SZA has returned with a new song called ‘Hit Different’ featuring Ty Dolla $ign. Produced by the Neptunes, it marks her first new single as lead artist since 2017’s CTRL and arrives with an accompanying self-directed music video. Check it out below.
In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, SZA spoke about working with the Neptunes and recording at DJ Khaled’s house while he was at this year’s Super Bowl. “I can’t really wrap my head around the experience and I think more so I’m fangirling off of having a track produced by probably the most formative producers and artists for me when I was growing up,” she said. “I just cannot fucking believe that because it’s my childhood dream and I can’t believe that I made things I that fuck with with someone that really changed my life.”
A few weeks ago, SZA called out her label Top Dawg Entertainment and its leader Terrence “Punch” Henderson for delaying the release of new music, adding that her relationship with the label has been “hostile.” The new track is out via TDE and RCA. “Just wanted to start sharing stuff… first time directing… thank you to everyone involved that brought my heart to life… thank u for putting up w me #TDE,” she tweeted upon its release.
A. G. Cook has released a new single called ‘XXoplex’, taken from his upcoming album Apple. It arrives with an accompanying music video directed by longtime PC Music collaborator Timothy Luke. Check it out below.
The electronic producer describes ‘XXoplex’ as the “dark, industrial heart” of the album. “As I’ve spent more time with the track over the years, I’ve started to enjoy its softer side, a silliness, a sense that anything could happen,” he explains. “As Newton’s law of EDM gravitation states, every track is bound to drop at some point.”
Along with the new track, Cook has also announced a new virtual livestream event called Appleville. It’s set to take place on September 12th and will feature appearances from Cook, Charli XCX, 100 gecs, Clairo, and more. It will be open for all, but if you purchase a Golden Ticket (via Bandcamp), you’ll get access to the “moshpit” as well as downloadable recordings of the concert and other exclusive music. All proceeds will be donated to Mermaids and Black Cultural Archives.
Just last month, A. G. Cook released his massive, 49-track septuple album7G. His upcoming album, which also includes the previously unveiled single ‘Oh Yeah’, will arrive on September 18th.
Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, which she also wrote, is the award-winning A24 film Lady Bird. Saoirse Ronan is Christine MacPherson, who much prefers the title Lady Bird, is determined to make the most of her senior year at her Catholic high school in Sacramento. She joins the school theatre program with her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein), where she meets Danny O’Neill (Lucas Hedges). They enter into a romantic relationship until the girls spot him kissing another boy.
Meanwhile, Lady Bird dreams of attending a prestigious college far from home, despite her mother Marion’s (Laurie Metcalf) insistence that they can’t afford those schools. This becomes the central conflict that drives Lady Bird’s decisions for the entire film. At Marion’s orders, Lady Bird starts a job at a local café where she meets Kyle (Timothée Chalamet). She abandons Julie to spend time with Kyle and popular girl Jenna (Odeya Rush), even though she clearly doesn’t fit in.
The film uses its shadowy cinematography to tell this coming-of-age story in a clever and nuanced way while still highlighting the bright flame of Lady Bird’s youth and impetuous character. Here are fifteen vivid stills from the film.
Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner and Crying’s Ryan Galloway have teamed up for a surprise new quarantine project called BUMPER. Announced just yesterday, the duo’s first EP, titled pop songs, is out today (September 4). Listen to the project in its entirety below.
Though Zauner and Galloway live just blocks away from each other in New York City, they haven’t seen each other in person since the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier this year. They made pop songs entirely online, sharing tracks back and forth via email.
ANOHNI has shared a new track called ‘R.N.C. 2020’, a protest song inspired by last week’s Republican National Convention. Listen to it below.
“What’s really happening?” the artist wrote in a statement to The Guardian. “Toxic levels of corruption and collusion are devouring the US. Christian extremists want to turn the country into a religious state straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale.” About the track in particular, she said: “The sound of this track ‘R.N.C. 2020′ is pretty rough. The loop is from a concert I did at a club in New York City in my early 20s. So that’s me screaming in the past… for the present. Can you visualize a different path forward? We All have to focus on this now, with everything we’ve got.”
Vania is one of the most exciting, humble artists to come into the indie scene in the past year. Vania’s first release Surrender marked her on the map as the name to watch; now with her second song Wonder released, she joined us for an interview to talk about it.
Firstly, how are you, what have you been up to during quarantine?
