Lil Nas X has announced that his debut album Montero is set to arrive on September 17. According to pre-save links for the LP, Montero will contain 15 tracks, including the previously released singles ‘Montero (Call Me by Your Name)’, ‘Sun Goes Down’, and ‘Industry Baby‘. The album’s trailer, which you can watch below, teases an as-yet-untitled new song.
“creating this album has been therapy for me,” Lil Nas X wrote on Twitter. “i’ve learned to let go of trying to control people’s perception of who i am, what i can do, and where i will be. i’ve realized the only opinion of me that really matters is my own.”
creating this album has been therapy for me. i’ve learned to let go of trying to control people’s perception of who i am, what i can do, and where i will be. i’ve realized the only opinion of me that really matters is my own.
Sigrid has shared a new single called ‘Burning Bridges’. The Norwegian singer’s latest follows her track ‘Mirror’, which came out in May and was remixed by Kelly Lee Owens. Listen to ‘Burning Bridges’ below.
“It’s inspired by one of the toughest things I’ve been through,” Sigrid said of the new song in a press release. “It’s a song that’s about the point where you just have to say in a relationship, ‘you know what, let’s just finish this’. That moment when enough is enough, and you need a clean break.”
In addition to the new track, Sigrid has announced her biggest-ever UK, Ireland, and European tour. Tickets can be purchased here, and you can find her tour schedule below.
Sigrid 2022 Tour Dates:
Mar 13 – Manchester O2 Apollo – Manchester
Mar 14 – Usher Hall – Edinburgh
Mar 16 – SSE Arena Wembley – London
Mar 18 – Arena – Dublin
May 30 – Razzmatazz- Barcelona, Spain
May 31 – Les Docks – Lausanne, Switzerland
Jun 1 – Fabrique – Milan, Italy
Jun 3 – Arena – Vienna, Austria
Jun 5 – Roxy – Prague, Czech Republic
Jun 7 – Huxley’s – Berlin, Germany
Jun 9 – Carlswerk Victoria – Cologne, Germany
Jun 13 – La Cigale – Paris, France
CHVRCHES were the musical guests on last night’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where they delivered a performance of their single ‘Good Girls’ from a hillside location. Watch it below.
‘Good Girls’ is taken from CHVRCHES’ upcoming studio album Screen Violence, which is out tomorrow (August 27) via Glassnote. A music video for the track debuted last month. The follow-up to 2018’s Love Is Dead also includes the previously released singles ‘He Said She Said’ and the Robert Smith collaboration ‘How Not To Drown’. The band recently teamed up with John Carpenter for a new 7″ single featuring CHVRCHES’ take on ‘Turning the Bones’ and Carpenter’s remix of ‘Good Girls’.
Explosions in the Sky were approached to create the score for Big Bend: The Wild Frontier of Texas, which captures the lives of animals in the band’s home state, back in 2019. They released their most recent studio album, The Wilderness, in 2016. Their last soundtrack was for the 2013 film Lone Survivor.
Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack for Public Television) Cover Artwork:
Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack for Public Television) Tracklist:
1. Chisos
2. Climbing Bear
3. Woodpecker
4. Spring
5. Flying
6. Camouflage
7. Swimming
8. Stories in Stone
9. Summer
10. Nightfall
11. Owl Hunting
12. Sunrise
13. Big Horns
14. Autumn
15. Cubs
16. Pallid Bats
17. Rains Legacy
18. Bird Family
19. Winter
20. Human History
Marissa Nadler has announced her next album: The Path of the Clouds arrives October 29 via Sacred Bones/Bella Union. The new song ‘Bessie, Did You Make It?’ is out now, alongside a video directed by Thou’s Mitch Wells. Watch and listen below.
The Path of the Clouds features contributions from Nadler’s piano teacher Jesse Chandler, a member of Mercury Rev and Midlake, Mary Lattimore, Simon Raymonde, Emma Ruth Rundle, Amber Webber, and Milky Burgess. The record will mark Nadler’s first solo LP of original material in three years, following 2018’s For My Crimes. Earlier this year, she released the covers album Instead of Dreaming.
