Category: News

We all know the demon-fighting duo the Warrens have been made popular by Patrick Wilson’s perfect face, but were you aware that the Warrens actually existed? Whether or not they really battled Satan himself remains unknown, but they did inspire 2021’s The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which was based on true events.

The trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson took place in 1981 and was the first known court case that tried to use demonic possession to prove the defendant’s innocence. The real court case inspired a book, the aforementioned Conjuring sequel, and Netflix’s new documentary, The Devil On Trial. Maybe one day there will be a special titled The Devil Takes A Mugshot but that has not happened yet.

The Devil On Trial chronicles the strange case of David Glatzel, an 11-year-old who was allegedly possessed after visiting his sister’s new rental home. David warns the family that a ghost has told them not the move there, and then the pre-teen begins to act strange and insist that a demon was out to get them. This is when Ed and Lorraine Warren stepped in, performing a seemingly botched exorcism in which the demon then went to possess Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who then started to exhibit strange behavior.

Eventually, Johnson murders his landlord in a rampage, and the Warrens testify that it was because the devil was inside him. Did I mention that this took place in Connecticut? It all makes sense when you take that into consideration.

While The Devil Made Me Do It has Wilson doing his best demon-hunting face, The Devil on Trial brings in actual witnesses of the event so you can decide if you believe that the devil really made him do it after all. See for yourself on Netflix. Or don’t and just go out and get possessed by a demon! It’s the time of year for it anyway.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Sticks and stones can break bones, and, for many, words can really hurt. Several musicians, including Megan Thee Stallion, SZA, and more, have used their platforms to highlight the difficulty of managing their mental health with social media usage. Today (October 17), “Speed Drive” singer Charli XCX joins the cause.

In a video shared to her official TikTok page, she shared a special message to her friend Sam Smith after witnessing their disheartening online bullying first-hand.

“Hi everyone. I’m about to release a song with Sam Smith [‘In The City’], and the experience has been really interesting. Never in my life have I seen someone receive so many hateful comments online. It’s been really disheartening,” said Charli.

She continued, “At the same time, I am so proud of Sam’s ability to withstand that because I know I certainly couldn’t withstand it. So, I want to say: Sam, I love you, I love our song together, and I am in awe of your strength.”

After getting choked up, she closed the video with a message to viewers, “Yeah, I hope everyone has a lovely day.”

“In The City” is out on 10/19 via Asylum Records/Atlantic. Find more information here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In a further sign of Republican in-fighting, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan lost the first round of voting for Speaker of the House after 20 of his fellow GOP congressman voted against him on Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks to Matt Gaetz, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted, but now the party can’t decide on who should replace. At one point, Donald Trump was being floated as a temporary replacement, and more concernedly, the former president was into it. However, that option quickly faded as more GOP congressman threw their hat in the ring. Steve Scalise launched a failed bid, and now, Jordan is looking at the same outcome.

Via CNN:

There are still a group of lawmakers publicly opposing Jordan, including GOP lawmakers still angry that a small group of Republicans forced out McCarthy and then opposed the speaker nomination of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who initially defeated Jordan inside the GOP conference, 113 to 99.

“I can’t get past the fact that a small group in our conference violated the rules to get rid of Kevin, and then blocked Steve,” said Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska. “You don’t have a process where I play by the rules and these other people can’t and then they get what they want. That’s not American. Americans want fair play and rule of law.”

While Jordan goes off to lick his wounds and attempts to stir up more votes, people on social media were having a field day with his loss after the congressman boasted to reporters that he felt “really good” about his chances going into the vote.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via CNN)

Ecuadorian artist Helado Negro is releasing a new album, Phasor, next year. Ahead of the album, Helado has shared a new video for a song called “LFO.”

“LFO” stands for “Lupe Finds Oliveros” and is inspired by Lupe Lopez and the minimalist composer and sonic meditation practitioner Pauline Oliveros. Lopez was Mexican-American woman known for her work building amplifiers for Fender Guitars in the ’50s.

“Lupe’s amps are sought after, her care and touch apparently harnessed a special sound from this design,” said Helado in a statement. “I fell in love with this story and this legacy and the mythology surrounding it. How craft touches us so deeply in the smallest ways. Deep care for the littlest things makes all the difference.”

In the song’s accompanying video, Helado is seen dressed up in a large garment, wearing a long wig and beard as he navigates the universe.

