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Front and Back Cover Art by Laura Reitze
Foreword:
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Mary Beth Bauerman
Justin Berg
Cara Davis
John Dietz
Skyler Foley
Isabel Haber
Atiya Haque
Ceci Hughes
Van Monday
Aidan O’Halloran
Eamon Raftery-Sweeney
Laura Reitze
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Emma Shahin
Barrett Smith
Jack Stewart
Laura Tutko
In the Comfort of their Home Studio Sketch Series By Laura Reitze
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Greetings Vinyl Tap consumer, Whether you are a religious reader or first-time peruse-r of our small-but-mighty WCWM music publication, we are so thankful you took time out of your day to grab our Spring 2021 edition from a shelf of some sort. Maybe the colorful, psychedelic cover by the lovely Laura Reitze allured you, or… perhaps you’re just super bored, waiting to meet with a friend and chomp down a warm Cosi pesto chicken melt (a personal favorite). Regardless of how and why this issue landed in your hands, I can promise that you are in for a wonderful -music, arts, and culture- treat! Last semester, our issue focused on macro, societal questions and concerns: we talked about how we felt rather hopeless in many realms of our lives. We all know that progress isn’t linear, so it’s not like everything we addressed in our last issue has completely ‘healed’ with time, but some things are looking up. At the very least, the vaccine is no longer a mere tale. Gotta say that, boy, sharing our pent-up, frustrated thoughts was cathartic in the heart of a pandemic, but one could say that we have now ‘been there’ and ‘done that.’ We have figuratively and literally turned the page on our last issue, which brings us here. For the current issue, we draw our attention to the artist. Being an artist nowadays isn’t an easy feat. A fan base is typically developed through touring, and touring is nearly impossible right now – unless you are the Flaming Lips and decide to hold ‘space bubble’ concerts, which is, may I say, so on brand. But what about the rest of the artists? Those with ebulliophobia?? Many artists have had to rely entirely on their online presence to maintain popularity and ‘sell’ their music to others. Several staff members have written pieces focused on how artists have curated online personas, especially on TikTok, where virality is game-changing, but rare. On the other side of the equation, music consumers’ attention spans have decreased with the overwhelming amount of digital content – hey, we have a piece on that too! All the albums reviewed for this issue were also produced during quarantine, and some of the reviews touch on how this has influenced the style and material of said albums. Additionally, many artists have turned to self-producing their albums because of ~COVID~, and we have a few cute sketches of their charming home recording spaces just for you :) . Since a lot of artists have gone the DIY route this year, we made our magazine DIY/zine-style as well: the cover was digitally painted, each of us doodled on our headshot, and there are a few handmade collages scattered inside the issue! Oh, and yes, our photoshoot was inspired by Phoebe Bridgers’ SNL performance because we want her to notice us!! We also believe she is a wonderful example of an artist who has mastered badassery during an absolutely shitty time… and damn, can she smash a guitar! No one tell David Crosby I said that Now that I’ve set the scene for this issue, I hope you enjoy digging in. Huge shoutout to the Vinyl Tap staff for writing thought-provoking pieces and creating wonderful art – stay gold & rock on! Hopefully this will be the last, but not least, pandemic issue we ever create <3 Peace out, Emma Shahin Editor-In-Chief 8
Contents
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1 Trait Danger Interview
John Dietz’s conversation with comedy rap group 1 Trait Danger
How Tik Tok Changed the Music Industry & my Life 16
Skyler Foley writes about going viral on Tik Tok
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Skeleton Night Live
Vinyl Tap’s Spring 2021 photoshoot inspired by Phoebe Bridgers’ SNL performance
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Bro I am simply too Gecc’d Up Right Now
Van Monday reviews the cultural phenomenon sometimes known as “hyperpop”
One More Saturday Night
Revisting the Grateful Dead’s final show at William & Mary, by Barrett Smith
A Brief History of Taylor Swift
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How artists redefine themselves in the digital era, by Justin Berg
Album Reviews
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Morgan Wallen & Ariel Pink show how far the music world have to go, by Aidan O’Halloran
Submitting to the Algorithm
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All of Taylor Swift’s different eras, as experienced by Jack Stewart
Golden Boys: The Music Industry & Accountability
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Our staff provides their collective two cents
Julien Baker - Little Oblivions 47 King Gizzard & The Lizzard Wizzard - K.G. 48 Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales 49 Tiger Jaw - I Won’t Care How You Remember Me 50 Langhorne Slim- Strawberry Mansion 51 Paul McCartney - McCartney III 52 9
Source: Hard Noise- The Hard Times
1 Trait Danger John Dietz’s conversation with Andrew Katz and Will Toledo from the band, Car Seat Headrest, and the comedy rap group, 1 Trait Danger.
