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?
Gary Numan’s sophomore album Telekon just turned 45, and to mark the occasion, it’s getting the reissue treatment. Over the next couple of months Beggars Banquet will release three different editions: a sustainably pressed vinyl, a double-LP deluxe expanded edition, and a standard double-LP edition. The deluxe edition will feature four bonus tracks, and one of those, “Like A B-Film,” is out today.
Here’s your actually-freaky Halloween soundtrack. Lankum, Dublin’s masters of doom-laden experimental folk music, have covered 2-tone kings the Specials’ 1981 spooky ska classic “Ghost Town.” Lankum originally recorded the cover for Oona Doherty’s dance show Specky Clark this year. Now, just in time for All Hallow’s Eve, it gets a music video by director Leonn Ward, filmed in County Wicklow. It basically sounds like the trailerized version of “Ghost Town,” but good.
The pretty bad but fun-to-watch new biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in theaters now, and it mostly seems pretty factually faithful to Springsteen’s experience recording the album Nebraska. But any work of biography is at least partly a work of fiction, and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere seemingly includes at least one glaring lie about Springsteen’s choice in condiments. In the movie, Springsteen says that he likes mustard. In real life, Springsteen hates mustard.
What should we call this person? He has many names, and we don’t know the real one. We’re talking about the anonymous South Korean musician who releases gorgeous, idiosyncratic shoegaze under the name Parannoul. This prolific artist has only played live a handful of times, and he won’t be doing that anymore. Instead, he continues to craft cohesive, transportive records on his own, and it feels weird to keep calling him “Parannoul” when he’s releasing a lot of his music under different names.
Most people wait until later in life to write their memoirs. UK indie-poppers the Tubs haven’t been around for a very long time; they were a Stereogum Band To Watch just a couple of years ago. But co-leader Owen Williams has done plenty of other things, as well. He makes his own music under the name Cotton Crown, and he used to be in Joanna Gruesome. Williams’ other band Ex-Voïd just played their farewell show a few days ago. As part of the Gob Nation Collective, Williams launched Perfect Angel Press, a small literary operation dedicated to “spiteful literature.” And anyway, Williams’ book might not even be about his experiences in music.
On Halloween, Anna von Hausswolff unveils her new album Iconoclasts. So far the Swedish musician has released “Stardust,” “The Whole Woman” with Iggy Pop, and “Struggle With The Beast,” and today she’s sharing the final preview with the magnificent Ethel Cain collab “Aging Young Women.”
Yes yes yes, it’s the Gum posting GUM. You figured it out. You’re very clever. GUM is the solo project from Jay Watson, touring Tame Impala member and co-leader of the Perth psych-rock band POND. GUM’s last solo album was 2023’s Saturnia. After that he teamed up with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith to release the collaborative album Ill Times. Now, GUM has signed to King Gizzard’s label p(doom), and his new single “Expanding Blue” is out now.
Earlier this year, New Orleans post-punk duo the Convenience released their very good album Like Cartoon Vampires. Today, the band follows that LP with a new one-off single that has nothing whatsoever to do with cartoon vampires, even though it’s almost Halloween and everything. Their latest track is called “Angel.” If anything, angels are the opposite of cartoon vampires. They’re at least enemies. I’m pretty certain of that. If a vampire and an angel saw each other in a bar, maybe it wouldn’t be on sight, but they’d at least glare at each other surreptitiously.