The Path of the Clouds Cover Artwork:
The Path of the Clouds Tracklist:
1. Bessie, Did You Make It?
2. The Path of the Clouds
3. Couldn’t Have Done the Killing
4. If I Could Breathe Underwater
5. Elegy
6. Well Sometimes You Just Can’t Stay
7. From Vapor to Stardust
8. Storm
9. Turned Into Air
10. And I Dream of Running
11. Lemon Queen
Bnny is the Chicago-based outfit led by singer Jess Viscius alongside her sister Alexa Viscius and friends Tim Makowski and Matt Pelkey. Jess started the project while working as an art director after someone’s guitar had been left at her apartment, which prompted her to take up songwriting. Over the course of several years, she wrote songs inspired by a tumultuous relationship, then the void left by the death of her partner. Bnny’s debut album, produced by Jason Balla of Dehd, is boldly titled Everything: half of it was written after her partner’s passing, half in its wake. From the haunting opener ‘Ambulance’ to the garage-inflected ‘Take That Back’, its songs are honest in their simplicity, leaving Viscius to drift through the fog of melancholy. Citing The Velvet Underground as an influence while also evoking Mazzy Star and Soko, Viscius’ whispery, fragile voice finds ways of moving through the omnipresent cloud and into the realm of promises and dreams. Every now and then, she floats back down, realizing they’re no substitute for the real thing. Closer ‘Voice Memo’ is as raw as it gets: just 54 seconds of Viscius and a man harmonizing over delicately strummed guitar.
We caught up with Jess Viscius for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about her earliest musical memories, the process of making Everything, and more.
Do you mind sharing some of your earliest musical memories?
I have a vivid memory of being a little girl, and I had gotten this ABBA CD. I was laying in my bed listening to my pink Walkman, trying to memorise all the words to this song, ‘Take a Chance on Me’. And I was like, “If I can get all these words memorised, I’ll just be so cool.” And when you’re a kid, you’re already like insane, so I was just bouncing off the walls in my bedroom being like, “Ah, this music is crazy!” That’s my first real memory of really loving music and feeling its power.
What kind of music did you grow up listening to, besides ABBA?
ABBA was when I was really young, but then when I got into high school is when I would say I got more seriously into music, and I grew up on like, The Strokes and Modest Mouse and Blonde Redhead and Bob Dylan. I have a twin sister, and she always had much better taste in music than me, and then I eventually just got into cool music myself because she was always showing me good stuff. We started going to shows from Chicago – we lived in a suburb of Chicago, so we would drive out when we were 16 and go to shows. And those were just formative years of my life where I was experiencing live music and just seeing what music could offer you – you know, a sense of community.
How do you reflect on that time in general?
That was just an incredible time. I feel like when you’re young and you listen to music it’s just so formative and it really shapes your identity. And I think the music I listened to in high school, it still holds up and it still resonates me with me. Music is so comforting, especially when you feel like you’re this lonely kid in the suburbs; it just feels really isolating, and it was just validating to hear songs about certain things and relate it to myself as a teenager who was dealing with depression and whatever else.
How do you feel like you’ve changed since then?
It’s funny, because I feel like I’m an entirely new person but also exactly the same. I still have the same problems – you know, they’ve shifted, like either they’re bigger or smaller. You think about yourself when you’re young and everything seems really challenging. When I was younger, I always was really depressed and I didn’t know why. And then as an adult, you sort of learn to take things day by day and learn how to focus on yourself and learn more about self-awareness and self-care. It all comes in waves, you know, it’s just a wild journey.
When you first started writing songs, was it also a way to express those emotions?
Yeah. I feel like I’m a really guarded person and I have a hard time being vulnerable in my day-to-day, but music allows me to get in touch with that side of myself that I can’t easily access. That’s why it is therapeutic, because I can sit down and start writing a song – I think I’m in that camp of songwriters who are like, I don’t really write the songs, they just come to me. So sometimes, I’m just surprised by what I’m feeling and I’m like, “Wow, where did that even come from?”
Was that the case with Everything as well?
Yeah, I feel like this album is incredibly vulnerable, and that in and of itself is frightening to me. It feels like I’m letting the world read my diary or something. But I think that part of being an artist is being vulnerable and being honest, and that’s just what felt right for me with this album. But it’s funny because as we’re practising again, I’m like, for our next album, it would be cool to write songs that are a little more lighthearted, just so we could have more fun in the performances. Because it’s just sort of exhausting to play these songs, emotionally, for me.
