Choose your location
Pitchfork
Sti.ll
Why remake a classic? Comparison to the original is likely to cast even an extraordinary achievement in a bad light. Or so thought the composer and engineer Joseph Branciforte when Taylor Deupree approached him with the grandly ambitious—or perhaps wildly misguided—idea to create an acoustic version of his 2002 album Stil.. That record was a high water mark of the glitch movement, born of the moment in the late ’90s when personal computers became home studios. Deupree endlessly looped a handful of electronic samples slightly out of sync, allowing tiny digital artifacts to phase in and out of time like a Steve Reich composition at microscopic scale. Stil. is remarkably warm-sounding and emotive for such resolutely digital music, but impossible to imagine being played by actual humans. And yet, on October 10, 2021, Deupree sent an email to Branciforte requesting just that: “not sure if you’re familiar with the album... it’s very very repetitive... and i’d want it all played... not played for a bar and looped in pro tools.” Branciforte reluctantly agreed—on the condition that he could back out if it didn’t work.
Diddy Seen Attacking Cassie in Newly Published Surveillance Footage From 2016
Note: This article contains references to and descriptions of apparent physical assault that some readers may find disturbing. CNN obtained and published hotel surveillance video from March 2016 that appears to show Sean “Diddy” Combs physically assaulting his then-girlfriend, the pop and R&B singer Casandra Elizabeth “Cassie” Ventura. The graphic footage comes from the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles, according to CNN.
Billie Eilish Shares New “Lunch” Video: Watch
Billie Eilish likes to pair her album releases with music videos for standout songs. On they day her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, came out, in 2019, she shared the “Bad Guy” video. A couple of years later, on Friday, July 30, 2021, she dropped the visual for the Happier Than Ever title track. Today, Hit Me Hard and Soft’s “Lunch” gets the music video treatment. Watch the Eilish-directed video below.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse to Release Long-in-the-Works Archival Album Early Daze
More than a decade after mooting the project in his book Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young has announced the release of Early Daze, an album of mostly unreleased recordings from the beginnings of Crazy Horse. The record includes un-vaulted versions of six songs, each presented in its first incarnation: “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” “Winterlong,” “Wonderin’,” “Look at All the Things,” “Helpless,” and “Down by the River.” Below, listen to another of the album’s tracks, “Everybody’s Alone”; that recording was released with a different mix on Neil Young Archives, Vol. 1 (1963-1972). Early Daze arrives June 28.
The The Announce Tour and First Album in 24 Years, Share Song: Listen
The The are back with Ensoulment, their first album since 2000. The Matt Johnson–led band will hit the road, too, traversing North America in the autumn, between dates in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. Below, find the dates and listen to “Cognitive Dissident,” from the LP. The album arrives September 6 (via Cinéola/EarMusic).
5 Takeaways From Billie Eilish’s New Album Hit Me Hard and Soft
In the three years since Billie Eilish’s sophomore album, 2021’s self-reflective, jazzy Happier Than Ever, the pop phenom hasn’t lost an ounce of cultural relevance. Thanks to her Grammy- and Oscar-winning song for last year’s Barbie soundtrack, the crushing ballad “What Was I Made For?,” the 22-year-old is as ubiquitous as ever, putting the hype for her new music at an all-time high. After she announced her third album last month—the curiously titled Hit Me Hard and Soft, to be released with no advance singles or videos—she revealed in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music that she and her brother and longtime producer, Finneas, had “made an album without any or much thought of other people.” One couldn’t help but wonder if a surprising pivot was in store.
Tom Waits Reunites With Jim Jarmusch for New Film Father Mother Sister Brother
Tom Waits will star alongside Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Charlotte Rampling, and Mayim Bialik in Jim Jarmusch’s new movie Father Mother Sister Brother, Variety reports. Jarmusch’s follow-up to The Dead Don’t Die is a “comedy interwoven with threads of melancholy,” told as a triptych, per its description. It will also have a musical component, Jarmusch has said.
8 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Billie Eilish, Crumb, Shellac, and More
With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Billie Eilish, Crumb, Shellac, Beth Gibbons, Mach-Hommy, Rapsody, Wolfacejoeyy, and Lip Critic. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Lives Outgrown
Beth Gibbons has made inactivity into an art form. In Portishead she sang as if hanging onto the microphone for dear life, her voice the embodiment of languorous misery. Her recorded output since then has arrived at a snail’s pace and her reputation has grown with each fallow year. Following the release of Portishead’s Third, in 2008, Gibbons has performed Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 with the Polish National Radio Symphony, featured on Kendrick Lamar’s “Mother I Sober,” and done precious little else in public. Gibbons does nothing that she doesn't have to and she does it in her own sweet time, which makes the arrival of Lives Outgrown feel like a revelatory occasion.
