Music fans usually know the name Iggy Pop, but they often know it as shorthand. The Stooges guy. The shirtless menace. The “Lust for Life” guy. The patron saint of self-destruction who somehow lived long enough to become respectable enough to narrate luxury car ads without the universe collapsing. But once you actually get into…
Avant-garde jazz and free jazz are two terms that seem almost designed to be off-putting, to make a casual or jazz-curious listener immediately think “no thanks, won’t be bothering with that.” As someone who’s listened to a lot of this music for many years now, I want to demystify a bit. For a long time,…
The Byrds are one of those bands people think they understand after “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn, Turn, Turn”. You hear the Rickenbacker jangle, the high harmonies, and there it is: folk-rock, done. A beautiful sound, a historically important band, a few giant singles, cue the warm glow of 1965. Not entirely inaccurate of course,…
Afrobeat has a sneaky way of getting you. At first, it might just be the groove. The bass sits down and refuses to leave. The drums and percussion start talking to each other. The horns come in sharp and bright. A track runs ten or twelve minutes, and instead of thinking, this is long, you…
Most groups spend their careers guarding the thing that made people love them. De La Soul spent theirs sneaking out the back door before that thing learned how to charge rent. That’s the secret hiding in the crates. They were never just the happy, quirky, daisy-age crew from your cooler cousin’s milk crate. Playful? Absolutely….
The Cure are often talked about as if they are two bands trapped in one very dramatic cardigan. There is the dark Cure: rain-streaked windows, funeral basslines, grey skies, songs that sound like they were recorded in a room where nobody had opened the curtains since 1981. Then there is the pop Cure: bright melodies,…
Aretha Franklin is very easy to praise and surprisingly hard to sort. Praising her is the easy part. You hear the voice and the discussion is basically over. There are great singers, and then there are singers who make greatness sound like a physical force. Aretha could take one line and make it feel like…
There are A Tribe Called Quest albums fans defend with their whole chest. The Low End Theory? No hesitation. Midnight Marauders? Put it in the rafters. People’s Instinctive Travels? The joyful, weird, wide-eyed beginning. We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service? The farewell none of us were ready for, especially after Phife…
Ranking Lana Del Rey gets much more interesting once you stop asking which album has the best aesthetic and start asking where the writing feels most alive inside the aesthetic. Because the early Lana construction was powerful for a reason. Born to Die didn’t just introduce a singer. It introduced one of the strongest pop…
A lot of people hear the phrase experimental music and immediately brace themselves. I get it. It sounds like homework. It sounds like you’re about to be handed a reading list and a warning that this next part is “challenging but important.” It can sound less like music you fall in love with and more…