By the beginning of 1999, Doug Martsch had already accomplished incredible things. Built To Spill's singer, songwriter, and guitarist was still just 29 years old, but as recapped in this Spin feature, his largely excellent discography included "three albums with Treepeople, his caterwauling first band formed during the brief period he lived in Seattle... three more with the Halo Benders, a pairing...
If you had to pick one '90s popular music act that, success notwithstanding, should've been far luckier than they were, TLC would have to be on your shortlist. Few groups of the era had their uncanny blend of chart success and tragic turmoil: As their sophomore album, CrazySexyCool, shot singles "Creep" and "Waterfalls" to the top of the charts and sold nearly two-dozen million copies worldwide, Lisa...
In the Backstreet Boys' video for 1998 mega-hit "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)," the group's tour bus breaks down outside what turns out to be a haunted house. Reluctantly, they decide to stay the night, after which "Thriller"-style horror hijinks ensue. The boys in the band appear in costume as various kinds of ghoulish creatures. If you watched MTV at all at the dawn of the TRL era, you remember...
Welcome back. It's a new year. A fresh start. So, for the third installment of our 2018 wrap-up, we're going to be looking at... I'm kidding. Kind of. I mean, we could do another catch-up column since January usually feels slow, right? Is this not the season when metal goes into hibernation and hits snooze for a month or two? Is this not...the dead zone? If I had to guess, I'd say January contains...
In 2017, the Aussie psych-rock mob King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard pulled off something incredible. At the beginning of the year, they promised that they'd release five new albums before the year was over. And then they did it. And all the albums were worth hearing. (For my money, the best of them was Polygondwanaland, and it was straight-up great.) Last year, there was chatter about another new album,...
Big news on the Ariana Grande bad-tattoo front: Ariana Grande tried to fix her bad tattoo, and she somehow made it worse. Earlier this week, Grande attempted to celebrate her new #1 single "7 Rings" by getting the words "7 Rings" tattooed on her palm in Japanese kanji. But apparently, what she really got was "small charcoal grill." The "7" character, and the "rings" character, when put together, apparently...
We can now safely call the elliptical enigma Cass McCombs one of the great American songwriters; he's been cranking out fascinating and intensely unique jams for the better part of two decades. Next week, McCombs will follow up 2016's Mangy Love with the new album Tip Of The Sphere, which works as one more dive into one of our more unpredictable musical minds. Musically, Tip Of The Sphere ranges from...
When Kacey Musgraves released Golden Hour last March, she tapped into a seemingly bottomless well of critical hosannas. Yours truly was personally responsible for a significant percentage of that praise. I rhapsodized about Golden Hour again and again and again and again, and then, when we named it the best album of 2018, I did it one more time. So you will not be surprised to learn that I was enthusiastically...
Decidedly, Cherry Glazerr’s Clementine Creevy and I are not tea connoisseurs. But on a peculiarly warm day in January, we’re learning a lot about the aromatic beverage.
Kim Gordon has long been one of our most intimidating rock stars. From her work with the legendary Sonic Youth to her side gig Free Kitten and current project Body/Head, she’s always been able to wield harsh noise, anti-patriarchal vitriol, and rock star cool with ease. But even though she can summon the feedback to…
There’s been something happening in Dublin. Across 2014 and 2015, a group called Girl Band started to generate international buzz thanks to their idiosyncratic blend of noise-rock, post-punk, and techno-inspired rhythms. Here was a new sound, one nobody associated with a specific generation or scene in Ireland. Girl Band then went silent for several years,…
We’ve Got A File On You is a new reboot of an old-school Stereogum franchise. Once called Annotated Media Guide, these are interviews in which artists share the stories behind the extracurricular activities that dot their careers: acting gigs, guest appearances, random internet ephemera, etc.
Almost 10 years ago, Sharon Van Etten released…
For someone who can be so verbose, Bradford Cox is the first person to admit he doesn’t have all the answers — at this point, he’s not even pretending to.
Chris Simpson doesn’t think he’s ever met a casual Mineral fan, but the potential for millions of them briefly existed in the minds of people like Sylvia Rhone, Jimmy Iovine, and Clive Davis. Even your parents can probably name the careers shepherded by these legendary A&Rs: Santana, Bruce Springsteen, 2Pac, Eminem, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Metallica,…
Sasami Ashworth is determined to make it. In a sense, she already has. She’s scored short films and commercials, taught in an elementary school, and collaborated in the studio with artists like Vagabon, Hand Habits, and Wild Nothing. And for two-and-a-half years she was a member of Cherry Glazerr, playing the synths that leveled out…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…
Wayne Coyne is always busy. Whether working on official albums or a smattering of side projects, the Flaming Lips — the band he’s now been a part of for 35 years — never seem to stop moving. “With us, it’s always like five things at one time,” he says from his home in Oklahoma City,…
Phoebe Bridgers won a lot of people over quickly. Amidst releasing her debut Stranger In The Alps last year, she immediately made her presence known: A gifted singer-songwriter often diving into confessional, melancholic depths while maintaining a sometimes-dry, sometimes-quirky sense of humor online and elsewhere. She was gifted, and she was interesting. We wound up…
Right now, it certainly seems as if Open Mike Eagle can’t be stopped. Since he got started in earnest at the beginning of this decade, he’s never really taken a break from releasing projects in various forms. His run of albums and EPs since 2014, in particular, has shown the arc of an artist getting…
“It certainly has been … a surprising year,” Lindsey Buckingham joked from the stage at Manhattan’s Town Hall last week. Fleetwood Mac’s erstwhile singer and guitarist is playing shows in support of Solo Anthology, a career-spanning collection that’s somehow his first-ever hits package 37 years into a successful solo career. The just-released 6xLP version of…
Snail Mail was already having a quick ascension. Last year, when Lindsey Jordan was just 18, she garnered a ton of buzz and acclaim for her reissued 2016 EP Habit, eventually earning her a deal with Matador for her full-length debut. She seemed like one of the indie world’s bright new stars, and we named…
When someone says they want to show you a piece of Old New York, there are certain locations you might imagine. Maybe a far-flung corner of Brooklyn or Queens, less touched by waves of gentrification. Perhaps one street hidden away in the long-lost stretches of the Lower East Side, still openly marked by all the…
Tracking Down is a Stereogum franchise in which we talk to artists who have been out of the spotlight for a minute.…