I’m doing ok, definitely been on a rollercoaster of productivity and emotions since quarantine started! In the beginning, I was just excited that I had so much time on my hands to make music with no distractions or social obligations. I’d wake up and be at the computer until it was time to go to sleep. Burned out pretty fast doing that. I’m still adjusting but getting the hang of balancing self-care with productivity. Taking walks, stepping away from electronics. Nature grounds me so I need to go say hello to the trees more often.
Wonder marks your second single, did anything change in the process of making this single compared to Surrender?
Usually, I’ll write, record, and produce at the same time, which is how my first single Surrender came to be. With Wonder, I’d had the lyrics and the melodies laid out, but it needed a home production-wise. I didn’t know at first what I’d wanted for it sonically, so it was a collaborative effort getting it to the finish line.
For the song, you worked alongside Elliot Jacobson, the co-producer of the song, how does the collaboration begin on a song like Wonder?
It was a ton of back and forth, bouncing around ideas. A producer named Julian Tobon reimagined the chords and helped direct the vibe. I fleshed out which sounds I’d wanted, and recorded the synths and basses at home. When I handed the production to Elliot, it had almost no drums; there was only a part in the bridge that I called the “Phil Collins” drum. At the time I was pretty set on that being the only beat in the whole song, but he tested out a few ideas (grateful for that) and it finally clicked. There are so many magical parts he constructed, one of my favs being that he made my backing vocals sound like weird ghosts.
Your songs are very personal and explore your nostalgia of time spent at an eating disorder treatment center, what influenced your decision to craft something so emotional and close to you?
This was actually the first time I’d written explicitly about my eating disorder. It was a few years into recovery and I was having a really hard time with the mind/ body battles. I was doing what I had to do to stay physically healthy, but I was struggling with disordered thinking. In therapy you’re asked, what do these thoughts serve? What are you craving? For me, it was that recovery was getting hard and I wanted the comfort of being cared for. So I let myself feel nostalgic about the times I’d spent at treatment centers, where I was incredibly held and I didn’t have to worry about feeding myself. Other people were doing that for me. I thought it would be triggering to write about, but it actually made me realize how far I’d come; I could sit with those thoughts, ride them out and not act on old coping behaviors. Although the lyrics are coming from a darker place on the recovery spectrum, I hope to balance it out with dialogue like this. And maybe it can make someone going through a difficult time in their recovery feel less alone.
With the song now released, what do you feel is next for you as an artist?
I shot a music video for Wonder with my twin sis, Christa, that I can’t wait to share. Some more singles for my project are getting prepped for release and then I have a few features coming out that I’m really excited for! Other than that, I plan on continuing the balancing act and navigating the new norm of life in 2020.
Thanks a ton to you, Modestas, and to Our Culture for supporting my project and giving me the chance to speak more about Wonder!
Glad you enjoyed us and congratulations on the release!
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on September 4th, 2020:
Big Sean, Detroit 2
Big Sean is back with his first album in three years, Detroit 2, out now via G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam Recordings. The Detroit rapper’s follow-up to 2017’s I Decided. features contributions from Travis Scott, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Diddy, Young Thug, Anderson .Paak, Post Malone, Wale, and more. It also includes three songs called ‘Story’, which feature Dave Chappelle, Erykah Badu, and Stevie Wonder respectively, as well as the previously unveiled collaboration with the late Nipsey Hussle, ‘Deep Reverence’. The project is a successor to Sean’s critically acclaimed 2012 mixtape, Detroit, which came shortly after his debut LP Finally Famous.
Bill Callahan, Gold Record
Bill Callahan has come through with his seventh studio album, Gold Record, via Drag City. Marking the songwriter’s follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, his first album in six years, the 10-track LP was written while Callahan was touring in support of his last album and was recorded with a band that included guitarist Matt Kinsey and bassist Jaime Zurverza. All but one song from the album had already been unveiled; every Monday up until the record’s release, Callahan shared one song from the album, which also includes a reworking of Smog’s ‘Let’s Move to the Country’, from the 1999 album Knock Knock.
Lomelda, Hannah
Lomelda, the project led by singer-songwriter Hannah Read, have released their fourth studio album, Hannah, via Double Double Whammy. Following last year’s M for Empathy, which was recorded in its entirety during a weekend trip back to her hometown in Texas, their latest was recorded three different times before it was ready to be released. Containing 14 tracks, it was produced by Hannah and her brother Tommy Read at his studio in Silsbee, TX and includes the previously released singles ‘Wonder’, ‘It’s Infinite’, and ‘Hannah Sun’.
