music
The Sword Announce Conquest of Quarantine Session, Cover T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution”: Watch
The Sword have announced a new socially distant performance series, Conquest of Quarantine. The heavy rockers are today premiering the first tune from the three-song lockdown session, a cover of T. Rex’s “Children of the Revolution’, exclusively via Heavy Consequence. The new series comes on the heels of The Sword’s recent career-spanning compilations, Conquest of Kingdoms and Chronology 2006-2018. Both cull archival live recordings, B-sides, and rarities. As singer-guitarist J.D. Cronise told us in our recent interview, the band hoped to tour in support of the album before the pandemic effectively paused live music. Instead, The Sword performed together virtually in isolation and streaming the footage for fans. “Since we’re not touring this summer as originally planned, we figured we shou...
The Internet Has Spoken: Taylor Swift’s Folklore Album Cover Is Actually Very Metal
Remember when pop star Justin Timberlake retreated into the forest to get his “folk” on and became a bonafide Man of the Woods? It looks like Taylor Swift spent her quarantine attempting to take that same earthy path, and the result is a new album literally called folklore. What’s more, she put it together with help from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, himself A Wisconsin Man of the Woods, and Aaron and Bryce Dessner, members of quintessential indie outfit The National. As Fluxblog founder Matthew Perpetua so succinctly put it, “I guess Taylor Swift finally went out in the woods with the National and Bon Iver boys to actually make ‘some indie record that’s much cooler than mine,’” plucking choice lyrics from Swift’s 2012 hit single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”. So I guess...
Clutch Announce Live from the Doom Saloon Volume II Livestream Concert
If you’ve ever wanted to build your own Clutch setlist, now’s your chance. The band might even play it during its upcoming livestream performance, dubbed “Live from the Doom Saloon Volume II”. Clutch are encouraging fans to pick their “dream 14-song setlist” for the virtual concert, which costs $9 and streams at 5:00 p.m. PT / 8:00 p.m. ET on August 7th (and available on-demand through that weekend). Donations from the show go to benefit the Innocent Lives Foundation. Any Clutch song from their 1991 “Pitchfork” 7-inch through 2018’s Book of Bad Decisions and their recent Weathermaker Vault Series is game. It’s a lot to choose from, but whoever submits the winning setlist — as picked by the band — will receive an insane prize pack including: a TremLord 30 combo amplifier from Orange Am...
Bandcamp Fridays Extended Through The Rest Of 2020
With the government fumbling and failing to lead as usual, Bandcamp has stepped up in a big way to support the arts sector during this pandemic. At the onset of the outbreak earlier this year, the music streaming platform launched Bandcamp Friday, which saw the company waive its cut of sales for 24 hours. The first four Bandcamp Fridays resulted in a whopping $20 million dollars (!) going directly into the hands of artists and labels. Because of its resounding popularity and the country’s unfortunate continued surge in coronavirus cases, Bandcamp has announced it will extend this campaign through the end of 2020. “Because the pandemic is far from over, we’ll continue to hold Bandcamp Fridays on the first Friday of every month until the end of the year,” Bandcamp wrote on its official websi...
Thundercat Contributes New Song to ThunderCats TV Series: Stream
Who better to write a new song for the ThunderCats reboot than the musician named Thundercat. The funk and jazz maestro born Stephen Burner has contributed a new song called “Grune’s Tune” to Cartoon Network’s ThunderCats Roar. As Pitchfork points out, Burner’s song is about a villainous anthropomorphic saber-toothed tiger named Grune the Destroyer, of which he also voices in the series. During a Comic-Con@Home panel on Thursday, Burner spoke about his life-long fascination with ThunderCats and revealed his musical moniker came about because he frequently wore a ThunderCats T-Shirt in the studio, leading Erykah Badu to refer to him as “Thundercat”. Watch the animated video for “Grune’s Tune” and the Comic-Con@Home panel below. Back in April, Thundercat released his fourth st...
Ben Folds Serenades a Sucky Year with “2020” Performance on Colbert: Watch
At this point in 2020, it’s hard to even glance at any information source without deepening this sustained sense of despair. Imagine what it’s like for someone like Stephen Colbert, who has to actually put a smile on and joke about this dumpster fire of a year every night. Yet power to him, the late-night host continues on cheerily, even when a musical guest like Ben Folds comes on to remind him of how crappy everything is with a performance of “2020”. Folds delivered a #PlayAtHome performance of his new single on Thursday night’s Late Show. Colbert introduced the waltz by saying it “really captures the spirit of the moment” before the piano pop master took over from his (shockingly white) office. Sitting behind his keyboard, Folds asked, “How many years will we cram into one?” while ...
