On her latest album, Squeeze, Sasami took us to polar extremities with sounds that ranged from gazy indie, to industrial rock, and even to straight up dark metal yowls. The ambitious collection has been out for a few months, and now Sasami has released an alternate take of “Tried To Understand” that flips the track on its head and features Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis.
“‘Tried To Understand’ was a song that took many forms before it became what you hear on my album,” Sasami said in a statement.
These words should not be taken lightly, as it goes from a grassy folk tune with a sweet lead guitar, to a decidedly thrashier, driving number with a more assertive lead riff by Mascis. It rips hard at every turn and there’s a balanced dynamic in vocals from Sasami and Mascis.
“This rawer cut with J. Mascis is kind of a peek into the different dimensions and moods one composition can inhabit,” added Sasami, who is currently on tour with Haim. “This version features Ty Segall on drums, me on bass and guitar and J. on the ripping leads and backing vocals. It’s the less cute version of what spinning out can sound like.”
Listen to the alternate version of “Tried To Understand” above.
The Denver Broncos have entered into a sale agreement that will set a record for the highest price ever paid for a North American sports team. According to ESPN, the agreement between to purchase the franchise from the Pat Bowlen Trust will cost the Walton-Penner family ownership group — led by Walmart heir Rob Walton — $4.65 billion.
The news of the sale was announced in a pair of statements, one by Walton and one by Broncos president and CEO Joe Ellis.
The Denver Broncos and the Walton-Penner family have entered into a purchase and sale agreement to acquire the team.
The team has been in a trust since Bowlen, whose family purchased the franchise in 1984, handed day-to-day operations of the team to Ellis in 2014 as he battled Alzheimer’s. He died in 2019, and by that point, the team had been placed in a trust. It was officially put up for sale earlier this year.
According to ESPN, the sale is expected to become official sometime in the next 60-90 days after its terms are reviewed by the league’s finance committee and a vote is taken by its owners, with 24 yes votes needed for the sale to go through. The price tag of $4.65 million smashes the previous record for the sale of a North American team, which was held by Steve Cohen’s purchase of the New York Mets for $2.475 billion in 2020, and the record for the sale of an NFL team, which was held by David Tepper for his $2.3 billion purchase of the Carolina Panthers in 2018. It falls just short of the record price paid for a team, as the bar was set at end of May by the recent $5 billion purchase of Chelsea FC.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are expected to play a “starring role” in the January 6th hearings after Florida’s least favorite couple provided “really valuable” information during their testimonies that will make for “gripping television.” The first hearing doesn’t begin until Thursday, June 9, but the New York Times provided helpful context about how little Jared and Ivanka wanted anything to do with Donald Trump — and Rudy Giuliani — while he was trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen,” the Times reported. “While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.” They were already planning their move to Florida less than 24 hours after Trump was telling anyone who would listen that “frankly, we did win this election.”
Their decision to move on opened a vacuum around the president that was filled by conspiracy theorists like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who relayed to Mr. Trump farcically false stories of dead voters, stuffed ballot boxes, corrupted voting machines, and foreign plots. Concluding that the president would not listen even to family members urging him to accept the results, Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump that he would not be involved if Mr. Giuliani were in charge, according to people he confided in, effectively ceding the field to those who would try to overturn the election.
Even as far as Fox News personalities go, Jesse Watters doesn’t know when to shut up. The King of Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud, who once casually dropped a tidbit about the time he deflated the tires on a female colleague’s car so that she’d need him to give her a ride home into the conversation, stuck his foot in it once again on Tuesday, as HuffPost reports.
Rather than recognize the content of McConaughey’s speech, Watters saw his appearance at the White House as a chance to throw a couple of cheat shots and mock the Biden administration. “What are the White House going to do now,” Watters wanted to know. “Are they going to put Tom Cruise out to talk inflation? Is this where we’re going?”
Even if you wanted to overlook the poor timing and taste of the joke—he is, after all, essentially mocking people for caring about the 21 people who were just murdered by a teen gunman with an AR-15—that the “inflation” punchline came out of Watters’ mouth at all is rich, and far too tantalizing to ignore. As this is the same man who, just last month, interviewed Jersey Shore star Pauly D about, yep, inflation! Fortunately, the embarrassing irony was not lost on anyone.