Before we get more into the album, could you take me back to the origins of the project?
I feel like it did sort of happen accidentally, where it was just casually like, “Oh, let’s start a band.” And then I became more invested in it and just getting really excited and making so many friends in the music community, and then it just became my whole world. And now I feel like that’s the world exist in, the Chicago music scene is just a community. I think I really like challenging myself, so as somebody who didn’t play guitar it was exciting to teach myself and just watch these people play and be like, “Oh, I can do this. I want to get up on stage and sing and write songs.”
Was it harder than you thought to actually do that?
No, I think it’s pretty easy. And that’s what’s inspiring about music – I think it was Lou Reed who said like, you need to know three chords or something to be a musician, and it’s so true. I think that my favourite types of songs are simple songs and I think you can maybe see that from our album, it’s really simple and stripped-back. But I don’t think you need to be an excellent musician to play music; I think anybody who has the will and the excitement easily start a band with their friends. I feel like everybody should do it – I’m always so curious, you know, like seeing people on the street and thinking about, “Oh, what kind of song would that guy write if you gave him a guitar? What would he have to say?”
If you saw yourself as a stranger on the street, what kind of music would you see yourself making?
Probably like, “This girl writes indie music.” [laughs] Just based on how I dress, it’s like, “Oh, okay, I get it.” It’s funny, actually, my sister and I were DJing the other night, and the person we were DJing with was looking at somebody’s Spotify profile and then before he played the song like he had made like a conclusion about what the music would sound like based on like the profile photo, and then he heard it and he’s like, “Oh, this is not at all what I was expecting.” It’s funny how the image is really tied up to the sound, or sometimes it’s not, and that’s an interesting dynamic. So maybe for our next album I’ll completely change my look and it’ll be really weird, it won’t match up with the music at all.
As a visual artist as well, I assume that dynamic is something you always have in mind.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like visuals are always right there with the music for me.
Can you walk me through the timeline of making the album?
Some of the songs are from like 2016, when I first started writing the songs. The story of the album is the story of my relationship with my partner Trey, who passed away. There are songs that I wrote before he passed away, and then I took a break, and then there are some songs that are afterwards. I wasn’t sure this album was ever gonna get made, honestly. Like, I had given up on music at a certain point and I was just like, “I don’t know why I’m doing this anymore, I don’t find any joy in it.” But I think that was also just like a symptom of, you know, what I was experiencing, and when some time had passed I realised I want to keep working on this, like this is really important. And then the newer songs on the album are more from like 2019 and 2020. So I took a took a good amount of time in between.
You named the album Everything, partly, from what I read, because you didn’t want it to be solely defined by the grief and the melancholy that that comes up in the second half of the album, or the first songs that you wrote. When you got back into writing the other half of the album, did it feel like a chance to capture the full spectrum of emotions that come with grief?
Yeah, and that’s partly why I named the album Everything. I didn’t realise at the time, but when I look back at, it is sort of like going through the stages of grief, and just accepting myself, the good parts and the bad parts, and just finding value in the journey that led me to finishing the album. I’m such a nostalgic person, and even though some of the earlier songs in the album were these resentful sort of songs, I cherish those memories that I had with Trey. So every song is really important to me, and so specifically tied up to a part of my life, that I still cherish the memory even though it might have not been positive one at the time or when I was writing the song. The naming behind the album – I like that the word itself is sort of like finite, you know. This is essentially everything I have, everything I’ll have with this person. It’s sort of all-encompassing.
When you listen or play these songs now, do you see any of them in a different light?
Yeah, I see the early ones in a new light, where I see the fault in myself. I think at that point in my life I was younger and angry and really negative, and I just didn’t really see what was in front of me. And so I look back now and I sort of kick myself and like, that was such like a beautiful time in my life. I also feel like when somebody dies, you sort of obsessively think of what you could have done differently. And a lot of that insight about these songs is from that especially, is just thinking about how things could have changed.
I think that one of the best ways to honour somebody’s memory is to just take the best parts of them and try to see that in yourself or try to be that. And so I think that I often think of Trey and the best parts of him and the parts that I really loved and I’m like, “How can I live like that, be like that?” I think I definitely grew up a lot from the time I wrote those first songs to now and learned a lot from my relationship with Trey.