In support of the upcoming album, Helado is currently playing some festivals, and will embark on a tour next year. Tickets are available for purchase here.

You can see the video for “LFO” above and the Phasor artwork and tracklist below, along with Helado Negro’s tour dates.

1. “LFO”
2. “I Just Want to Wake Up With You”
3. “Best For You And Me:
4. “Colores Del Mar”
5. “Echo Tricks Me”
6. “Out There”
7. “Flores”
8. “Wish You Could Be Here”
9. “Es Una Fantasia”

10/29/2023 — Vigo, Spain @ Radar Estudios
10/30/2023 — Madrid, Spain @ Sala Mon Live
10/31/2023 — Sevilla, Spain @ Sala X
11/01/2023 — Málaga, Spain @ Sala París 15
11/02/2023 — Alicante, Spain @ Fundación Mediterráneo – Aula de Alicante
11/03/2023 — Valencia, Spain @ La Rambleta
11/04/2023 — Barcelona, Spain @ WOLF
11/05/2023 — Zaragoza, Spain @ Espacio Las Armas
11/08/2023 — Paris, France @ Trabendo (Pitchfork Music Festival Paris)
11/09/2023 — London, United Kingdom @ Hackney Church (Pitchfork Music Festival London)
11/10/2023 — Segrate, Italy @ Circolo Magnolia
02/09/2024 — Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
02/10/2024 — Orlando, FL @ The Social
02/12/2024 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
02/13/2024 — Austin, TX @ Empire Control Room & Garage
02/14/2024 — Fort Worth, TX @ Tulips FTW
02/17/2024 — Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
02/18/2024 — Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy and Harriet’s
02/19/2024 — San Diego, CA @ Music Box
02/21/2024 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco
02/22/2024 — San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
02/23/2024 — Sacramento, CA @ Harlow’s
02/25/2024 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
02/26/2024 — Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
02/29/2024 — Tallinn, Estonia @ Paavli Kultuurivabrik
03/02/2024 — Vilnius, Lithuania @ Kablys
03/03/2024 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ Loppen
03/05/2024 — Berlin, Germany @ Hole44
03/06/2024 — Warsaw, Poland @ Jassmine
03/09/2024 — Luxembourg, Luxembourg @ Kulturfabrik Krefeld eV
03/12/2024 — Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique
03/14/2024 — Utrecht, Netherlands @ Ekko
04/21/2024 — Asheville, NC @ Eulogy
04/22/2024 — Chapel Hill, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
04/23/2024 — Washington, DC @ The Atlantis
04/24/2024 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
04/26/2024 — Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
04/28/2024 — Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
04/30/2024 — Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall
05/01/2024 — Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club
05/03/2024 — Denver, CO @ Globe Hall
05/04/2024 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Urban Lounge

Phasor is out 2/9 via 4AD. Find more information here.

GOP candidates used to clamor for a President Trump endorsement. Heck, they even clamored for an ex-President Trump endorsement for awhile, but these days? Perhaps those 90+ indictment charges are finally having an effect. And it’s turning into another fiasco for Congress.

Also worth a quick refresher thought: Back in January during the chaos that led to several votes (and nearly a fight) before Kevin McCarthy was elected House Speaker, Jim Jordan imagined that the Founding Fathers would be proud. Does he feel that way this week, after his first vote going up for House Speaker has ended in a big “nope” from Republicans?

At least, 20 of them decided that it’s not worth going there with Jordan, which means that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries won more votes. This is surely not what Trump expected on Tuesday morning while urging the GOP to vote for Jordan. “Jim Jordan will be a GREAT Speaker of the House,” he wrote on Truth Social. “As everyone knows, I have long ago given him my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

Not only did this “truth” not age well, but it curdled immediately upon landing. Has Trump really lost his so-called Golden Touch with the House GOP beyond the MAGA crowd? Yup, and people are dunking all over him for it.

Unfortunately, another music marriage is biting the dust. According to the Us, “The Tree” singer Maren Morris has filed for divorce from her husband and former collaborator, Ryan Hurd, after five years of marriage. Although the shocking report was revealed today (October 17), Morris reportedly submitted the court documents on October 2.