Shortly after the death of Taylor Hawkins in March, Foo Fighters made the understandable decision to cancel all of their upcoming concerts. Now, though, the band is ready to return: Today, they announced a pair of tribute concerts in honor of Hawkins. The first will take place at London’s Wembley Stadium on September 3, while the other will go down at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum on September 27. Tickets for both shows are set to go on sale on June 17.
A post on the Foo Fighters website describes the concerts as “all-star rock and roll shows” and notes that lineups for each date will be announced shortly.
The post also reads:
“As one of the most respected and beloved figures in modern music, Taylor’s monolithic talent and magnetic personality endeared him to millions of fans, peers, friends and fellow musical legends the world over. Millions mourned his untimely passing on March 25, with passionate and sincere tributes coming from fans as well as musicians Taylor idolized. The Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts will unite several of those artists, the Hawkins family and of course his Foo Fighters brothers in celebration of Taylor’s memory and his legacy as a global rock icon — his bandmates and his inspirations playing the songs that he fell in love with, and the ones he brought to life.”
Hawkins’ wife Alison also offered a statement, which can be found below.
“My deepest thanks and admiration go out to the global Foo Fighters community and Taylor’s fans far and wide for the outpouring of love each and every one of you have shown our beloved Taylor. Your kindness has been an invaluable comfort for my family and me during this time of unimaginable grief.
As Taylor’s wife, and on behalf of our children, I want to share how much you meant to him and how dedicated he was to ‘knocking your socks off’ during every performance. Taylor was honored to be a part of the Foo Fighters and valued his dream role in the band every minute of his 25 years with them. We consider every band member and the extended Foo Fighters team our family.
Taylor’s endearing spirit and deep love of music will live on forever through the collaborations he so enjoyed having with other musicians and the catalog of songs he contributed to and created.
In celebration of his life, it is now up to all of us who loved him most to honor Taylor’s legacy and the music he gave us.
Thank you all again for your love and sympathy. Taylor loved all of you & we love you too.
Vladimir Putin’s legacy took quite a turn earlier this year when he decided to go imperialistic by invading Ukraine. His troops have since seen a series of setbacks, and we’ve heard plenty about how behind-the-scenes events are not great. Troops nearly blew up their general, Putin has fired military leaders (and secret agents) like wildfire, and a top commander (known as “The Executioner”) got whacked by a sniper with that news arriving this week.
All of these developments follow news that Putin’s inner circle is making plans to insert a successor with some eye toward restoring some type of Russian glory. In the meantime, U.S. intelligence officers revealed that Putin’s rule is secretly considered to be finite, given his rumored health woes and constant threats of assassination.
Overall, the Kremlin must be frustrated, and Newsweek now reports that some of this disgruntlement could find its way to Germany in the form of an invasion. At least, that’s the takeaway after a German official cracked an on-air joke while hurling an F-bomb, which echoed Ukraine soldiers’ own declaration and a Russian state TV host calling out Germany:
On his evening program on Tuesday on Russia-1, Solovyov introduced a clip of German Culture Minister Claudia Roth receiving a gift of two stamps from her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksandr Tkachenko, during a trip to Odessa on Tuesday. The first stamp showed a soldier in front of the silhouette of the Moskva, the Russian Black Sea fleet flagship that Ukraine said it had sunk with missiles. On the other stamp was the image of a soldier with his middle finger raised.
“F**k you, Russian ship,” Roth said in English to Tkachenko as she laughed. This was a nod to what was reportedly shouted by Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island on February 24 when they told Russian warships to “go f**k yourself.”
From there, Solovyov referenced Operation Barbarossa (1941), which saw German troops invade Russia. He then declared outrage over the F-bomb and asked, “What are we supposed to do now? Once again shake the dust off Teutonic graves with the thundering march of Soviet boots? They will never get the message otherwise.”
You can watch the clip below, and Solovyov sure seems angry! And this is all in response to an apparent joking tone (as one can also see in this clip) from the German culture minister.
Meanwhile, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is out there saying that she has no regrets for not doing anything to stop Putin’s annexation of Crimea. International relations continues to be a source of high drama, unfortunately with the effects landing upon civilians while Putin’s Ukraine invasion continues cranking past the 100 day mark.
