On paper, The Pop Group’s fourth full-length, Honeymoon On Mars, seems like a nuclear explosion. The U.K. post-punk annihilators worked with Dennis Bovell, who also produced their groundbreaking 1979 debut, Y, and Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad, the production team behind Public Enemy’s most incisive, exciting work.…
The A.V. Club is pleased to be partnering with the Northwest’s very own Pickathon festival for a new video series. Each month, we’ll be premiering a new video from the fest’s Mt. Hood stage, meaning we’ll be dropping excellent videos on you from all over the musical spectrum.
On her flamboyant early albums, Lady Gaga’s fascination with fame led to trenchant societal observations and subversions. The tepid 2013 album Artpop reversed that trend. With its vapid, debauched commentary—the kind at which she once sneered—the record wasn’t from the perspective of an outsider looking askance at…
A few stray guitar notes, some studio chatter, a drummer trying out some fills—these inauspicious sounds begin American Football’s classic self-titled debut from 1999, a landmark album that spawned countless emo bands that paled in comparison.
Winter Wheat is about preservation and perseverance. Drown out the lyrics, though, and that might not be so clear—there’s a chilliness to these 15 songs, many of which shiver with the kind of stark weariness that’s long suffused John K. Samson’s vocals. The once-Weakerthans frontman’s insectoid croon works wonders in…
Jimmy Eat World will never escape “The Middle,” and they’re quite all right with that. Twenty-three years on, the Arizona band has yet to match the success of 2001’s quintessential single, which marked their apotheosis from emo into the coveted ranks of the 2000s-alt-rock canon. And yet, rather than distance…
Leonard Cohen would be forgiven if he were in a more morose place than usual. A recent New Yorker profile revealed the 82-year-old isn’t in great health, and he’s aware that his time on Earth is growing ever finite. “I’ve got some work to do,” he told David Remnick. “Take care of business. I am ready to die. I hope…
In Under The Influence, The A.V. Club asks a musician to pair three of their songs with a non-musical influence.
Pictured in the liner notes for Brian Eno’s 1985 ambient piece Thursday Afternoon is a lined paper that scrupulously diagrams the song structure. The page shows a series of rows of timelines, each one surrounded by Eno’s penciled-in notes, chronicling the flow of the self-titled and sole song on this album: “Hints of…
My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were financial flops, critical failures, or lack a substantial cult following.
Wesley Willis: Wesley Willis is a Chicago legend for good reason: His massive frame was matched only by the joy he took in singing—and the mental illness that plagued him. It would be easy, especially in hindsight, to think that people listen to Willis’ music to make fun of him, but in my experience that wasn’t the…
This week’s question comes from senior editor Sean O’Neal:
In HateSong, we ask our favorite musicians, writers, comedians, actors, and so forth to expound on the one song they hate most in the world.
Jamie Lidell has been moving toward the pure soul sounds of his latest album, Building A Beginning, since his first release some two decades past. The velvet-throated vocalist and songwriter carved a singular niche for himself in the abstract electronic music world with his blue-eyed soul vocals. He inserted these…
Whether he’s going aggro-punk, as on last year’s Desaparecidos re-up Payola, or playing indie Paul Simon on lush Americana albums like 2014’s Upside Down Mountain, Conor Oberst might as well be strumming solo. The longtime Bright Eyes leader sings every song like he’s shivering on your doorstep, unburdening himself of…
In Under The Influence, The A.V. Club asks a musician to pair three of their songs with a non-musical influence.
A piercing scream opens “Skunk,” the lead track on The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Now I Got Worry. It’s a harrowing first impression, but coming from Spencer, it feels strangely par for the course. By 1996, all manner of odd sounds, effects, and studio eccentricities had become integral to the Blues Explosion’s…
Ugly Casanova: Ugly Casanova is a solo project from Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse who, if I remember correctly, thought that it would be a good safety-net name if his main band’s major-label deal didn’t work out. The not-quite-a band’s only album, Sharpen Your Teeth, came out not long after the classic The Moon &…
In Hear This, The A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs that saw an artist bounce back after releasing a dud of a record.
Pity the punk who grows up but doesn’t grow accustomed to mortality. Not in a “rage, rage against the dying of the light” kind of way, but more the “sitting in the all-ages hardcore show basement, wondering why you still feel the same” mentality. Billie Joe Armstrong’s concerns are still largely the same as those…
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