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Bruce Springsteen Joins Joe Ely on Song From New Album: Listen
The country singer-songwriter Joe Ely has announced a new album, Driven to Drive, which arrives on August 2. Leading the LP is a new song featuring Bruce Springsteen, “Odds of the Blues.” Listen to the track below. Ely and Springsteen have performed together sporadically since the early 1990s....
To All Trains
To All Trains is a Shellac record. Expectedly, thankfully, obviously, unapologetically, unremarkably a Shellac record. A 180-gram Touch and Go Records—“made with 100% Recyclable Material which is PVC & Phthalates Free and uses 79% less CO₂ to produce”—Shellac record. Of course, the crucial difference with...
Room Under the Stairs
Zayn’s solo career has been a series of fits and starts, a product of a modern pop landscape where being a talented singer is far from enough to capture the zeitgeist. It may have been a mistake to initially define himself by what he was not: not a Simon Cowell shill, not a squeaky-clean boy band idol, not above laborious concept albums. His chosen character of the brooding, afflicted Don Juan, provocative as it may be, is not exactly unique; even the Weeknd has begun working beyond its creative limits. And with ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS, Zayn seems to be finally casting off that tried-and-tested persona, at least to an extent.
Snake
ESG, Liquid Liquid, and LCD Soundsystem; cowbells, scratchy guitars, and hi-hats—we all know how dance punk goes. But what if there was another way? This is the question that Atlanta producer Nikki Nair poses on Snake, having recently turned his attention to rethinking 2-step on his 2023 EP with Hudson Mohawke, Set the Roof.
Listen to Myaap and Yonaa’s “Choppa Sound”: The Ones
I look forward to Milwaukee lowend rapper team-ups the way some people look forward to NBA stars playing together at the Olympics. This time around it’s the 414 area’s self-proclaimed “dancing queen” Myaap with Yonaa, the sister of Certified Trapper, who has a spicier tongue than her brother but the same homemade feel. Together on “Choppa Sound,” they hop on a buckwild beat that sounds like one of those old Ching Team GarageBand instrumentals used in Milwaukee dance battles and go back and forth on turbo mode. They sound as if they were in the booth tussling over the mic to see who could get the most twerk commands out. It’s a draw.
Boundary Is the Dominican Republic’s Leftfield Techno Prodigy
Pitchfork contributing editor Isabelia Herrera’s column covers the most captivating songs, trends, artists, and scenes coming out of Latin America and its diaspora. On a tucked-away street in the heart of Santo Domingo, surrounded by the Gothic architecture of 500-year-old basilicas and former residences of colonial officials, a speaker-frying party was about to begin. It was a humid December night in 2017, and the producer Boundary, born Josué Suero, was gearing up to play snippets of his album Fantasmagórico, a collection of bubbly IDM and sparkling techno tracks. A smattering of club kids, industry folk, and underground beatmakers gathered on the sidewalk outside the venue to smoke. The lineup that night featured other Dominican experimentalists, including Kelman Duran and Diego Raposo. I was excited to catch both Duran and Raposo’s sets, but I’ll admit I was most curious about Boundary, who, at 17 years old, had suddenly emerged as the scene’s resident prodigy.
Horse Jumper of Love Announce New Album, Share Video for New Song “Wink”: Watch
Horse Jumper of Love have announced a new album: Disaster Trick, the Boston slowcore band’s fourth full-length LP, arrives August 16 via Run for Cover. Featured on the LP are March’s “Gates of Heaven” and today’s new song, “Wink,” which has contributions by Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman. Check out Brittany Reeber’s video for the track below.
Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against Former Recording Academy CEO Dismissed at Accuser’s Request
Last week, on Friday, May 17, a federal judge dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit against former Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow, according to court records viewed by Pitchfork. The judge—Analisa Torres, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York—dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning the case can be refiled.
Youth Lagoon Shares Video for New Song “Lucy Takes a Picture”: Watch
Trevor Powers is back with another new Youth Lagoon song, following January’s “Football.” Today, he’s shared “Lucy Takes a Picture,” which he co-produced along with Rodaidh Mcdonald. He also reunited with his longtime creative partner Tyler T. Williams for its music video, which you can watch below.
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
This is the least we’ve known about Billie Eilish going into an album. For years, the star’s journey was documented in yearly Vanity Fair interviews and candid documentaries; even Carpool Karaoke visited Eilish’s childhood home, where she still lived until recently. That seeming lack of boundaries between the pop star and her audience is increasingly standard for megastars, but Eilish’s intimate music made her a particularly strong candidate for parasociality. Her 2021 album, Happier Than Ever, was largely a response to public scrutiny, more reserved and mature than her 2019 debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? In the ensuing years, Eilish kept a low profile, surfacing every now and then to soundtrack a Pixar film or win an Oscar before retreating to work on the next record.
Valentino
The emergence of New York City’s sexy drill movement couldn’t have come at a better time for Staten Island native wolfacejoeyy. Though he’d already begun to hash out the particulars of his sound by the time Cash Cobain and Chow Lee dropped their pioneering 2 Slizzy 2 Sexy mixtape in 2022, joeyy was undergoing artistic growing pains. For the past few years, he’d been chopping it up in group chats with the underground’s then-buzziest upstarts, like SoFaygo, Slump6s, and Yung Fazo, exploring the moment’s pastel-streaked, melodic trap sound. Though he had a knack for writing the sticky, falsetto-laden choruses favored by his peers, joeyy’s more ambitious output indicated a desire to break from SoundCloud rap’s superficial and often overstimulating conventions.
