Liam Gallagher is looking back in anger, and rightfully so. Oasis brought their reunion tour to Australia last night with their first night at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, and a fan set off a flare into the audience. Now Liam is doing some scolding on social media.
When we caught up with Magdalena Bay at Primavera Sound a few months back, they joked that one approach to following up last year’s acclaimed Imaginal Disk would be to simply never release another album. Based on recent activity, maybe they are actually following that strategy by simply doling out songs two by two rather than combining them into a full-length statement. The alt-pop duo has been releasing new songs in pairs this fall: first “Second Sleep” and “Star Eyes,” then “Human Happens” and “Paint Me A Picture.” Today, they’ve got two more tracks for us.
Next year will mark two decades since the release of Bat For Lashes’ debut full-length Fur And Gold. Natasha Khan is celebrating early with a 20th anniversary edition.
Lately, the late Warren Zevon has been getting his flowers. The cult-favorite singer-songwriter will receive the Musical Influence Award at next weekend’s Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame induction, and a massive tribute concert in Los Angeles last weekend saw the likes of Jackson Browne, Dwight Yoakam, and Fountains Of Wayne performing his songs. Now comes news of a fresh tribute album.
Ariana Grande’s masterful 2018 album Sweetener includes a single called “R.E.M.” Mike Mills, bassist for the legendary alt-rock band R.E.M., found this amusing. His laughter became slightly more anxious and perturbed when Grande made R.E.M. the name of her cosmetics and fragrance line. And when that company released a product line in a box designed to look like a cassette tape, Mills decided it was time to respond.
Metal had to set its “Days Without a Nazi Festival” counter back to zero after the ignominious Metal Threat Fest brought sketchball acts like Graveland, Inquisition, Grand Belial’s Key, and Arghoslent to the Chicago suburbs earlier this month. It was an amusing circus to behold from afar, at least.
Orville Peck might be preparing for his EGOT. Earlier this year he played the Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway, and he’s starring in the Kitao Sakurai-directed Street Fighter with 50 Cent, Jason Momoa, and Noah Centineo. Today, he’s pivoted back to music with the announcement of a new EP Appaloosa, out in two weeks via Warner. The mysterious country crooner also shared the lead single “Drift Away.”
Did you know that the Wall Street Journal holds an annual awards show? It does. The newspaper’s Innovator Awards have been happening since 2012. Per the newspaper itself, this particular awards gala “encapsulates everything readers have come to expect from the award-winning magazine: a gathering of ambitious, forward-looking minds whose originality has led to meaningful change and offers inspiration to others.” This year’s award show went down Wednesday night at New York’s Museum Of Modern Art, and it recognized innovators like Hailey Bieber, Spike Lee, Ben Stiller, George Lucas, and Billie Eilish. As she accepted her all-important Innovator Award, Eilish had some words for the billionaires in the room.
Right now, the consistently great R&B experimentalist Dijon is out on tour, and he performed his staggering new album Baby in full at the opening date in San Diego. On Wednesday, Dijon played the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, and some friends came out to assist. Dijon is a prolific collaborator, but Justins Bieber and Vernon did not make their way to the stage last night. Instead, Dijon sang a couple of tracks with his old buddy Mk.gee.
Yesterday, Billboard deputy editor and Stereogum buddy Andrew Unterberger published a piece with some confusing implications: On last week’s Billboard Hot 100, there were no rap songs in the top 40. The same holds true for this week’s chart. It has been a very, very long since since we saw a Billboard top 40 with zero rap songs — 35 years, in fact. The last time that happened was the week of Feb. 2, 1990, when Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” was sitting at #41, on its way to peaking at #9. This was the early crossover era, seven months before Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” became the first rap song ever to top the Hot 100. Up until very recently, rap has been a dominant force on the pop charts. But for the past two weeks, it’s been nowhere near the top. That’s weird. What does it mean?