What do sailing and STEM fields have in common? For one, both have traditionally been—and largely still are—the domain of men. Sailing is a male-dominated sport, with women making up 16% of all competitors and only 5% of professional competitors in regattas last year. And though women have made big strides in STEM, progress has been uneven and women are still underrepresented in certain fields, including environmental science.
Such underrepresentation is one reason the founders of eXXpedition gather all-female sailing crews with diverse areas of expertise to research ocean plastic pollution. Since 2014, the nonprofit organization has been on a mission to “make the unseen, seen”—the unseen being women in sailing and science, the plastics and toxins polluting our oceans, and the diverse solutions to the problem.
Emily Penn founded eXXpedition after seeing ocean plastic pollution up close while working on a biofuel boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Emily Penn founded eXXpedition to bring women in sailing and ocean plastic pollution into full view.Courtesty of Emily Penn/eXXpedition
“I’d jump into the water to wash and be surrounded by plastic, nearly 1,000 miles from the nearest land,” Penn told National Geographic. “We would then stop at these small islands, and see how they were struggling so much with waste management, especially plastic. And then we’d land on beaches of uninhabited islands that had more plastic on them. After those moments of seeing it first-hand, I just couldn’t really look back.”
During her first all-woman sailing expedition, Penn was amazed by the positive, supportive atmosphere aboard the ship. Having an all-women crew was a “magic” dynamic—surprisingly different from the mixed crews she’d always been part of—and thus eXXpedition was born.
Sea voyages are vital for environmental research, but they aren’t particularly visible to those of us on land. The eXXpedition team has utilized Facebook and Instagram to bring people aboard virtually and connect its community around the globe. With more than 18,000 Facebook groups dedicated to celebrating and protecting our planet, and environmental protection being one of the top three causes people donate to on Instagram, these platforms have been critical to driving support for the organization’s mission and sharing the results of its voyages.
In October 2019, eXXpedition launched a bold, two-year mission to circumnavigate the globe called Round the World. Multidisciplinary crews of women—scientists, journalists, activists and more—set sail to conduct research over 38,000 nautical miles, traveling through four of the five oceanic gyres where pollution accumulates in dense pockets. The crews sailed across the Atlantic, throughout the Caribbean, to Galapagos and Easter Island, and across the South Pacific Gyre to Tahiti, studying the issue and collecting valuable data.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Pandemic shutdowns brought the world to a screeching halt, and sadly, the remaining Round the World legs had to be canceled. But that didn’t mean the eXXpedition mission stopped; it merely shifted.
While eXXpedition voyages provide valuable research, the problem of ocean pollution starts on land, which means all of us need to be involved in this work. However, many people simply don’t know which actions to take.
So when COVID shut things down, Penn created SHiFT, an online platform to help people hone their own environmental actions even as they navigated the unfamiliar waters of the pandemic.
“Our research has shown us that the sources of plastic pollution are endless,” Penn tells Upworthy. “This means the solutions are too. There is no silver bullet. We need to tackle the problem from every angle.
“For many people, this message can feel overwhelming,” she adds. ”Should I switch my packaging to biodegradable plastic, glass or paper, or do I need to redesign my product completely? Should I put a filter on my washing machine, or make clothes from bamboo or rethink the way we sell clothing all together? We know we need all these solutions, but many of us need help to work out which one to use and when.”
SHiFT helps individuals and businesses whittle down those overwhelming options to a manageable one or two by guiding them to discover their unique strengths or “superpowers.”
“We need experts in every field,” says Penn. “It’s not about everyone becoming a marine biologist or everyone dedicating their lives to this, but it’s about saying, ‘Great, you’re an engineer, let’s look at ways we can do better waste management. You’re a chemist, let’s look at ways we can reinvent plastic or a biodegradable material. You’re a teacher, then talk about it. You’re a policy maker, then let’s legislate it.’”
More than 5,000 people a month from 133 countries use SHiFT to explore hundreds of impactful solutions and narrow them down to what’s most doable for them. Penn says the global community eXXpedition has created is where the real power of the organization lies.