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Words by John Dietz This interview is a transcription of a conversation originally recorded for broadcast on my show on 90.9 FM WCWM, “I Hate Music with John Dietz.” JOHN DIETZ: The first thing I wanted to talk about is comedy. All the 1 Trait Danger albums have elements of EDM, they have elements of rap, but first and foremost, these are comedy albums. So, I was wondering, who are some of your comedic inspirations? ANDREW KATZ: Yeah, I would say Tenacious D is a good start, Weird Al Yankovic for sure. I got asked this question a few days ago when Will and I were in a Q&A, and those were the two that I gave, so I’ll stick to those. JD: A big component of earlier 1 Trait Danger albums was jokes that you would come up with on tour as Car Seat Headrest -- what was the process of creating 1 Trait Bangers like considering that you didn’t have that more natural comedic outlet? AK: The process was different, for sure, because we weren’t on tour, as you said. So it was mostly just this view that you’re seeing now, just some dudes sitting in a room, messing around and trying to figure out comedy. But it started with a lot of making beats on the computer or recording voice memos of stuff that I thought was funny, and then kinda trying to turn it into a song. Of course, that’s where Will’s expertise comes in, he’s a great songwriter. But yeah, I did a lot of voice memo work. And even in the song “Too Famous,” the beginning of that, where it says “A lot of muthaf-ers is talking,” I won’t swear, “but they ain’t saying *bleep*” (laughs), that line is actually ripped straight from a voice memo recording on my phone. That was an idea that I had, and then what I would do is throw it into Ableton and then try to turn that into a song, but I felt like that itself belonged in the song. But yeah, that’s kinda the process, just any little idea that comes into the mind. The problem when you’re not on tour is that it’s hard to get those ideas, cause you don’t have as many people to bounce stuff off of. But we made it happen.
It was mostly just this view that you’re seeing now, just some dudes sitting in a room, messing around and trying to figure out comedy. JD: A major target of satire in all three of the albums so far is Pitchfork. Was there a specific incident that caused your disdain for them or is this just kinda a long-running hatred? AK: My disdain for Pitchfork? Well, it originally started just cause they would write stuff about us and other people in the industry that was stupid, and they’re just kinda funny to pick on because they’re the big dog in the indie sphere.
WILL TOLEDO: But it’s also not -- I mean, Tim Schenectady doesn’t actually write for Pitchfork. AK: No, the lore is that Tim Schenectady’s full name is Tim Schenectady Pitchfork News. He writes for a journal called Dirtplug. But obviously, it doesn’t come off like that on the albums, right? That’s just kinda the lore. But Pitchfork surely is just a case of it’s easy to pick on the big dog. You know, you can’t pick on a tiny journalist website, you know? That would be mean. It’s less mean to pick on the Big Dog. AND, they’ve made egregious mistakes in the past. They reviewed Twin Fantasy, they misspelled “Fantasy” as “Fantasty” in the headline of the article! Like, I don’t even have to make this stuff up, they’re just feeding me stuff on their own. It’s like a real-world episode of South Park. So it’s just super easy to go after them. JD: I actually was gonna talk about the lore, which you brought up: I mean, in these albums, there’s so many different characters, there’s a lot of backstory. Does it ever get confusing figuring out “this character is who exactly?” or “wait, this happened when?” WT: Andrew gets confused a lot! (laughs) A lot of this album was, I’d come and he’d have recorded something, and I’d say ‘This doesn’t work with the canon.’ (laughs) A lot of sorting out on this album, just trying to make it work with what we had already set up. And there’s a lot more plot on this album too -- you know, it all came into place kinda accidentally. On the first album, we didn’t have any overall plan, and then the second one, we came up with the idea of this world tour, which is where it got, I think, more satirical of the music world. And then this one was really just developing more the characters we had already set up on the first two albums. AK: Yeah, I don’t deal with character arc and story. I just try to make funny singular songs and then it’s Will’s job to figure out how to put them together. JD: I’m curious also about how the comedic skits come about, particularly ones like “ROCKET SHIP Intro,” which I’m gonna be playing on the show right after this. Is this a collaborative effort? Or do you write them yourself and then say ‘Hey Will’ or ‘Hey Seth’ or ‘Hey Ethan,’ you know, ‘I need you to come say this crazy thing.’ AK: Well, “ROCKET SHIP Intro” really started with the idea of ‘Okay, we need to have some sort of interaction between Grimes and Elon [Musk],’ like you have that framework, and then it’s discussing ‘how do we do that.’ I don’t remember how we came up with that. WT: I mean, when I came, you already had the idea -- the song started with the idea that she was gonna steal a rocket ship, and part of that was the conversation when she wanted to go on a rocket ship. And the actual record11
