Michigan’s Stef Chura is a formidable triple threat: intense singer, bracing guitarist, revelatory songwriter. You can hear Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in her side-eyed snarl, Cat Power’s coiled intimacy in her quieter moments, Jack White and PJ Harvey in her modernist take on primitive instrumental violence and …
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Nine years and five studio albums in, Mac DeMarco has staked out his territory, and the only reason it’s bigger than his couch is he needs room for a TV. The gap-toothed soft-rock prince finds himself looking for peace and quiet amidst the noise of modern times on Here Comes …
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As recording artists grapple with the low-yield streaming era, there’s been a surge of creativity off record — in pumped-up concert staging, film scoring, musical theater, memoir-writing. Flexing the storytelling skills he’s flaunted in songs and concert banter for decades, Bruce Springsteen rose to the moment with his 2016 autobiographyBorn …
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Anderson .Paak’s third LPOxnardis his first release on Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label, andfor longtime fans It’s been interesting (and maybe a bit worrying) to watch him scale up his career goals to meet the ambitions of his new corporate benefactors. There have been subtle placements of his music in NBA …
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It’s hard to imagine now, but it wasn’t until Electric Ladyland that Jimi Hendrix was officially in charge of how his music would sound. His first two LPs had come out in 1967, a year in which he played more than 200 concerts with his trio, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. …
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Chicago MC Mick Jenkins has always been something of a rap hermit, emerging when he feels ready and dropping sprawling projects of baritone philosophy and freeform wordplay. When he broke out in 2014 with the contemplative mixtape The Water (S), Jenkins seemed to exist outside of the general rap universe: …
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The first thing that strikes you about Ian Sweet‘s bright, bracing indie-pop is the tension between Jilian Medford’s diminutive voice and the huge, candied tumult she’s creating and hurling her voice into, and against. It gives off the feeling of someone being transported, or falling into or maybe even being …
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The legendary arranger-writer-producer Quincy Jones has an extensive arsenal of go-to aphorisms. One concerns the difficult business of matching the right tune to the right singer. “The song is the power,” Jones told Rolling Stone last year. “A great song can make the worst singer in the world a star. …
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MNEK’s debut album, Language, comes with a statement of purpose: “It’s time to step up to the front now, so you can hear me out.” The 23-year-old writer-producer Uzoechi Emenike may feel that this introduction is necessary, because he’s spent a number of years holed up in the studio penning …
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Katie Bennett’s voice rarely rises above a whisper on her lo-fi indie-pop band’s new album, on which thinly strummed guitars and gingerly tapped drums sound like they’re being played by a band of Smurfs struggling to wake up after a very successful Sunday nap. But her sturdily crafted songs still …
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