“The many nationalities, skill sets, sectors and approaches to solving the plastics issue together is our greatest strength since we started our sailing missions in 2014,” says Penn. “Digital tools have helped us overcome the ultimate challenge we have, which is that with everyone spread around the world it can be a challenge to bring the community together. Now we have an opportunity to bring them together virtually to connect and collaborate and go on to really drive change on land.”
In addition to SHiFT, eXXpedition utilizes Facebook and Instagram to keep that community engaged and informed. The hope is to inspire people to action by sharing ambassador stories from women who have participated in voyages, debunking myths about plastics and pollution, making research accessible and understandable for everyone, and hosting virtual events.
The eXXpedition team is encouraged by the attention that plastics and ocean pollution has been getting and by how many people are interested in helping find solutions. On World Oceans Day on June 8, the SHiFT site will be adding even more tools to help people find their role and use their superpowers to tackle ocean plastic pollution.
“We don’t need everyone to do everything,” says Penn, “but we need everyone to do something.”
Still, Nas has more to say, but about the Black community at large beyond just BET, as he took to Twitter to discuss homophobia (a particularly relevant topic right now given we’re a week into Pride Month).
Yesterday afternoon, he tweeted, “this not over no bet award this is about the bigger problem of homophobia in the black community, y’all can sit and pretend all u want but imma risk it all for us.” Hours later, a Twitter user made note of Frank Ocean and Tyler The Creator’s previous nominations and Nas responded, “love frank and tyler to death but can we admit queer men are more respected when they do less feminine things or am i making that up?”
this not over no bet award this is about the bigger problem of homophobia in the black community, y’all can sit and pretend all u want but imma risk it all for us.
love frank and tyler to death but can we admit queer men are more respected when they do less feminine things or am i making that up? https://t.co/MLqkGYKWSI
Somebody else responded by implying that Nas didn’t get a nomination this year because his “music sucks,” but the rapper got the conversation back on track, replying, “ok cool i suck, my music is terrible, bad nas. now answer the question ‘are queer men are more respected when they do less feminine things’ yes or no?”
ok cool i suck, my music is terrible, bad nas. now answer the question “are queer men are more respected when they do less feminine things” yes or no? https://t.co/P3tQgJmfuQ
Somebody else jumped in, “you’re not making it up but when will gay men understand they can be gay w/o making it their whole personality? now you act like a female rather than you just liking men and that’s where people are put off.” To that, Nas replied, “gay men should continue making being gay their whole personality as long as we are still being jailed n fckin killed in countries for it.”
gay men should continue making being gay their whole personality as long as we are still being jailed n fckin killed in countries for it. https://t.co/f3qMM9r0Ml
Meanwhile, BET shared a gallery of images and videos of Nas on social media last night, declaring, “This is bigger than the #BETAwards. This is real life and we will always rock with Lil’ Nas X and stand for our people.” Nas wasn’t moved by that, as he responded this morning, “these are literally just buzz words placed together.”
It doesn’t seem quite right to call 2022 so far a “normal” year — as far as the music world goes, bands are still being routinely sidelined on tour by Covid as they attempt to make up for the financial devastation of the last few years. But the first several months of 2022 have had the feel of a dam that’s been busted, as scores of records from top-flight artists have dropped nearly every week.
Not only are there more albums, it seems, but the albums themselves are more. Double LPs have gone from a rare indulgence to a new normal in practically every genre. After years of being cooped up, artists are unleashing songs by the armful as they tentatively head back on the road.
In a year of supersized music, it makes sense for my mid-year list to also be super-sized. I finally settled on 22 favorites that I wanted to stump for, though even that might be inadequate. If “normal” doesn’t fit 2022 in terms of the myriad disasters still wreaking havoc in the world, it also doesn’t suit the extraordinary artistic output we’ve witnessed so far this year.
This list — which is ordered alphabetically — represents just a small sliver of the brilliance being served up during what could ultimately be the best musical year in some time.
Big Thief, New Warm Dragon I Believe In You
So much of the pleasure of listening to this masterful album — if this list were ranked, this would be at No. 1 — comes from appreciating the subtle and delicate ways in which Big Thief works and plays together, whether it’s the excellent jam that closes “Little Things,” the surprisingly heavy rock groove that subsumes “Flower Of Blood,” or the way Buck Meek’s voice rises to harmonize with Adrianne Lenker on the chorus of the stunning love song “12000 Lines.” When it came out in February, I called it a masterpiece. I haven’t wavered from that, and I doubt I will by year’s end.
