Corey Taylor performed a solo cover of ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?’ during his appearance on SiriusXM’s virtual Octane Home Invasion Festival. Watch his rendition below.
“I’ve been threatening to do a cover of this for a very, very long time and figured what better time to do it than right now on the spot for all the SiriusXM people,” the Slipknot singer said before performing the track, which was originally written by Nick Lowe for his band Brinsley Schwarz in 1974, and was later famously covered by Elvis Costello.
Big Sean has unveiled the official music video for his collaborative single with Travis Scott, ‘Lithuania’. The track is taken from his most recent album, Detroit 2, which dropped last Friday. Check out the visual, which draws inspiration from Stephen King’s The Shining, below.
The Detroit rapper’s latest album follows 2017’s I Decided. and also features contributions from Eminem, Lil Wayne, Diddy, Young Thug, Anderson .Paak, Post Malone, Wale, and more. It serves as the sequel to his critically acclaimed 2012 mixtape, Detroit, which came shortly after his debut LP Finally Famous.
Travis Scott recently contributed a song to the soundtrack for Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet.
Phoebe Bridgers and Arlo Parks teamed up for the Piano Session on Radio 1’s Chillest Show with host Phil Taggart. During their set, they performed a cover of Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ as well as Bridgers’ ‘Kyoto’, from her most recent album Punisher. Check out their performance, which features Parks on piano and both artists on vocals, below.
When asked about how her collaboration with Arlo Parks came about, Bridgers said: “I can’t remember who sent Arlo to me initially but it was all I listened to for a couple of weeks, which is funny ’cause she doesn’t have that much music. I became a really big fan and we started DMing. She covered ‘Moon Song’ and I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever’. I was in London working on stuff and we went into a church and filmed us covering Radiohead and one of my songs.”
Speaking about their stripped-down version of ‘Kyoto’, she added: “The coolest thing about this version is that it highlights how sad it is. Also, Arlo’s voice is just so cool and it’s very different from mine so I think we complement each other a lot. It’s a really sad song. I initially wrote it as a ballad and it turned into an uptempo song, but when you read the lyrics it’s a really sad song.”
Explaining her decision to cover Radiohead, she said: “My first ever London show was at St Pancras Old Church and there were like 100 people there and I thought it would be cool to cover Radiohead. It was the first time that people really showed up specifically for me. It was before my album even was out. It was magical. I think it’s one of the best songs ever written.”
Basic Space is another eye-pleasing, visually observing series by the Polish photographer Paweł Franik. In this splendid series, Franik showcases locations in places such as Alesund, Norway, Fuerteventura, Spain, and Death Valley, CA, USA.
Okja is a 2017 film from acclaimed Korean director Bong Joon-ho, starring Seo-Hyeon Ahn, Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal, Lily Collins, and Steven Yeun. The Netflix original received critical acclaim for its poignant portrayal of friendship between Mija, a young girl, and Okja, a large (fictional) animal the Mirando Corporation wants to take for themselves. Mija embarks on a rescue mission to save her friend from the greedy conglomerate before Okja is exploited and slaughtered like so many others of her kind.
The South Korean mountains are a beautiful, idyllic setting for Mija’s peaceful childhood, contrasted starkly against the bland brutality of New York, where Lucy Mirando and Dr. Johnny Wilcox have taken and mistreated Okja. Mija receives help from the Animal Liberation Front and soon realizes the issue reaches far wider than her and her “super-pig”.
Netflix has unveiled first look images from David Fincher’s upcoming film Mank, a biopic of Citizen Kane co-writer Herman Mankiewicz starring Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, and Lily Collins. The initial preview photos were released this Saturday (September 6) to coincide with the 79th anniversary of the wide theatrical release of Citizen Kane, also known as ‘Citizen Kane Day’.
Marking Fincher’s first feature since 2014’s Gone Girl, Mank is the filmmaker’s first movie presented in black and white. The film has long been a passion project for Fincher, as the screenplay was written by his father, Jack Fincher, before he passed away in 2003. It finds the filmmaker reuniting with composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who their first Oscar for their work on 2010’s The Social Network.
Lil Wayne has shared a new track called ‘Big Worm’. It’s accompanied by video co-directed by Ray Kay, which sees the rapper turn back time using face morphing technology, going through all the different looks he’s sported since hitting the scene with The Hot Boys back in 1997. Check it out below.