Do you think making the songs themselves taught you something that maybe you wouldn’t have realized otherwise?
I feel like from the latter half of the album, I was dealing with a lot of guilt that I think in my day-to-day life I wasn’t necessarily facing. So, writing those songs helped me acknowledge that was something that I was really struggling with and just helped me get help, basically, and continue to work through these emotions.
Is there a moment on the album that you would isolate as being particularly special to you on a personal level?
I think the song ‘Dreaming’, I see this song as me pleading with whoever to let me see Trey again. I was just like, “I wanna see you in a dream,” you know, and then it was also me acknowledging my guilt. That was written during the heaviest moments of grief, when I was wishing that things were different and not fully accepting anything yet.
I appreciate you talking about this and being so open. Is there anything that we didn’t have the chance to talk about that you’d like to share?
I want to say that my partner was also a musician, and he was truly an incredible musician. His name is Trey Gruber. I feel like I need to credit him, and he was super influential in my life and the way I see the world and see music. Just listen to his music, too, if you can. It’s really good.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Kanye West, who recently filed to change his name to Ye, has launched the Donda Stem Player, a $200 device that will be released alongside his much-delayed album Donda. According to the rapper’s website, the device allows users to “customize any song” by controlling vocals, drums, bass, and samples, isolating parts, adding effects, or splitting “any song into stems.”
As Pitchfork points out, West mentioned the device during an interview with Zane Lowe back in 2019, while images and details of the Stem Player were also leaked this March.
The rotating image of the Donda Stem Player on Ye’s website includes the line ‘Yeezy Tech x Kano’. Kano is a British company known for creating buildable computers for creativity and education; Kano’s CEO, Alex Klein, wrote some lyrics for West’s Jesus Is King track ‘Water’.
The Donda Stem Player will apparently ship out with the release of Donda and will be available in the “US and UK for now.” Tomorrow night (August 26), West is hosting a third listening party for the record at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
According to Lea, ‘partner’ is “a song about moving through a memory… an involuntary memory that steals up on you the night after a rager (which takes place the morning after the song ‘damn’).”
Ada Lea’s new album, which will follow her 2019 debut what we say in private, is due for release on September 24 via Saddle Creek.
It’s an hour after midnight on June 11, 2021, the vaccine side-effects are just starting to kick in, and Lorde has emerged from her four-year hiatus with a new single called ‘Solar Power’. Considering my predicament, it’s no wonder I was among the many people who found it hard to connect with its relaxed, beachy vibe on first listen, but it was obvious the song was a grower, and its cultish video suggested her long-awaited third album might have an interesting conceptual bent. But beneath the discourse lay the simple truth that the singer known for evoking the unbearable angst of growing up now seemed perfectly happy, a fact that fuelled a small but vocal minority with a certain kind of envy by the time of the album’s release. When you’re busy scrolling through social media to keep up with all the takes, how could you not feel a pang of resentment at the person who’s managed to cut out all that noise to connect with the beauty of our fragile natural world?
But Lorde isn’t here to offer spiritual transcendence. In fact, she actively rejects that role. Belying Solar Power’s pleasant, sunny disposition is her usual introspection and self-awareness; she kicks off the album by introducing herself as a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash” who refuses to bear the weight of responsibility imposed on her. “Now, if you’re looking for a savior/ Well, that’s not me/ You need someone to take your pain for you?/ Well, that’s not me,” she sings, before embracing a vague but communal sense of direction: “Let’s hope the sun will show us the path.” Lorde’s writing on the record is vivid and compelling, particularly when she charts her own journey to success, as in ‘California’, which opens with Carole King presenting her with the Song of the Year award at the 2014 Grammys and ends with her returning to her native New Zealand to get away from the spotlight.
