Photo Credit: Brandon Lung At the beginning of 2020 (a period which we’ve all already developed a great deal of nostalgia for), Sydney, Australia band Stand Atlantic made quite a bit of noise with their single “Shh!”, which is off of their second full-length album Pink Elephant. The song provides what’s essentially a crash course in the band’s sound: it opens with a stomping beat, introduces a verse… Read more
Photo credit: Beth Garrabrant The one thing 2020 was guaranteed not to deliver was another Taylor Swift album – it was a year ago that the singer released her seventh album, Lover, and fans are still deliberating over which song should have been the next radio single, campaigning with their usual fire-fueled ferocity for their… Read more
Photo Credit: Steve Gullick On their fourth album, All Distortions are Intentional, Wrexham, Wales rock band Neck Deep gives us a little bit of everything. Well, maybe not everything, but certainly a lot, and they tend to give us quite a bit more than we might expect on quite a number of the album’s twelve tracks. This dedication to musical flexibility is apparent… Read more
Photo Credit: Liz Collins The Chicks’ eighth album originally was going to be an easy record of covers, a wham-bam compilation that took less effort to put out than the accolades it would no doubt receive, fulfilling their seven-album contract with Sony’s Columbia Records and allowing them to move on. After the barn-storming stampede of… Read more
Photo Credit: Red Bull Records In 1967, a song called “New York Mining Disaster 1941” was released to radio stations but did not list the artist. The DJs listened to it, assumed it was the Beatles, and thus put it into heavy rotation. Even when the actual artist was revealed as a new band called the Bee Gees, people still believed that… Read more
Photo Credit: Niles Gregory “Breaking the fourth wall” is a device frequently used in theater and films where the characters either speak directly to the audience, or somehow acknowledge that they’re in a work of fiction. This isn’t as common in music, but on the opening (and title) track of their third album Into the Raging Sea, Richmond, Virginia… Read more
Photo Credit: Andy Ford Jarad Anthony Higgins, known professionally as Juice WRLD, was a fast-rising superstar out of Chicago who was known as a prodigious emoter and leader among the Soundcloud rap set. Six days after his twenty-first birthday, he flew from Los Angeles to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, where he and his management team were… Read more
Photo Credit: Lauren Dunn Quarantine, at least for G-Eazy, has been filled with “the opportunity to self-reflect, grow and evolve.” Emerged from the depths of his isolation, he comes bearing gifts: Everything’s Strange Here arrives after a delay stemmed from reading the room around international civil rights protests. Fittingly, this project is a protest in… Read more
Photo Credit: Sarah Silver To be described as “on a spectrum” suggests qualities that are immeasurable to a specific point, or non-quantitative. Where on the spectrum exactly? Who’s to say, because that decision is another party’s responsibility entirely. Black Eyed Peas and their meandering catalog are “on a spectrum” – on one end are roots… Read more
Photo Credit: @Amzyobr At the outset of what promised to be a heavy-hitting career, Pop Smoke was shot dead. 20-years-old and renting a home in the hills of Los Angeles to get a taste of the good stuff, he flew a little too close to the sun and he got there quickly. Born Bashar Barakah… Read more