The French New Wave finally made its way to Africa in the late 1960s, thanks in part to the French postcolonial presence on the African continent, which gave rise to the particularly influential artistic output of directors in Senegal, with… Read More
20. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It in People [Arts & Crafts/Paper Bag] The diffidently-sung “Anthem for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” will reach you, even if you’re not in the targeted demographic. You will want to shout out the lyrics with… Read More
40. Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning [Saddle Creek] Released in 2005 alongside the stylistically opposed Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning features ten brilliantly crafted songs about frustrating love, the struggle for identity, and… Read More
Excerpted from When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras by Claudrena N. Harold (footnotes omitted). Copyright 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.… Read More
A standard-issue modern music gripe, subject of a ton of clickbait articles, is, “why are there no protest songs anymore?” The answers vary, but the most crucial point is that political criticism laces an incredible amount of modern music. Anyone… Read More
Adulkt Life are a new punk band helmed by music veterans. Vocalist Chris Rowley fulfilled that same role in the early 1990s riot grrl act Huggy Bear. This is his first serious musical venture since that band broke up in… Read More
That Nothing’s new album would be called The Great Dismal is probably the least surprising thing that has happened all year. The title seems almost inevitable. Even before the worldwide pandemic, lockdowns, quarantines, social unrest, and violence, Nothing frontman Domenic… Read More
Solemnity rings through the breathtakingly wordless introduction to “The Call”, the new a cappella single taken from Moira Smiley and VOCO’s upcoming album In Our Voices. Composed by Gregory Fletcher, “The Call” comes with a video poignant in its simplicity… Read More
The two first met at a Roots show and in no time did they begin exchanging beats and rhymes. MC Mattic and producer Johnny Madwreck have since been quietly orchestrating works of deft beauty these last 20 years or so.… Read More
While it’s easy to get caught up in debates about aesthetic purity when it comes to punk music, it’s important to remember that, in the ’70s, embracing the punk lifestyle often came with a very real threat to life and… Read More