What a Devastating Turn of Events
Professional declutterer Marie Kondo operates by a simple principle: Every item in her home must “spark joy” when she holds it. If not, it’s on the chopping block. The Japanese term for this now-popular phrase is “tokimeku,” which also literally describes a fluttering heart. Zimbabwean-English artist Rachel Chinouriri dedicates a song to Kondo on her debut, What a Devastating Turn of Events, now released in a deluxe edition. “I’m getting rid of everything/Starting with you,” she declares, her husky voice barely breaching a whisper. Throughout the album, Chinouriri is taking inventory—chasing the tingly feeling that comes with upending the status quo.
The Juliana Hatfield Three Announce 30th Anniversary Become What You Are Tour
The Juliana Hatfield Three have announced a North American tour to celebrate the “30th-ish anniversary” of Become What You Are, which came out back in 1993. Juliana Hatfield, drummer Todd Philips, and bassist Dean Fisher will perform the album, in full, in addition to other songs from their catalog, while opening for Soul Asylum. The trek begins on September 30 in Boulder, Colorado, and ends on November 1 in Rutland, Vermont. See the complete list of tour dates below.
Billie Eilish, Los Campesinos!, and More: This Week’s Pitchfork Selects Playlist
The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we’re sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff’s favorite new music. The playlist is a grab-bag of tracks: Its only guiding principle is that these are the songs you’d gladly send to a friend.
Vince Staples Announces New Album Dark Times, Shares Video for New Song: Watch
Vince Staples has announced a new album titled Dark Times. It’s his final album on Def Jam. The follow-up to 2022’s Ramona Park Broke My Heart will arrive this Friday, May 24. The Long Beach rapper has also unveiled the new song “Shame on the Devil” with a split screen music video, featuring a close-up shot of his face on the right while he raps the song’s lyrics, and a shot of people’s shadows cast on the corner of a room on the left. Check it out below.
AMAMA
Midway through Crumb’s new album, there’s a transitory, 49-second track called “Nightly News.” It’s groggy-sounding, a hazy sampler of cable-news synths and this-just-in swells; you get the sense that you’ve just woken up on the couch, and the TV is taunting you with whatever happened this time. Millions of cockroaches accidentally released from nearby research facility? Serial slasher last seen purchasing potato chips at local mini-mart? Nothing, it turns out: The song ends before revealing what the news actually is. It feels particularly apt for the New York band, who’ve spent the past near-decade churning out hypnotic epics with a sinister edge. In 2019, frontwoman Lila Ramani told Pitchfork that she wouldn’t “chill” to her group’s output. Dreamy as it is, their music is a wake-up call.
Hex Dealer
In their music video for “In the Wawa (Convinced I Am God),” New York four-piece Lip Critic play avaricious record label execs, who realize the band (also portrayed by themselves) has stolen their masters. With the execs on their tails, Lip Critic incinerates the CDs with blowtorches, rendering them nothing more than melted plastic. The video exemplifies how the band approaches creation: like a hydra, cutting off one line of influence only to sprout new strands to experiment with. On their debut record, Lip Critic throws everything at you—dance punk, digital hardcore, heavy noise—and see if it’ll stick. At just over 30 minutes, this is an album of endurance and pure adrenaline; the mayhem makes Hex Dealer an exhilarating listen.
P.S. Fuck You
Yhapojj has the kind of outsized persona where he takes on the identity of a wolf, is anointed to knighthood via sword emojis in TikTok comments, and has a show shut down by NYPD—only to take the music into the streets and the skate park. Since 2020, he’s been triangulating his sound, somewhere between Isley Brothers, ILoveMakonnen, and Bangerz-era Miley Cyrus. On P.S. Fuck You, the 20-year-old Huntsville, Alabama rapper comes back down to Earth with a vulnerable and sometimes silly project that’s ultimately sort of fun but not that deep.
Watch Sabrina Carpenter Perform “Espresso,” “Feather,” and “Nonsense” on Saturday Night Live
Sabrina Carpenter was the musical guest on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jake Gyllenhaal. She performed her breakout single “Espresso,” as well as a medley merging her songs “Feather” and “Nonsense,” both of which appear on her 2022 deluxe album, Emails I Can’t Send Fwd:. The pop star also played Daphne in a Scooby-Doo-themed skit, alongside host Jake Gyllenhaal as Fred and cast members Sarah Sherman as Velma, Mikey Day as Shaggy, and Andrew Dismukes as an animated Scooby-Doo. Watch Carpenter’s performances, that sketch, and her SNL promo video with Gyllenhaal and Bowen Yang, below.
Judy at Carnegie Hall
In a photograph snapped on the evening of April 23, 1961, a line of disembodied hands reach out to grasp for Judy Garland onstage at Carnegie Hall. They belonged to a group of men whose allegiance to the star was as passionate as it was fraught; as bound up in their identification with her strength and humor as with the many troubles of her life. Their cohort could only be spoken about in code, and in time, a whole vocabulary emerged to describe them: friends of Dorothy, the boys in the band, Best Judys. To journalists and outsiders they were objects of amusement, if not outright scorn: “the boys in tight trousers,” “ever-present bluebirds,” or as one writer bluntly called them, “a flutter of fags.”
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