Some artists have been releasing half of their album in singles, and that includes Dream, Ivory, who are back today with “Tangerine Dream,” their sixth (!) preview of When You Come Back I Have So Much To Tell You. The tune is a gauzy, immersive earworm.
Lots of bands are splitting ways with their drummers lately, but in March Mastodon had it worse by losing their longtime lead guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds. The statement made the situation seem amicable, but now the former member is suggesting otherwise.
Jonathan Richman has announced his new album Only Frozen Sky Anyway, the follow-up to 2021’s Want To Visit My Inner House?. The Modern Lovers founder is sharing the lead singles “O Guitar” and “I Was Just A Piece Of Frozen Sky Anyway” today.
Last month Anthology Recordings announced Maybe I’m Dreaming, the newest compilation of private press gems to follow recent ones like 2021’s Still Sad and 2019’s Sad About The Times. They shared the Watson Brothers Band’s “Just Whistle,” and today they’re back with “Let The Light Slip” by Peter Kraemer.
Who doesn’t love Fontaines D.C.? The Irish post-punks might be one of the biggest and most universally beloved rock acts we’ve got around these days. They publicly feuded with Oasis, had a music video starring Barry Keoghan, were covered by Porter Robinson, featured on the latest Hinds record, and are friends with Little Mix’s Jade. It looks like another pop star is a fan of them, too: Olivia Rodrigo, who covered their Skinty Fia track “I Love You” in the group’s hometown of Dublin tonight.
The concert etiquette crisis continues. This is a new one: An audience member at Germany’s Hurricane Festival over the weekend was shooting Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong with a water gun throughout the performance. The frontman halted “Jesus Of Suburbia” to shout at the perpetrator.
A few days after Memorial Day, the synth-powered Montreal indie-poppers TOPS came back strong with “Chlorine,” the lead single from their new album Bury The Key. Those TOPS types have another tune for us today, a hard-charging number called “Falling On My Sword.” Informed by band member David Carriere’s love of hardcore, this one has more aggressive guitar action than your average TOPS song, but it doesn’t go racing out of the sonic universe they’ve worked so hard to establish over the years.
Joy Orbison and Overmono love to collaborate. The UK electronic acts have previously joined forces on songs like “Blind Date” and “Bromley,” and now they’re back with another called “Lippy,” which features Montreal rapper Skiifall.
Music festivals ain’t what they used to be. Nearly a decade on from the bursting of the festival bubble, a few of the world’s grand-scale mega-fests continue to program incredible experiences. Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, which the Stereogum staff attended together this month, is very much among them. But financially, it’s getting harder to pull off a quality fest at scale. It’s why Pitchfork Music Festival, one of the best events of its kind, ceased to exist this year. The big ones that persist are mostly bleak. A quick survey of the posters for the biggest corporate fests in North America — stuff like Lollapalooza and its distant relatives Osheaga, Boston Calling, and Governors Ball — offers personality-devoid walls of text appealing to a common denominator so low it may actually be in the earth’s core. For people who actually care about music, large swaths of the festival scene are cooked.
