| Music is like a spell. It has the power to push you to name all the things you feel like sometimes you can't say, and be able to sit with them and feel them, and also to move you forward. |
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| Special Interest's Alli Logout at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago, Sept. 12, 2021. |
| (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images) |
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| quote of the day |
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| rantnrave:// |
It’s Friday
And in honor of the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME induction ceremony, which on Saturday will welcome HARRY BELAFONTE, PAT BENATAR, ELIZABETH COTTEN, DURAN DURAN, EMINEM, EURYTHMICS, JIMMY JAM & TERRY LEWIS, JUDAS PRIEST, DOLLY PARTON, LIONEL RICHIE and CARLY SIMON into the official pantheon (along with a few behind-the-scenes luminaries, including one of the “complicated and misunderstood Americans” mentioned here), we’re going to lean into the rock today. And in honor of that particularly sprawling collection of names whose plaques are about to be hung, we’re going to keep our arms open wide, as always, when it comes to deciding what exactly rock and roll is. If it’s got a good beat and you can dance on the ceiling to it, then it’s rock and roll, yesterday, today and forever.
(Please don’t look for sarcasm or irony in the above paragraph, because it isn’t there. Lionel Richie is a giant. Carly Simon was weirder and darker than anyone who’ll play a show in Williamsburg or Echo Park in 2022. Judas Priest invented more things than Thomas Edison. Etc etc etc. Anyway...)
On ENDURE, the third album by New Orleans dance-rock-against-the-machine foursome SPECIAL INTEREST, “pop, disco, and house all melt into their reliably raucous glam punk, and questions of communal caretaking press against a grief-riddled apocalyptic outlook,” says Pitchfork. Also, “This time around, their thorns drip with honey.” Which is to say, it’s all that and deceptively catchy, too. This 8-minute punk-blues slow jam is a rock epic for the ages... TOM SKINNER—“the sort of drummer who always locates the pivot point between chaos and clarity"—is best known as one of two percussionists in the Afrofuturist jazz band Sons of Kemet and as the non-Radiohead guy in the Smile. He steps into the bandleader’s seat on VOICES OF BISHARA, which finds him driving a quintet including the great British saxophonists Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia (plus bass and cello; the album was inspired in part by the music of the late cellist Abdul Wadud). It’s an album of spiritual jazz built on deep grooves that could fill about a dozen different kinds of dance floors, whether in London, New York or, say, Cleveland, home of both Wadud and a certain music hall of fame. Here’s Skinner and a slightly altered version of his quintet delivering a mesmerizing live performance of the album’s “The Journey”...
BIG JOANIE debuted in 2018 with the harmony-laden riot-grrrl blast of SISTAHS, and now, having signed to Kill Rock Stars, follows up with BACK HOME, which embraces synth-pop and other electronic touches and “swerves towards something that doesn’t really sound like a punk album at all.” An ambitious, promising step forward for “one of British punk’s great new hopes,” says NME... Baltimore’s HORSE LORDS “fuse bluegrass, house, post-punk and free jazz in wild new combinations” on COMRADELY OBJECTS... MARVIN TATE’S D-SETTLEMENT’s self-titled compilation consolidates the three-album oeuvre of a Chicago band that pulls together rock, gospel, funk, the blues and more while singing about “race, poverty, gender, and gentrification.” The delirious opening track kindly requests that someone “turn da mother***in’ lights back on”... TAIPEI HOUSTON, from the Bay Area, is an alt-hard-rock bass and drums duo consisting of brothers Myles and Layne Ulrich, whose dad is a man named Lars, who’s “given some general advice, though I don’t know that there’s really any soundbite,” according to Myles. “He’s been really supportive of it and thinks it’s really cool.” Their debut album is called ONCE BIT NEVER BORED and is not a metal record.
Also today: Albums from Drake & 21 Savage, R.A.P. Ferreira, Boldy James, Ezra Collective, Tyshawn Sorey Trio +1, First Aid Kit, Daniel Avery, Mount Kimbie, Cavetown, Joji, Okay Kaya, Yung Fazo, Lecrae, the Pretty Reckless, Hundred Watt Heart (aka guitarist Captain Kirk Douglas of the Roots), Fleshwater, Turnover, Phoenix, Teddy Swims, µ-Ziq, rRoxymore, Spoon x On-U Sound, Hawa, Coco & Clair Clair, Madeline Edwards, Kaitlin Butts, Gold Dust, Sam Bush (tribute to John Hartford), Laura Jean, Carla dal Forno, Born Without Bones, Tenci, Rayland Baxter, Anna of the North, Julien Chang, Old Fire, Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age), Black Mirrors, Jakob Bro & Joe Lovano (tribute to Paul Motian), Stephen Gauci/Matt Shipp/William Parker/Francisco Mela, Julie Campiche Quartet, the Headhunters, Ibrahim Maalouf, Robert McDuffie & Elizabeth Pridgen, Yonatan Gat... And the A-list-packed “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack, led by the new Rihanna single... And, as a reminder, you have two days left to download Sault’s five new albums.
At the Movies
SELENA GOMEZ confronts her mental-health struggles head-on in director ALEX KESHISHIAN’s “profoundly sad and surprisingly raw” SELENA GOMEZ: MY MIND & ME, which drops today on Apple Plus... The intentionally bonkers biopic WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY, written by Weird All and ERIC APPEL and directed by Appel, premieres on Roku. “At almost no point does it accurately reflect even a tiny moment in Yankovic’s actual life story,” notes Rolling Stone... Showtime debuts SPECTOR, a docuseries about Phil Spector, the monstrous Rock Hall of Fame producer-turned-murderer... Meanwhile on Broadway, the musical version of ALMOST FAMOUS opened Thursday to scathing reviews. “Musical theater is a radically different beast from film, let alone life, and [Cameron] Crowe... does not seem to have accounted for that,” JESSE GREEN writes in the NY Times.
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| - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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Complex |
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| Where Do DJs Stand on Playing Kanye’s Music? |
| By Jaelani Turner-Williams |
| “When I DJ a party I like to create a positive vibe. I feel like Kanye’s antics away from music have overpowered the emotional connection we have with his songs." |
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Technomaterialism |
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| Negrophilia in club culture |
| By Mathys Rennela |
| Reflecting on the recent social reckoning around the dance music industry's anti-Blackness problem, this essay outlines the pitfalls of an industry which only seeks to tame social progress and profit from Black artistry. |
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Vulture |
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| Smino’s Family Bonds Run Deep |
| By Tirhakah Love |
| The rapper and singer on his new album "Luv 4 Rent," working with J. Cole, and getting inspiration from his grandparents. |
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| what we're into |
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| Music of the day |
| “LA Blues” |
| Special Interest |
| "If you don't like it, you can f*** right off / Them boys in blue don't come 'round on this block." Epic 2022 rock and roll, from "Endure." |
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| Music | Media |
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Suggest a link  |
| “REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask ‘why?’” |
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