from ‘90s, perhaps the last moment in music history when A&R reps gazed upon artists as inherently strange as Ween and Daniel Johnston with dollar signs in their eyes. (Alas, some of the more curious artefacts of the era—like Boredoms’ Pop Tatari, or Royal Trux’s Thank You, or The Geraldine Fibbers’ Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home—aren’t available on Spotify.) The songs here span Sonic Youth’s Goo to Modest Mouse’s Sony debut The Moon and Antarctica—which technically came out in 2000, but feels like a perfect capper to the ’90s era that birthed them (and a prelude to the early-2000s web-abetted indie uprising that spurred their biggest success). So now, with all due respect to Sebadoh: gimme corporate rock!

"Everybody hates a tourist," a wise, skinny man once sang. So lets leave "Wonderwall" at the karaoke bar and rediscover some quality overlooked choons from the Britpop era, which, in our unscientific opinion, begins with Suedes self-titled 1993 debut and stretches all the way to 2000, if only to remind you that Gay Dad and Elasticas The Menace werent all that bad. (Really!) Were also abiding by a fairly liberal definition of Britpop here, because tracks like Spiritualizeds "Lay Back in the Sun" and Shacks "Natalies Party" are as eternally splendorous as anything produced by their NME-mugging peers.After listening to this playlist, youll be left wondering why Oasis "Hey Now" wasnt as big as "Supersonic," why the Boo Radleys werent as big as Oasis, why Pulps "Sylvia" isnt considered Jarvis Cockers career-defining performance, and why the only way to experience Echobellys "Insomniac" on Spotify is through the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. Youll also be reminded of that fleeting moment when Ride went mod-rock, The Stone Roses turned into Led Zeppelin, and Radiohead were just a bunch of alt-rock chancers who named their first album after a Jerky Boys sketch. And if 2018 brings us a Catatonia revival, then our work is done.

In love in 1988, I gave “The Flame” more attention than it deserved. But Robin Zander sings the hell out of this make-or-break ballad, and Rick Nielsen’s mandocello is front and center. Thus began the most reviled period of Cheap Trick’s history, during which Zander recorded a duet with a Wilson sister not even as sharp as “Almost Paradise” and they competed with Poison and Whitesnake. But I’m no fan of power pop, so classing up hair metal ballads strikes me as no different. I wish I’d been there during their live peak. I rely on my knowledge of a couple studio albums and The Essential Cheap Trick.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

This playlist was curated by our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum—go there for more great lists, commentary, and more.

I knew I’d joined a special place when the first act Stylus Magazine inducted its Hall of Fame wasn’t Joy Division, Talking Heads, or Brian Eno but…ELO. Tireless enthusiasts of British pop but with progressive-rock roots, Electric Light Orchestra at their best recorded pop as otherworldly as the (in)famous spaceships yet as familiar as Jules Verne. Jukebox heroes whose material absorbed the other jukebox competition.I hesitated, it’s true, before including “Evil Woman.” “Evil Hook” is more like it — damn! The chorus sung in falsetto answered by Richard Bevan’s clavinet. Misogynist, there’s no denying it, except like most dorks closeted with their addled dreams synchronized on synthesizers, they get their idea of women from other songs or their own suppressed lust. In essence, the speed and detail and delight of the music mitigates, to my ears, the dumb, received tropes; women couldn’t be evil if they inspired a love-as-lust ode as addled as “Don’t Bring Me Down.”Expert magpies (“Shine a Little Love” is Lynne doing ABBA doing disco, or perhaps ABBA heard ELO’s use of strings and thought, “Hm…”) and precise trend reflectors (“Hold Me Tight” became a hit in 1981 just as American pop music was drenched in homages to the fifties), ELO could get exhausting, especially when in a rotten mood their songs remind me of bumpers or Saturday morning cartoons from the dawn of the Reagan era. So much of Lynne’s work presaged the dork futurism of Gary Numan and Trevor Horn’s use of call and response harmonies singing at the top of their range while pianos tinkle and a singer tries keeping his equilibrium in a world intent on banishing his awful hair to obsolescence. Perhaps this explains Lynne’s alignment later in the eighties with Tom Petty and George Harrison. It had to be more than “It’s Over.” Otherwise they would have dialed the number of the dude from Supertramp.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

This Beatles acolyte learned the lesson: he imitated their eccentricity because he was a natural eccentric and a natural songsmith, not because he wanted to write Great Songs. For a while they poured out of him; he was the shaggiest, loveliest, and most self-destructive of the seventies singer-songwriters. His was a doomed project, for meshing Nelson Riddle’s orchestral pop and the American Songbook tradition it invokes with a Vietnam generation’s fetish for revelation sounded impossible then, and it hasn’t worn well. But he and Carole King should have composed more soundtracks for children’s TV — imagine sequels to “Chicken Soup with Rice” written by the author of “Cuddly Toy”!And “Spaceman” is more devastating than “Rocket Man” and “Space Oddity,” fools.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.