So, here’s the alleged reason behind Morris and Hurd’s divorce: Morris cited irreconcilable differences as the cause for the split in the paperwork retrieved by the outlet. Outside of the details shared by the publisher, at this time, nothing else is known. Neither Morris nor Hurd have released a formal statement regarding the break. Morris is outspoken when it comes to social issues, but one could imagine when it hits closer to home, she wants to keep the divorce close to the vest.

Morris and Hurd met in 2014 while writing Tim McGraw’s song “Last Turn Home.” A year later, their professional friendship blossomed into a romantic connection.

Fans took to social media to share their response to the news.

“Not going to let it ruin my day. In other words, not going to spend the 5 minutes on Google finding out who they are,” wrote one user.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO, the one music couple I thought would last [crying emojis],” penned another.

“Marriage is a hard thing to keep together. I hope they recover from this,” remarked another.

WARNING: Spoilers for Invincible Season 1. Obviously.

With Invincible Season 2 fast approaching, let’s take a look back at the Season 1 finale and its wildly brutal twist that has left fans hankering to see what comes next in this hit adaptation of the Robert Kirkman comic.

After weaving back and forth between whether Nolan Grayson a.k.a. Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons) is evil, Invincible finally lays its cards on the table as the man who was seen as Earth’s most powerful protector reveals the truth to Mark/Invincible (Steven Yeun). Despite Nolan’s claims to the contrary, the Viltrumites are not a benevolent society. Instead, they’re a ruthless empire conquering the universe through unrelenting force. Nolan’s mission is to rule Earth, not be its hero. Humans mean nothing to him, including his wife Debbie (Sandra Oh), and now, it’s time for Mark to fulfill his genetic destiny by helping dear old dad dominate the planet.

Mark is gonna take a hard pass. Unfortunately, he severely underestimates both his father’s genuine disdain for lower life forms and his severe propensity for violence. It’d be wrong to describe what happens next as a fight because what mostly happens is a beating of unparalleled proportions. Nolan not only bludgeons Mark with his fist, but he proceeds to use his son’s body to mete out wide scale carnage. He slams Mark into occupied buildings, crushes people right in front of his face, and at one point, holds him up to a speeding subway and forces Mark to watch as bodies are splattered across his own.

The beating only stops when Nolan has a frustrating (to him) moment of empathy where he remembers Mark’s first baseball game. Despite years of Viltrumite conditioning, he flies off into space, unable to continue pummeling his son. Of course, Mark is basically a bloody pulp, so there’s not a whole lot left to work with.

After physically healing from his father’s assault — mentally will be a whole other ball game — Mark slowly eases back into his life. However, he soon learns from Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen) that Mark has already given hope to a coalition of planets for being the first Viltrumite to go against the empire. An empire that will surely return to work and finish the job that Nolan could not.

Invincible Season 2 premieres November 3 on Amazon Prime Video.

Rick and Morty returned for its seventh season this month, though a lot has changed since season six. After co-creator Justin Roiland was fired from the animated series, a new crew of voice actors took over, with many fans wondering if they would sound as good. Spoiler: they sound almost exactly the same. So everyone can just relax now and enjoy the show.

As of right now, the only way to re-watch new episodes of Rick and Morty is if you buy them or stream them on the Adult Swim app. But it won’t be that way forever: past seasons are all on Hulu and Max, meaning the seventh will also end up there soon and you’ll be able to hear Hugh Jackman play … Hugh Jackman. What did we expect, really?

Using high-tech deduction skills (looking at their past release dates) the seventh season will be available to stream on Hulu and Max sometime in May 2024. Season six aired in December 2022 and hit streaming in May 2023, so we can assume it will be about the same amount of time in between.

The good news is that the series was already renewed for an eighth season, so we’ll probably be doing the same exact thing next year. Consistency is key here.

(Via Decider)

Timothée Chalamet sat down for a new GQ profile in honor of his upcoming role in Wonka alongside Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa. In the process, he addressed the awkwardness of filming a cannibal romance movie at around the same time that those Armie Hammer allegations surfaced. Additionally, he discussed how much he enjoys Top Gun: Maverick, which he claims to have seen “eight times” while filming Dune: Part Two.