Caracara, New Preoccupations
My favorite “shiny guitar” album of the half-year. Produced by “shiny guitar” aficionado Will Yip, New Preoccupations has been described by this Philly band as a druggy album about recovery, which you sense from the charged, blurred sonics and the scarred but hopeful lyrics. But, admittedly, my relationship with this record isn’t quite that deep. I love how New Preoccupations relentlessly targets my ’90s alt-rock pleasure centers. I refer specifically to the post-grunge half of the decade, when bands like Third Eye Blind and Matchbox Twenty shed the sludge and went straight for soaring hooks.
Dehd, Blue Skies
I got into this Chicago trio after becoming entranced by their breakthrough third record, 2020’s Flower Of Devotion. While they can be broadly labeled as a post-punk band, Dehd doesn’t fall into the usual clichés of that subgenre — there are no monotone, talky vocals that wryly deconstruct the low-key madness of modern existence. This band is way too romantic for that. There’s a reason why so many critics namecheck Roy Orbison and The Cure when describing them — they specialize in jangly, reverb-heavy fatalism that earns the melodrama of the lyrics by putting you squarely in their goth-kid frame of mind.
Destroyer, Labyrinthitis
While the lyrics contain some of the darkest lines of Dan Bejar’s career — so dark that Bejar talks about “the singer” on this record in the third person — the music grooves hard, drawing on an unlikely but somehow compatible combination of influences drawn from techno and rave cultures as well as gloomily catchy ’80s English alt-rock bands like New Order and The Cure. It’s similar to the musical palettes utilized on 2017’s Ken and 2019’s Have We Met — Bejar considers Labyrinthitisthe concluding part of a trilogy with those records — but on the new album there’s a greater feeling of exuberance. It surely is the most danceable music Destroyer has yet made.
Father John Misty, Chloë And The Next 20th Century
If an FJM album drops and there isn’t a polarizing press tour to go with it, does that album make a sound? I’ll admit I’m still getting used to this era of Father John Mum. But it feels appropriate for his most recent batch of songs. Rather than write about the familiar swaggering anti-hero that was his persona on the first four albums, Josh Tillman has instead focused on his other made-up characters — the titular “borough socialist” Chloë, a striving entertainment biz creative named Simone, the actress known as Funny Girl, an unnamed pair of ex-lovers who are reunited by their recently deceased cat Mr. Blue. It’s as much a collection of short stories as it is a record.
Good Looks, Bummer Year
I don’t think I’ve played a song more in the first half of the year than the opening track from this album, “Almost Automatic,” which is precisely the sort of small town-minded heartland rock I am comically predisposed to loving. Only people don’t make this kind of heartland rock anymore, which is the way the genre was understood in the 1980s. (In other words, it sounds more like the BoDeans than “Boys Of Summer.”) Suiting their Texas roots, this is likely the only indie rock record from 2022 that includes a song that expresses empathy for Trump voters.
Guerilla Toss, Famously Alive
Bands like this used to be more common in the late aughts and early 2010s, an era in which arty punk bands combined pop with noise to create dance music for drug-fueled hipsters. Perhaps if the indie-sleaze revival is truly a thing, bands like this will become a thing again. Though there’s not much of a sleaze factor with the deliriously fun Famously Alive — Guerilla Toss are guileless, not irony-damaged, and the party they throw on this record feels inclusive and powered by joy for joy’s sake.
Gang Of Youths, Angel In Realtime
If 2017’s Go Farther In Lightness was this Australian’s band’s Joshua Tree — the fearlessly earnest collection of guitar-based spirituals rooted in an unending desire for transcendence — then perhaps the follow-up is their Achtung Baby. An album in which beat-heavy, danceable, and often ecstatic music acts as a shield for blood-and-guts, dark-night-of-the-soul introspection. An intimate confession made to sound loud enough to engulf the entire world.
