Jeff Rosenstock and Laura Stevenson have shared their latest Neil Young covers EP, Younger Still. Stream it below via Bandcamp. Back in 2019, the collaborators and friends started working on a new EP at Rosenstock’s Brooklyn apartment before he moved to Los Angeles. Then, the pandemic came, and work on the project was put on hold as the artists focused on their own endeavors. This summer, Stevenson made the trip to LA, and they recorded a completely different EP that became Younger Still. The four-track collection arrives ahead of Rosenstock and Stevenson’s joint tour kicking off later this month featuring stops in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and more. Anika Pyle and Gladie will rotate as openers; tickets are available now via Ticketmaster. Advertisement Related Video Besides the joint...
Track by Track is a recurring feature series in which artists share the story behind every song on their latest release. Today, Joshua Harmon and Jonas Swanson of The Backseat Lovers break down their new album, Waiting to Spill. The highs and lows during the three-year period The Backseat Lovers spent crafting their latest record, Waiting to Spill, are palpable from the jump. Out on Friday, October 28th, the album illustrates the impact of a meditative work between experimenting with DIY instruments and wrapping up tracks from earlier sessions. The indie rock ensemble embodies the idea of patience is a virtue, as their sophomore effort builds off 2019’s When We Were Friends at its own pace, leading to a rewarding album for both the collective and their listeners. Throughout Waiting to...
It’s another New Music Friday, which means we’re due for another King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard record: Changes, the Aussie psych-rockers third studio album of October and 23rd overall, is out today. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard technically began working on Changes back in 2017, but it took a while until they were satisfied with the songs that wound up on the record, which includes the single “Hate Dancin.’” “I think of Changes as a song-cycle,” vocalist Stu Mackenzie said in a press release. “Every song is built around this one chord progression — every track is like a variation on a theme.” He continued: “But I don’t know if we had the musical vocabulary yet to complete the idea at that time. We recorded some of it then, including the version of ‘Explo...
Sleater-Kinney’s seminal 1997 album Dig Me Out passed its 25th anniversary this year, and now, the band has celebrated the record by unveiling Dig Me In: A Dig Me Out Covers Album. Listen to the project below. As Sleater-Kinney explained in a statement, “The artists who appear on Dig Me In have not so much covered the 13 original songs, but reinterpreted and reimagined them. Through added layers or the subtraction of guitars and drums, they provide a new way into the songs. Fresh rage, joy, pain, reclamation, slyness, and longing. Other interpretations slow down or stretch out the songs, trading urgency for contemplation, weariness or even a hint of ease.” Among the artists featured on Dig Me In are frequent Sleater-Kinney collaborator St. Vincent, clear Sleater-Kinney prote...
Carly Rae Jepsen has returned with The Loneliest Time, her first album since 2019’s Dedicated. Listen to the project below via Apple Music and Spotify. The Loneliest Time is said to be Jepsen’s “most introspective body of work to date,” but as its TikTok famous disco title track — as well as single “Beach House” and Song of the Week “Talking to Yourself” — shows, the record is still as infectious and bubbly as ever. Tavish Crowe, Bullion, Captain Cuts, John Hill, Kyle Shearer, Alex Hope, and Rostam Batmanglij all appear on the project, while Jepsen duets with Rufus Wainwright on the album’s title track. Advertisement Jepsen is in the midst of a North American tour with support from Empress Of, and tickets are on sale now over at Ticketmaster. The Loneliest Time Art...
Get your 2014 Tumblr flannels — or, rather, your 1970s hot pants — ready, because Arctic Monkeys have unveiled their new album The Car. In his review of the album, Paolo Ragusa says that The Car “is sonically aligned with the slow-burning psych pop of 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the band farther away than ever from the tense post-punk or bluesy garage rock that characterized much of their output pre-2018. Orchestral flourishes, though not overwhelmingly frequent, give many of The Car’s songs a classic feel, while Turner’s vocal persona evokes a midlife crisis David Bowie.” Arctic Monkeys previewed The Car with the singles “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” (which we named Song of the Week) and “Body Paint” (which they performed on Fallon). Advertise...
Taylor Swift has returned with Midnights, her 10th studio album. Listen to the project below via Apple Music and Spotify. In a statement, Swift says Midnights tells the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life. This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams. The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go search – hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve … we’ll meet ourselves.” The follow-up to 2020’s folklore and evermore, the 13-track project was once again produced by Jack Antonoff and features a collaborative song with Lana Del Rey. Zoë Kravitz and Swift’s boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, also have songwr...
PJ Harvey and composer Tim Phillips have shared the series soundtrack to Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters. Stream it below via Apple Music and Spotify. Bad Sisters was co-devoloped by Sharon Horgan and stars Horgan, Anne-Marie Duff, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, and Eve Hewson. It follows a group of sisters as they grieve a family members death while hoping to dodge investigators from a life insurance company. The 13-track OST features 11 original songs and two covers: Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire,” which serves as the theme song, and the traditional American folk song “Run On,” which has at times been recorded as “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” Advertisement Related Video The rest of the tunes were composed in a rather original way. Phillips, who has also scored for ...
Red Hot Chili Peppers are back with Return of the Dream Canteen, their second album of 2022. Listen to the project below. Anthony Kiedis, Flea, and Chad Smith have clearly been in good spirits since reuniting with their beloved on-again, off-again guitarist John Frusciante. Not only did they write enough music to follow-up April’s Unlimited Love just six months later, but they also penned a sentimental message to fans about Return of the Dream Canteen‘s origins. The statement reads: “We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been. Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundreds of times along the ...
Track by Track is a recurring feature series in which artists share the story behind every song on their latest release. Today, easy life break down their new album, MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE… There’s something comforting about easy life‘s homespun sound: the drums are crisp and worn, the keys and guitars flutter in a dreamy glow, and frontman Murray Matravers rounds out the band’s energy with clever, intimate verses, stuck halfway between hip-hop and indie rock. As far as bedroom pop goes, easy life have been major champions of the vibe-centric formula since their 2018 debut mixtape, Creature Habits. But now, easy life have moved far beyond their bedrooms to a breezy, escapist world for their second album, MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE…, out Friday, October 7th. The Leicester quintet, rounded ou...
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are releasing three albums this month, and the first one, Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, is out now. Listen to the project below. King Gizzard wrote Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava in the studio, assigning every song on the seven-track album a specific beats-per-minute value and a mode of the major scale. “We’d walk into the studio, set everything up, get a rough tempo going and just jam,” band leader Stu Mackenzie said in a statement. “No preconceived ideas at all, no concepts, no songs. We’d jam for maybe 45 minutes, and then all swap instruments and start again.” Even the album’s lyrics were a group effort, with the band utilizing a collaborative Google Doc for the writing process. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, M...
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have released the new single “Iron Lung” from Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava, their first of three albums coming in October. The nine-minute psych-rock jam comes with an equally trippy animated music video by SPOD. “Iron Lung” initially follows a measured, jazzy beat that expands with flutes, saxophone, and crunchy guitar riffs to an explosive peak. In a statement, guitarist Stu Mackenzie called the track “the ultimate collab,” sharing, “We wrote the lyrics as a group and created the music out of improvisation. Spontaneous creation. The best kind.” The accompanying music video mirrors the song’s lyrics, specifically the “different kind of cuttlefish.” More importantly, it portrays the titular breathing apparatus’ description of “Frog breat...