Gangrene: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
Gangrene are here to crack brains like they were blown speakers. So says Oh No near the top of his fourth collaborative album with The Alchemist, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. The Oh No-produced highlight “Oxnard Water Torture” slides…
Six Organs of Admittance: Time Is Glass
As with all Greek myths, there are several contradictory versions of the story of Hephaestus, but in each one, he was exiled from paradise and forced to toil at his craft on the Earth before he could go home, transformed…
LustSickPuppy: CAROUSEL FROM HELL
LustSickPuppy—who makes a madcap meld of punk, digital hardcore, rave, and rap—typically exerts a hyper-confident lusty indignation. It’s not that Tommy Hayes, the mind behind LustSickPuppy (LSP to the heads), doesn’t ever mention romance or melancholy within the turbulence of…
Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant takes a swipe at Taylor Swift’s ‘disappointing’ music: She doesn’t have ‘famous songs’
Music By Nicholas Hautman Published April 25, 2024, 9:36 a.m. ET Taylor Swift has nothing on Michael Jackson, according to Neil Tennant. The Pet Shop Boys vocalist took a swipe at the global superstar while comparing her to the late…
Billie Eilish on the joys of self-pleasure: ‘I should have a Ph.D. in masturbation’
Music By Chuck Arnold Published April 25, 2024, 7:52 a.m. ET What was she made for? Well, “jerking it” apparently. In a new cover-story interview with Rolling Stone, Billie Eilish reveals that masturbation is one of her secret obsessions. “TMI,…
St. Vincent: All Born Screaming
Annie Clark says that a performer’s job is to “shock and console.” For years, she was doing much more of the former than the latter. Her first four records—an impeccable run from 2007’s Marry Me through to 2014’s St. Vincent—played…
English Teacher: This Could Be Texas
On This Could Be Texas, English Teacher outline a landscape burdened by prejudice, the cost-of-living crisis, mental health issues. The band’s name couldn’t be more apt—it’s here to school us in 50 minutes. They sweep up myriad literary and cultural…
Lord Spikeheart: The Adept
A veteran of Nairobi’s metal scene and frequent collaborator within the Nyege Nyege collective of experimental electronic artists, Martin Kanja speaks multiple dialects of extremity. As Lord Spikeheart, the vocalist and producer has made bristling grindcore with his now defunct…
Taylor Swift’s ‘TTPD’ relationship breakdown: Songs about Joe Alwyn, Matty Healy and Travis Kelce
Music By Alexandra D’Aluisio and Sara Whitman Published April 19, 2024 Updated April 19, 2024, 12:27 p.m. ET Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” has arrived two months after she surprised fans at the 2024 Grammys with the announcement of…
Chanel Beads: Your Day Will Come
Chanel Beads is what you might call a scene band, the project of producer Shane Lavers who’s associated with the much-maligned lower Manhattan micro-neighborhood of Dimes Square. They play packed shows in lofts and bars full of kids born in…