MJ Lenderman, Boat Songs
The reference points for this album — early Wilco, “ditch” era Neil Young, all periods of Jason Molina — might seem pretty standard for an alt country-leaning singer-songwriter. But as is the case with his regular band, the rising North Carolina twangy shoegaze outfit Wednesday, Lenderman has a way of taking the familiar in new and refreshingly irreverent directions, like in the song “Dan Marino,” which references the former Miami Dolphins quarterback and an obscure quote from The Last Waltz over a lo-fi guitar rumble that sounds like side two of Tonight’s The Night.
Angel Olsen, Big Time
I’ve long admired Angel Olsen’s music without ever completely falling for it … until this record. Working with co-producer Jonathan Wilson, Olsen has wedded some of her heaviest songs — the album was inspired by the recent deaths of both of her parents — with the most ravishing music of her career. Retaining the rustic and retro Laurel Canyon vibe of Wilson’s work with Father John Misty and adding a generous dose of twang, Big Timeis a beautiful psychedelic country record with a grief-stricken heart. It somehow floats and sinks simultaneously.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Endless Rooms
The wonder of this Australian band’s consistently great output is how they find new ways to package the same elements — brisk riffs, mile-a-minute drums, pogoing bass lines — into insistently tuneful guitar-pop gems. While I remain partial to their breakout 2017 EP The French Press, I’m starting to think that their latest effort might be their best. The problem with this band is that I tend to think that whichever record I’ve heard most recently is their best. Like fellow Aussies AC/DC, these guys just make the same record over and over. But it’s always a really good record, so I’m really just complimenting their top-notch quality control.
Say Sue Me, The Last Thing Left
The melancholy bop of The Last Thing Left has soundtracked my late spring, as I’m a sucker for taking walks in the fresh air while taking in trebly guitars and alluringly doleful vocals. Sumi Choi — Say Sue Me’s singer, guitarist, and songwriter — really is the star of the show here, striking a perfect balance of knowing sorrow and ingratiating charm on songs that zip in and out before the heartache can set in. If you’ve grown impatient while waiting for a new Alvvays record, this album will be a salve.
The Smile, A Light For Attracting Attention
The highly anticipated side project from Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood presents itself as the most un-Radiohead-like of propositions — a guitar-driven power trio! — that happens to sound, tantalizingly, like a version of Radiohead that Radiohead no longer is apparently interested in being. Given the dearth of actual Radiohead albums since A Moon Shaped Pool, it’s almost too easy to regard A Light For Attracting Attention as the next best thing, a kind of musical methadone for Kid Anation.
Sooner, Days And Nights
One of my favorite debuts of 2022’s first half is this straightforward but very pleasurable amalgam of shoegaze and dream pop. Aren’t there already a lot of amalgams of shoegaze and dream pop in the contemporary indie rock scene? Yes. But most of them can’t touch the songwriting on Days And Nights or the quality of Federica Tassano’s vocals, which sail through the tangle of noise and blissed-out guitars like dry ice in a Cocteau Twins music video.
String Machine, Hallelujah Hell Yeah
This Pittsburgh band evokes the earnest emotionalism and large-band arrangements of the mid-aughts, when legions of bands with untenably large lineups attempted to make their versions of Funeral. But whereas most of those groups collapsed under the weight of their outsized pretensions — including Arcade Fire themselves — Hallelujah Hell Yeah is full of sunny melodies and insistent hooks that go down easy. At just 27 minutes, it’s the kind of album that you feel compelled to spin again immediately once it’s over.
Sharon Van Etten, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong
Three years after her most overt rock record, 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow, one of indie’s most reliable singer-songwriters finds a way to balance her recent aggressiveness (particularly on the flinty “Headspace”) with the familiar sensitivity of her early work. With an artist as dependable as Van Etten, it’s easy to take a record like We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong for granted. It’s “merely” another very good release from a very good artist. But it continues to hit harder and deeper with each listen.
Kurt Vile, (Watch My Moves)
In the 2010s, Vile earned comparisons to classic rockers like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty thanks to durably hooky indie hits like “Baby’s Arms,” “Wakin On A Pretty Day,” and “Pretty Pimpin.” But lately, he’s favored dreamier grooves and free-floating arrangements that let songs drift for several minutes, as if lost in a stoned reverie. The languid epics of 2018’s Bottle It In signaled this change in direction, and (Watch My Moves) fortifies it.