Solar Power finds Lorde reuniting with her Melodrama collaborator Jack Antonoff, who also co-produced Clairo’s recently released sophomore LP. But the proximity of the two albums – as well as Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever – is most interesting for the ways in which they grapple with fame, retreating into a mellower, more laidback sound that communicates both casual detachment and a fondness for another era. Here, those reference points are a little bit harder to pinpoint: the record is as inspired by ‘60s and ‘70s pop acts like the Mamas and the Papas and the Bee Gees as what she calls the “turn-of-the-century beachside optimism” of All Saints, S Club 7, Natalie Imbruglia, and Nelly Furtado, but they manifest as more of a vibe than a distinct, homogenous aesthetic. Its latter half, less breezy and darker than the first, makes for an interesting contrast, but Lorde fails to effectively accentuate that dynamic. Instead, she remains committed to a certain looseness that comes at the cost of strong hooks and resonant melodies.
There are glimpses of that euphoric rush. When Lorde summons that familiar drum machine on ‘Fallen Fruit’, the whole thing pulses back to life. “Come on and let the bliss begin,” she chants on the title track, echoing the “boom boom boom” that she broadcast on her previous album. ‘Solar Power’ turns out to be the kind of song that demands repeated listens, a highlight in an otherwise underwhelming album. Instead of channeling the movement and urgency of Body Talk-era Robyn, she invites her for a spoken word outro on ‘Secrets From A Girl (Who’s Seen It All)’, a song in which she addresses her younger self that ends with the lines: “When you’re ready, I’ll be outside/ And we can go look at the sunrise/ By euphoria mixed with existential vertigo? Cool…” You’re left wishing the album went to that place instead of alluding to it in an awkward interlude.
Though the lyrics can occasionally lack depth and specificity, the most persistent issue with Solar Power is that its languorous production does little to elevate them. ‘The Man With the Axe’, which Lorde originally wrote as a poem, contains images both evocative and radiant: “With my fistful of tunes that it’s painful to play/ Fingernail worlds like favourite seashells/ They fill up my nights and then they float away,” she sings, but the music is too listless to be immersive. ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’ opens with one of her most striking lines – “Got a wishbone drying on the windowsill in my kitchen/ Just in case I wake up and realize I’ve chosen wrong” – but even as it touches on lofty subjects like the cyclical nature of time, the track as a whole feels static and weightless. Though it sometimes falls short, however, the instrumentation also allows Lorde to lean into both the vulnerability and lightness of her voice, which shines on the chorus of ‘California’ or the heartfelt ‘Big Star’, a tribute to her late dog, Pearl. The way she harmonizes with a background choir that includes Clairo and Phoebe Bridgers throughout adds not just texture but a sense of unspoken intimacy to the music, too.
Lorde doesn’t have to replicate the emotional transcendence of an album as larger-than-life as Melodrama, but the path she carves out on Solar Power remains blurry and uncertain. It feels willingly out of touch and out of time, but Lorde seems so comfortable keeping a distant aura of mystique that she fails to fully express the immensity of both the joys and anxieties that burble beneath the surface. The problem is that it often doesn’t go far enough: its quiet composure rarely scans as tranquillity, yet there’s not even a hint of messiness to suggest a greater depth of feeling. It’s no surprise that, when she emulates a kind of detached persona on ‘Mood Ring’, satire becomes its own emotional shield. “You’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun,” Lorde sang on ‘Liability’, a line as poignant as it is confrontational. Here, she seems content to simply bask in its warm glow.
Nirvana‘s surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic and the estate of Kurt Cobain have been sued by Spencer Elden, who appeared as a baby on the cover of 1991’s Nevermind. As TMZ reports, Elden has sued the above parties, as well as photographer Kirk Weddle and the labels involved in the album’s release, alleging that the artwork is childhood pornography.
The lawsuit, filed August 24, claims that Elden has sustained “injuries” and “lifelong damages” as a result of the artwork, including “extreme and permanent emotional distress” as well as “interference with his normal development and educational progress” and “medical and psychological treatment,” according to legal documents uploaded by Pitchfork. He also alleges that the band promised to cover his genitals with a sticker, though the album was ultimately released without one. Elder is asking for damages of at least $150,000 from each party named in the lawsuit, attorney fees, and a trial by jury.
Elden has recreated the image at various points in his life and had “Nevermind” tattooed on his chest. However, in a 2016 interview with GQ Australia, he revealed his perspective on the artwork had shifted around the time of his most recent photo reenactment. “It’s fucked up. I’m pissed off about it, to be honest,” he said. “Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice.”