Song of the Week: Taylor Swift’s “exile” Reminds Us That We’re Not Alone
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify New Sounds playlist. It’ll be interesting if a decade or two from now, we’ll look back at “quarantine albums” or “pandemic art” as a thing — like how we classify certain things, including some old music, as “Depression-era.” First, I think we can all agree that we don’t want this tumultuous time to carry on any longer or more destructively than it must. But the isolation and time for contemplation that have accompanied this pandemic have inevitably seeped into music: how it’s created, how it’s shared, how it’s performed, and, yes, even its substance. Might we look back at the growing body of quarantine content in the years to come and acknowledge that ...
Doja Cat Caught COVID-19 After Saying It’s Just “A Flu”
Doja Cat is known as much for her controversial remarks and behavior as she is for her music, but if you spit enough BS eventually you’re gonna get some on yourself. Back in the early days of the pandemic, the rapper mocked coronavirus fears, saying in an Instagram live video, “I’m gonna get corona and then I’m gonna get a Corona, cause I don’t give a fuck about corona, bitch. It’s a flu! Ya’ll are pussies.” Well, hopefully she’s popped that Corona, because Doja Cat has revealed she contracted COVID-19. Doja disclosed the news during an interview with Capital XTRA. Asked how she’d been doing in lockdown, she looked sheepish and said, “I got COVID. Honestly, I don’t know how this happens but I guess I ordered something off of Postmates, and I don’t know how I got it but I got it.” She ...
Biz Markie Hospitalized Due to Complications from Diabetes
Biz Markie has been hospitalized in a Maryland hospital for several weeks due to complications from type 2 diabetes, according to TMZ. A representative for the 56-year-old rapper told TMZ that Markie “is receiving the best care from an amazing team of medical professionals and we remain positive about the outcome.” Markie previously lost 140 pounds in an effort to manage his diabetes. “If I didn’t make the changes, it was going to make the diabetes worse,” Markie explained in a 2014 interview. “[Doctors] said I could lose my feet. They said I could lose body parts. A lot of things could happen.” [embedded content] You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people...
Grimes Calls Out Elon Musk After He Tweets “Pronouns Suck”
Grimes publicly called out her own boyfriend, Elon Musk, for a discriminatory tweet against non-binary people. On Friday night, the Space X founder tweeted simply, “Pronouns suck.” It’s unclear what prompted Musk to make such a proclomation, but Grimes wasted no time in calling him out. Just seven minutes after Musk’s initial tweet, Grimes replied to him directly, writing, “I love you but please turn off ur phone or give me a dall. I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.” Grimes later deleted her reply, but Musk’s original tweet remains up. <img data-attachment-id="1055997" data-permalink="https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/07/grimes-elon-musk-pronouns/grimes-elon-musk-2/" data-orig-file="https://consequenceofsound.net/wp-con...
PJ Harvey Unearths Dry Demos Album: Stream
As part of an extensive archival campaign, PJ Harvey is reissuing her entire discography on vinyl. Notably, these re-releases are also being paired with demos culled from the original album sessions. First to be spotlighted in this series is, of course, her 1992 breakthrough debut album, Dry. Its corresponding collection of demos is simply titled Dry-Demos and consists of 11 early recordings, each raw and captivating in their own way. Whether you’ve been a longtime fan or have just recently discovered her magic, it’s a piece of Harvey history worth savoring (or at the very least, adding to your streaming queue). This release marks the first time Dry-Demos has ever received a standalone release. In addition to digital formats, it’s available in CD and vinyl form and comes packaged...
The Flaming Lips Imagine “You n Me Sellin’ Weed” on New Song: Stream
The Flaming Lips are back with a new song called “You n Me Sellin’ Weed” from American Head, their upcoming 21st album. Better yet, it comes with a sun-soaked music video to brighten up your quarantine. This is the fourth single we’ve heard from American Head so far, following “Dinosaurs On The Mountain”, “Flowers Of Neptune 6”, and “My Religion Is You”. While this new track reads like it will be a giddy uptempo number about the magic of selling drugs with your partner, it begins like the opposite. Over some hazy guitar strums and mellow percussion, Wayne Coyne sings with a tinge of nostalgia about a relationship — that is, until the tempo picks up, sound effect pop in the background, and the psychedelia starts to trickle in. As with the previously released songs from the album, “You n Me ...