Hmm. That’s a bit of an obsession. Chalamet further admitted that he even rented out a theater in Budapest and took the Dune: Part Two cast and crew with him. And it seems like the feeling might be mutual because Chalamet revealed that Tom advised him to brush up on heavy stunt training. The Mission: Impossible runner even sent him a ton of names and phone numbers, so that Chalamet could maybe learn how to drive off motorcycle off a cliff, too. Would that be going overboard? Perhaps, but that’s the Cruise way:

“After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email,” Chalamet said. It included a Rolodex of sorts of all the experts he might need for stunt training. A motorcycle coach. A helicopter coach. “He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So it’s up to you. The email was really like a war cry.”

I think we can all agree that Timothée Chalamet does not need to drive off a cliff. Nor does he need to perch atop a speeding train while taking a break from filming. Only one person feels the need for speed to do so, and we all know who that would be. To quote Highlander, “There can be only one [dude who climbs the Burj Khalifa].”

(Via GQ)

When Ben Gibbard emerged for his second set of the night at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, everything hadn’t quite changed. Sure, the changeover from his Death Cab For Cutie Transatlanticism performance to his take on Give Up with The Postal Service meant a wardrobe change — the all-black attire gave way to lily-white — and the band members shifted with Jenny Lewis and Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) coming to the stage. But Gibbard and guitarist/keyboardist Dave Depper remained in their configuration for both sets, and Gibbard’s tight-af skinny jeans maintained their throwback appeal, regardless of their color. And though the sonic reference points might have shifted from guitar rock to synth-pop, Gibbard’s throughline as a lovelorn songwriter at the height of his power in 2003 proved that maybe these two albums always belonged on the same stage together, two sides of the same coin that propelled Gibbard out of the indie spotlight and into the world of major labels, celebrity partners, and marathon running. (Again, I’m thinking about the fit of those pants. Dude’s legs looked incredible!)

It was a night of nostalgia that didn’t feel particularly nostalgic. Gibbard didn’t tell stories about this period of his career, now 20 years in the rearview. He nodded to Tamborello, a product of Santa Barabara, for having changed his life, but left it to the audience to piece together exactly how, simply assuming that the fabled story of The Postal Service’s creation was as ingrained in the audience as stories of massive floods were in ancient cultures. We welcomed Jen Wood to the stage to duet “Nothing Better,” something a bit rare for this tour that made this performance of the classic album feel complete. But mostly, he let the music and songwriting stand for themselves, allowing it to showcase an air of timelessness that its detractors might scoff at. But, to these ears, Gibbard’s longevity outshines many of his peers from that era, and the number of people that still pack large venues around the country to hear them only bolsters that take.

The show also raised an interesting question: why don’t more artists open for themselves on tour? The answer is likely that it would just be too exhausting to perform two different projects on the same night, but shows like this or the marathon multi-set appearances from King Gizzard and Phish take some wind out of the argument of the physical demands. One of my favorite all-time concert experiences was back in the aughts catching The New Pornographers in San Francisco touring Twin Cinema, and they had their bandmate Dan Bejar open the show with a Destroyer set. But since then, the art of supporting yourself has been highly underutilized. We never got the Metric/Stars/Feist/Broken Social Scene tour that makes so much sense on paper or Neko Case playing a solo set while on tour with The New Pornographers. The fact that Feist and Case can probably sell more tickets as solo acts than with their bands might play into that. We did see Atlas Sound open for Deerhunter in 2015 but never got anything like a Panda Bear/Avey Tare/Animal Collective tour that would offer up a complete view of these songwriters’ output.

The list can go on and on, but if anything, this Postal Service/DCFC run shows that it might not be too late for any of these concept tours to take place (in addition to Santa Barbara, the bands played three nights at the Hollywood Bowl, essentially moving over 50K tickets in the greater Los Angeles area). And as more contemporary artists delve into side and solo projects, perhaps they’ll be more open to marrying those worlds, rather than keeping them apart. Who says no to Lauren Mayberry offering her solo material before a Chvrches set, or Buck Meek showcasing his lone songwriting alongside Big Thief (the band already treats Adrianne Lenker’s solo output at canonical, but hell, have her do a solo set, too). The extended universe of The National could practically offer up a festival’s worth of tunes. And while Gibbard’s great physical shape might make it a bit more conceivable to provide the endurance needed for these sorts of events, none of these artists are getting any younger, and event concerts feel more “of the moment” than ever. The next indie-rock gold rush just might be in the form of concept touring.

Check out exclusive photos from The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie from the Santa Barbara Bowl below.

The Postal Service

Death Cab For Cutie

Pedro The Lion

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.