I Am Jordan
When I. Jordan spoke to Pitchfork in 2020, they weren’t getting their hopes up about the future. Their lofty ambition was to live in Berlin—“like every other DJ”—but they doubted they’d ever be successful enough to make that viable. They were, of course, being modest. By then, Jordan had already released a string of EPs that gushed with energy and emotion, blending UK rave styles with trance and the sunny thump of French house. Crucially, there was a personal element, too. 2020’s For You was a dedication to their younger self, an out-of-place queer teenager in the working-class northern English town of Doncaster. Four years later, Jordan has blown past those early doubts. Since 2021, they’ve found a home for their music on Ninja Tune, the prestigious and long-running London powerhouse. They’re now a fixture on the international club and festival circuit; Mixmag listed them as one of the 25 DJs who defined 2023. All the while, Jordan has kept their personal story front and center, chronicling their gender transition on social media and offering a real, humble, and empowering presence to their fans.
Listen to Miley Cyrus’ New Cover of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”
A24 Music’s new compilation Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense is out now. Opening the album is Miley Cyrus’ new cover of Talking Heads’ Talking Heads: 77 classic “Psycho Killer.” Listen to the new track below. Earlier this...
Empire of the Sun Coming Back With New Album, Share Video for New Song: Watch
Empire of the Sun have announced a new album: Ask That God, the Australian duo’s follow-up to October 2016’s Two Vines, is out on July 26 (via Capitol). Below, watch the video for the LP’s second single, “Music on the Radio.”. Ask That God includes Empire...
Omar Apollo Details Album, Shares Video for New Song: Watch
Omar Apollo has officially announced his second studio album: God Said No comes out on June 28 via Warner. The follow-up to Ivory includes last month’s “Spite,” a Mustafa collaboration called “Plane Trees,” and the new song “Dispose of Me.” Watch a live performance video of the latter track below.
The Most Anticipated Music Festivals of 2024
Summer is around the corner, and, as your more fastidiously organized friends may have made you aware, that means it’s time to plan for festival season. Peruse a list of offerings for every taste below, and get ready to pack your bags, whether with sunscreen, Wellies, or—should your journey bring you to the intemperate festival fields of England—both.
Lifeguard Announce Spring and Summer 2024 Tour
Lifeguard have announced spring and summer tour dates. The Chicago trio begins its tour in San Francisco on Thursday, June 13. The group will continue with North American shows into July, culminating in a performance at Pitchfork Music Festival on Saturday, July 20. Lifeguard will then play a handful of concerts in the United Kingdom and Europe. See the rock band’s tour dates below.
Listen to Wolfacejoeyy’s “Alexis Texas”: The Ones
For a song named after a porn star, “Alexis Texas” is unexpectedly innocent and only a little horny. Staten Island’s Wolfacejoeyy uses his weightless vocals (he’s got some OVO R&B in him) to review the roster of girls he wants to spoil—and steal from their boyfriends, if necessary. PoWR Trav and Jaystolaa set the dreamy tone with a soft, unrushed take on the seductive drill beats popularized by Cash Cobain. Just imagine Joeyy bouncing around a summertime party, flirting with whoever catches his eye. “Got 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 bad bitches want a piece of me,” he sings, sounding sweet even when in player mode.
U.S. House of Representatives Passes TICKET Act Calling for Better Pricing Transparency
The United States House of Representatives passed the Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing (TICKET) Act yesterday (May 15), marking a key step in the bill’s journey to becoming a law. A summary of the bill, written by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, reads as follows:
The Hollow
When Keeley Forsyth sings, you become acutely aware of the body emitting her voice. Not what it looks like, necessarily—not its age or shape or gender or skin color—but its raw physicality, its fundament of bones and sinew. She sings with her whole chest: diaphragm tightening, air filling the lungs, muscles twisting up the length of her throat, unleashing a presence that drips with the blood of the flesh that produced it. Some singers try to make their art sound effortless; Forsyth emphasizes the physical strain.
Mayday
Myriam Gendron’s Mayday marks the obvious evolution of a songwriter who cut her teeth busking Leonard Cohen songs in the Paris Metro, whose 2021 release Ma délire - songs of love, lost and found reimagined traditional Quebec folk songs. These are direct, grounded dispatches from the collective unconscious, melodies for sweeping floors or felling trees or mourning that might have existed forever. Between her 2014 debut, Not So Deep as a Well, where Gendron put Dorothy Parker’s poetry to music, and the new record, the Montreal-based artist has sharpened her set of timeworn tools: voice and guitar strings, as fleet and restless as a sparrow in her hands.
Dust Devil
Across Dust Devil, a notionally ambient electronic double album, Naemi—a Kansan now based in Berlin—crafts songs that rise and fall gently. Each one has a strong point of view but a brittle feel, like they began as sharp statements before the producer whittled them away to nothing. Indeed, like weather.gov says rather poetically about the tornado-like phenomenon that gives the album its name, each song arrives in a haze and when “depleted or the balance is broken,” “will break down and dissipate.” It’s a soft and magical album, big on ambition and small in scale, which is, in my opinion, the proper amount of each.
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments. It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency: our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. We strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation. Join us in shaping the news narrative together.