Throwing Muses, Sun Racket
Throwing Muses have returned with their first new album in seven years, Sun Racket, out now via Fire Records. It marks the Boston trio’s 10th album and follows 2013’s Purgatory/Paradise. “All it asked of us was to commingle two completely disparate sonic vocabularies: one heavy noise, the other delicate music box,” Kristin Hersh said in a press release. “Turns out we didn’t have to do much. Sun Racket knew what it was doing and pushed us aside, which is always best. After 30 years of playing together, we trust each other implicitly but we trust the music more.”
Other albums out today:
Tricky, Fall To Pieces; Hannah Georgas, All That Emotion; Corey Flood, Hanging Garden; Barely Civil, I’ll Figure This Out; Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective, Peradam; Hurts, Faith.
Even when adorned with lavish, grand instrumentation, the raw intensity of Angel Olsen’s voice always remains at the center of her music. She proved as much with last year’s All Mirrors, perhaps her most sonically ambitious effort yet, in which she was accompanied by a 12-piece string section while sticking to her deeply introspective songwriting approach. But Olsen actually started working on the album entirely on her own, recording at Phil Elverum’s Catholic-church-turned-studio in Anacortes, Washington – it was only months later that the idea for an expansive version came about. The singer-songwriter originally considered putting out both versions at the same time, but thought it “more interesting when people can listen back to stuff later that’s the original version, versus it all being compared at once,” as she told Rolling Stone last year.
It turned out to be a pertinent statement – one of the most interesting aspects of Whole New Mess is not so much the nakedness of the instrumentals but the way the passage of time seems to have distorted the meaning of the songs themselves. Dealing with the dissolution of a romantic relationship as well as her own struggles with addiction, Olsen’s lyrics often directly engage with the notion of time and how it inevitably causes a shift in perspective. On the opening track of the record, one of two previously unheard compositions that also serves as the title track, she makes a note to herself: “When it all fades to black, I’ll be gettin’ back on track/ Back to my own head, cleared out, ’til the time comes.” There’s a stark vulnerability in her delivery as that promise transforms into an expression of self-confidence: “I think I’ll really do the change,” she repeats as the song draws to a close.
Stripped-back recordings – including Olsen’s own early work, from 2010’s Strange Cacti EP to 2012’s Half Way Home – are often described as having diaristic qualities, but Whole New Mess feels more like taking a peek at an old diary and seeing how those confessions have taken on a new resonance. “Took a while, but I made it through/ If I could show you the hell I’d been to,” she sings on ‘(Summer Song)’. ‘What It Is’, a propulsive cut that was previously sequenced right in the middle of the record, now acts as the closer, which may or may not be a conscious decision: “Knowing that you love someone/ Doesn’t mean you ever were in love,” she sings, as if that observation has only gained more legitimacy over time.
If Olsen’s voice sounded breathtaking on All Mirrors, here each minute detail is amplified to make it feel like every word is as intimate in its physicality as a breath, one that rises and falls as it reacts to feeling. On Whole New Mess, the extent to which these songs are really about grappling with loneliness becomes all the more palpable. You can hear it in the way she sings that she’s “hiding out inside my head” on ‘Lark Song’, a dramatic highlight on All Mirrors that still remains a stand-out here; she returns to the same idea on the visceral ‘Impasse (Working for the Name)’ (“I’m just livin’ in my head”). One might have expected these songs in particular to not work in a quieter context, simply because of how much heft they carried on All Mirrors – but the alternate framing enhances those elements that might have otherwise been lost. In fact, on a purely emotional level, this version may even outshine its predecessor. What’s certain is that WholeNew Mess is much more than just a collection of demos – it stands as a testament to the way our perspective on art, just like life, is constantly shifting.
Yes, you read that right – Scottish alt-rock titans Biffy Clyro have covered Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s hit single, ‘WAP’. The band debuted their take on the song during a recent performance at BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge. You can watch their cover below.
Of course, frontman Simon Neil tweaks the original’s raunchy lyrics, which now include lines such as “If you’re not wet as Biffy, then your riffin’ game weak” and “If you don’t riff, then you can’t Biff/ You can’t hurt my feelings because I like this.”
Big Sean has revealed the tracklist for his upcoming album, Detroit 2, which comes out this Friday, September 4. It’s set to feature appearances from Travis Scott, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Diddy, Young Thug, Anderson .Paak, Post Malone, Wale, and more. It also includes three songs called ‘Story’, which feature Dave Chappelle, Erykah Badu, and Stevie Wonder respectively, as well as the previously unveiled collaboration with the late Nipsey Hussle, ‘Deep Reverence’. Check out the full tracklist below.
The rapper has also shared a preview of his joint track with Jhené Aiko and Ty Dolla $ign, titled ‘Body Language’. Find that below as well.
Big Sean
