Music Features

Here are three of the best albums of 2019 so far. Two of them are surprising and heartening resurrections by American bands who deserved better in their first lifetimes but haven’t given up. The third is bold prog-rock violence from Norway by a band with nearly three decades of mayhem …

In a deleted scene from Cameron Crowe‘s grunge-steeped 1992 rom com Singles, Matt Dillon’s character, Cliff Poncier, busks on a Seattle street. A friend walks by and asks him what happened to his band, Citizen Dick. “They didn’t get it; they weren’t with the program,” the dudely, long-haired singer-songwriter says. …

It’s been six years since Pearl Jam released Lightning Bolt, and they’re feeling the need to write new music again. It’s just been slow going. “It’d be fun to record or even just write a song together,” bassist Jeff Ament says. “I think when Chris [Cornell] passed, that’s really been …

Take a Daytrip is the present and Octavian is the future — or, at least, he should be. On their new collaboration, the two meet: Take a Daytrip, the producing duo responsible for the chart hurricane known as Sheck Wes’s “Mo Bamba,” as well as Vince Staples’s “Home” from the …

It’s a humid evening in late May when singer-guitarist Emir Mohsseni takes the stage at New York’s Mercury Lounge. He and his Brooklyn-based group, the Muckers, are opening for Mexico City’s Rey Pila, and as the Thursday night crowd shuffles in, several seem impressed by the danceable psych-rock coming from …

There’s a moment on the Beatles’ new “Super Deluxe” edition of the White Album that sums up all the glories of their 1968 masterpiece. And weirdly, that moment is “Good Night.” There’s always been something mysterious about “Good Night” — the album’s orchestral finale. It’s a tender ballad from John, …

It took a while, but Chris Gaines has turned out to be one of the most influential artists of 2018, by being the least influential artist of 1999. That’s perhaps the weirdest aspect of Lady Gaga’s A Star Is Born phenomenon — how uncannily close it all feels to country …

“‘Is jazz dead?’ is a stupid question,” says drummer and bandleader Makaya McCraven over beers at a Lower East Side bar that is, fittingly, playing a selection of 1930s and ’40s-era jazz cuts. “If you have to ask the same question for 50 years, it becomes a rhetorical question. When …

After a bad breakup, some girls would call on their friends for consolation. Some would prefer the company of a total stranger, foraged from the local dive bar; others a pint of ice cream and Netflix. Elle King ordered three pianos to her home in Los Angeles. “I was so …

“I don’t ever look at Twitter,” saysAustralian indie rock crew Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever’s bassist, Joe Russo, 28. “But from what I gather we’ve become much bigger in the States than in New Zealand and Australia.” He’s not kidding: The Melbourne group’s fusion of 1970s power pop, 1980s college rock …