‘Big Worm’ is taken from the deluxe edition of Wayne’s Funeral, which also includes additional tracks featuring the likes of Doja Cat, Tory Lanez, Lil Uzi Vert, and others. The original version of the album came out in January. More recently, Wayne made an appearance on Big Sean’s new album Detroit 2 and teamed up with A$AP Ferg for ‘No Ceilings’.
“It feels so good to be alone,” Kelly Lee Owens croons over nocturnal synths on ‘Night’. It’s a transcendent moment that crystallises what the electronic producer’s latest album is largely about: finding solace in solitude. Her dreamy voice seems to float above the ether, dancing around the minimalist techno beat untethered and free, as if to emulate the strange mental spaces that are illuminated when the lights are low. Owens’ vocals slowly rise into the front of the mix, growing in volume as the song reaches its euphoric yet still restrained climax. In an unexpected turn, she then addresses another person that may or may not be in the same room, adding the line “with you.” But in the context of the record, the song feels less like a romantic gesture than an invitation for the listener to participate in this journey of self-discovery, to share in the pleasures that come with opening up your inner world.
Inner Song, Kelly Lee Owens’ sophomore album following her 2017 self-titled debut, reveals the artist’s growth in both the creative and personal realm. Combining her penchant for evocative songwriting with her knack for crafting intricately textured electronic grooves, Owens weaves her compositions around a tighter thematic thread this time around, one that’s focused on finding strength in one’s self rather than succumbing to outer forces. “Felt the power in me/ Things are different in me,” she sings on the spaced-out ‘Re-Wild’. On the emotional highlight ‘On’, Owens delivers one of her most direct compositions, slipping into the kind of dream pop-adjacent territory that she often veered towards on her debut: “So/ This is how it must go/ And now I am moving on.” Despite some of the more somber tones that coat the instrumental, her soft delivery makes the proclamation sound delightfully uncomplicated.
Throughout the album, Owens’ steady, cyclical compositions seem to function as a way of carving out that path forward. She might be utilizing her vocals a fair bit more here, but she continues to prove her adeptness at building those rich emotional worlds through just her instrumentals. The most notable example here is the unexpected, fully instrumental cover of Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes/ Arpeggi’ that opens the record, which manages to encapsulate Thom Yorke’s metaphysical musings by allowing those arpeggiated synths to undulate through an otherworldly flow without ever losing their warmth. It does an excellent job of evoking the quality of being submerged underwater (“In the deepest ocean/ The bottom of the sea,” Yorke sings on the original), sinking further and further into some form of blissful abyss.
It’s only natural, then, that the album ventures into some icier territory the deeper we get, which makes parts of Inner Song somewhat less accessible. From the cold and distant pulse of ‘Melt!’ to the repetitive club grooves of ‘Jeanette’, these moments might alienate the average listener, but provide an interesting counterpoint to the more cordial and emotionally resonant songs like ‘Re-Wild’ and ‘L.I.N.E.’, perhaps the hookiest and most melodic of all the tracks here, in which Owens offers one of her most heartfelt choruses: “Love is not enough to stay/ I’d rather be on my own.”
But the most compelling cut on Inner Song is also the one that seems to be its biggest thematic outlier: ‘Corner of My Sky’, a collaboration with John Cale that’s both transfixing and masterfully constructed, finds the two artists meditating, in their own separate ways, on their relationship with their homeland. And yet, as disconnected as it may initially come off, it leaps right into the kind of mental state that the whole album seems intent on reproducing: of immersing yourself completely into something or someone instead of getting sucked into the temporal nature of everyday life. When Owens chants “wake up, wake up” on the closing track, it becomes evidently clear that this dream-like excursion that the album has taken us on is nearing its end. How fortunate, then, that we can plunge back in at any time.
Wreckless Eric responded to Armstrong’s cover, saying: “I love this! The most punk rock version ever!”
The Green Day frontman has shared a series of covers during the pandemic as part of his ongoing ‘No Fun Mondays’ series, including his own rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Gimme Some Truth’ and Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’.
HAIM have dropped a new batch of remixes titled The Summer Girl Remixes Volume 1. The record includes five reworkings of their single ‘Summer Girl’, from their most recent album Women In Music Pt. III. Lauren Auder, mmph, Amber Mark, Solomonophonic, and Jack And Henry all contributed their own versions of the track. Listen to the project and check out the tracklist below.
Though the pandemic prevented the band from touring in support of the album, HAIM celebrated its release with show livestreamed from a Los Angeles deli Canter’s. More recently, it was revealed that Alana Haim will star in Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming coming-of-age film along with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper.