Wednesday, Mowing The Leaves Instead Of Piling ‘Em Up
This North Carolina band — which includes the previously mentioned MJ Lenderman — is quickly becoming one of the fascinating roots-leaning indie acts. This covers album speaks to their uncommon range and ambition — country legends Roger Miller and Gary Stewart commingle with The Wipers’ Greg Sage and Adore-era Smashing Pumpkins. (Finally some justice for “Perfect.”) But my favorite tracks meet somewhere in the middle of those poles — the garage-rock take on Drive-By Truckers’ “Women Without Whiskey” and the gorgeous meltdown of Chris Bell’s immortal “I Am The Cosmos,” which just might be my new favorite version of that classic.
The Weeknd, Dawn FM
Back in January, I called my new favorite album by The Weeknd the record of 2022. That was certainly ill-advised, given that there were still another 11 months to go in the year at that point. But for now, I’ll stand behind it. There are possibly two or three albums I like better, but Dawn FM is so massive and seductive that I’m certain that this “Big ’80s” ear candy with a morbid undertow will come to define how we remember this year in retrospect. The highest compliment I can pay Dawn FM is that even the spoken-word tracks are worth hearing.
Wet Tuna, Warping All By Yourself
Matt Valentine is one of the modern masters of the intersection of indie rock and jam band music. While he’s best known for the group MV & EE, he’s lately been putting out music under the name Wet Tuna, taking a psych-rock approach to ’70s funk and jazz fusion. The third Wet Tuna album, Warping All By Yourself, is the best realization yet of this aesthetic. If you dig Herbie Hancock, Don Cherry, Songs In The Key of Life-era Stevie Wonder, and the funkiest and most coked-out disco elements of late ’70s Grateful Dead, you will enjoy this.
Wilco, Cruel Country
Now that we’re 20 years removed from Wilco’s ultimate “we’re not alt-country” mike drop, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Jeff Tweedy is more comfortable than ever with adopting country signifiers on Cruel Country. Enter Nels Cline, iconic indie-noise guitarist and (who knew?) accomplished country picker, whose plays like Don Rich with a Glenn Branca edge on “Falling Apart (Right Now).” And Tweedy follows suit, adopting a slyly funny lyrical voice on the record’s twangiest numbers. “Once I cut off my arm / I sewed it back on all wrong / Now I don’t have to bend / To reach the bottom shelf / When I need a story to tell,” he croons in “Story To Tell,” reviving the loopy John Prine-style humor of early Wilco classics like “Passenger Side” that he largely abandoned on subsequent records.
Nilüfer Yanya, Painless
This buzzy British singer-songwriter was a breakout artist back in 2019, thanks to an eclectic amalgam of influences suggesting that Yanya ultimately wanted to fuse the slinky grace of Sade with the sort of chunky and lovably punk anthems associated with Blink-182 and Libertines. On Painless, she continues to mix and match different styles and vibes, with strikingly vivid results. On stunning songs like “Stabilise” and “Midnight Sun,” she channels mid-period Radiohead through the lens of ecstatically dark-hued millennial pop.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Love isn’t easy. Sometimes one partner is too sure while the other lacks the certainty and confidence to commit to the risk of giving their heart over to someone else. Rae Sremmurd, in their first release ahead of their upcoming album Sremm4life, takes this topic head-on with their new video “Denial.”
The visual is set with Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi performing the record on a beach in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. In some scenes, there are beautiful women either at their side or posing in front of a window as the sun illuminates their skin. The two get their own time to get some fun poses in as well. A certain staircase should look very familiar, as it is the same one Snoop Dogg and Pharrell sat on in the classic “Beautiful” video.
While Swae Lee has been relatively active since Rae Sremmurd’s last release, 2018’s Sr3mm, Slxm Jimmi and the duo as a whole have taken a significant hiatus. There were previous rumors that they were going to split up, but the announcement that Sremmlife4 silenced all of those. Rae Sremmurd hit the ground running upon their debut with LPs Sremmlife and Sremmlife 2, so there is much anticipation for what is to come in this next chapter.
Check out the video for “Denial” above.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
