Some songs show up with the subtleness of a brick through a window. They do exactly what they say they’re going to do, point out who the baddies are and then proceed to scream their message at you until you either agree with them or take yourselves and your attitudes somewhere else. Deportee’s “Black Women […]
At some point in every dream, it loses its shine. Most people aren’t interested in talking about that point. Most people are interested in the dream. The initial momentum. Late-night idea sessions. Inspirational quotes overlaid on stock photos of mountains. The dreams where you wake up to it all working out, then do a magazine
This is a weird time to be involved with music; it demands we all be content creators, influencers, amateur marketers, compulsive oversharers, and, when we have time, musicians. All the songs now come pre-packaged with personalities, branding, carefully manicured online identities detailing everything the artist had for breakfast and their subsequent thoughts and feelings and
X-ANONYMOUS Couldn’t Have Picked a Better Title Than “CLAIM IT ALL”; They Absolutely Do Read More »
You know the modern crisis that is only really a modern crisis is one that begins when someone who you were so easily labeled as ‘just a friend’ sends a totally mundane text that somehow your brain insists is a world-altering event? And then you hear a song capturing that? It’s not a love song,
Love songs are difficult to write. Music has been churning them out for centuries with varying degrees of sincerity and alarming levels of acoustic guitar, but because to make one now, in an era where emotional vulnerability is often filtered through layers of irony or buried under overproduction, requires a certain willingness to be painfully
There’s a certain kind of album that basically introduces itself before you even press play. Like it wants you to know exactly how it was made so you’ll listen a little differently. Aeroplane by Connie Lansberg is very much that kind of album. In this instance, the setup is kind of the whole hook: one
Aeroplane Isn’t Trying to Wow You With Complexity Read More »
There is a very specific kind of rock album that seems to exist entirely to remind you that somewhere, somehow, a man in a leather jacket is still leaning dramatically into a microphone while someone behind him attacks a guitar like it personally insulted his family. Degeneration, the latest release from Deep Jimi, is one
Degeneration Simply Reminds You That Rock Music Never Left Read More »
There’s a particular kind of music release that doesn’t really care whether you experience it as an “album” in the modern, tightly curated, playlist-optimized sense, and instead behaves more like someone opening a vault and saying: here, this is everything, take your time. The Vault 2 by C’batch is exactly that kind of project; a
There is a very specific emotional space that rock bands love to gesture toward but almost never commit to living in, and that space is the middle of things. Not the cinematic beginning where everything is charged with meaning, not the triumphant or devastating ending where everything finally makes sense, but the long, ambiguous stretch
C’batch’s “Trapped (I’m Doing Fine)” returns not so much as a remix but as a kind of technological séance; an instrumental from another era summoned back into the present and politely asked to develop a personality. It obliges. Where once there was groove, now there is groove with intent, which is always a dangerous upgrade.
C’batch’s “Trapped (I’m Doing Fine)” Isn’t a Track Trying to Overwhelm You With Contrast Read More »