Art by @freebowling ing of that, I think I wrote out dialogue for that. Then, I did my lines, but you just kinda improvised the Grimes lines on top of mine. So it was collaborative once we were actually sitting down to write it. AK: Yeah, Will had his iPad, wrote down a basic framework script. Obviously, we’re not actors, we can’t read a script well. I don’t operate like that. So it’s like, okay, I have a vague idea of what we’re supposed to say, and then I think I shine when there’s improv involved. JD: In another skit, you get Matador Records founder Chris Lombardi to make an appearance on the intro of the album. What was his reaction to you asking him to do that and also to being the archvillain of both the album and the new videogame? AK: Yeah, both of those phone calls were funny. Will was there for the call when I told him about Lombardi’s World. It was a lot of sighs, like deep sighs. Then the call asking him to be the record exec and do a phone call was also just like him laughing a lot, like ‘goddamnit.’ But he’s a great sport, and he was totally up for it. He reminds me of a dad that secretly loves being involved, but doesn’t wanna give off like he likes being involved, you know, cause he wants to stay cool. Deep down, I feel like Chris really likes doing this stuff, he just acts like he doesn’t cause he wants to stay cool, which is totally fair. But he was super down, and he read his lines great. JD: Yeah, and it’s a great addition to the album, I think it’s hilarious. I also wanted to talk about the new videogame, Lombardi’s World. You had created a videogame before, called Cossett’s World, which was also related to the 1 Trait Danger lore, but this new game is more complex. The graphics are better, the storyline is more fleshed out: what was the process of going from Cossett’s World to Lombardi’s World like? 12
AK: Well, it was just experience. With Cossett’s World, I had literally never opened up a Unity project before, and that was the first thing I had ever done. So I went from knowing nothing to knowing a little bit, and the game was never re-tooled once I started knowing stuff. And you can see that through the game, you can see where I was experimenting with stuff. There’s literally a crashed rocket ship with weird meshes of a human in a T-pose flying out of it cause I didn’t know how to make fire. I got confused, and so I made human meshes instead of fire meshes. And I just left all of my learning in the game, so I just finished the game, and it was crap, like objectively a terrible game, but funny in some parts. And then of course I took that knowledge and just continued building and built Lombardi’s World, with a team of people to help me. I didn’t do it alone, it would’ve been not possible alone. So, yes, upgrading a team and upgrading skills is how you get Lombardi’s World. JD: Another interesting thing to see is the evolution of Car Seat Headrest and how it’s starting to incorporate different elements of 1 Trait Danger, like the song “Deadlines (Thoughtful)” on Making A Door Less Open sampling “Drove My Car” by 1 Trait Danger, and Will kinda adopts the same character in both groups. Is this something that happened intentionally, and can we expect to see those lines continue to blur into the future?
There’s literally a crashed rocketship with weird meshes of a human in a T-pose flying out of it cause I didn’t know how to make fire. I got confused, and so I made human meshes instead of fire meshes.
WT: Well, I think they’ll stay blurred. Intentionally is hard to say, because we were just working on both at the same time, you know, 1 Trait Danger started around the same time I was starting to work on the next Car Seat album, and it was just sorta natural that they would cross over some. You know, a lot of the elements that came out on 1 Trait was stuff that I wanted to work into Car Seat Headrest, like working more with Andrew at his place and learning his style of production. He was more from the EDM school and that wasn’t something I had encountered before meeting with him, and so I was interested in looking at that and looking at how to put a song together in that way. MADLO (Making A Door Less Open) sorta became the record where I tried that -- I just wanted to see how to do that, and that was one of the seeds of that record. Other elements of 1 Trait Danger, like the characters, ended up coming along too, and that’s something that’ll play out more once we finally start touring on it, which is still sometime in the indefinite future. JD: Awesome, and hopefully I’ll be able to see you guys as 1 Trait Danger sometime in the future. I have one more question: in the history of 1 Trait Danger, which song has been the most fun to make and why? AK: I think, without a doubt, it would be “Saturday’s For The Boys” for me. There was just an absurd amount of laughter when we were making that song. We were just laughing the entire time.
WT: Yeah, well, for some reason Australia is the place for 1 Trait Danger. Was it both times we went to Australia we were working on it? AK: We stayed in the same apartment when we made “Saturday’s For The Boys” and when we made “Melbourne, Australia.” WT: Yeah, then we came back, and we made “Melbourne, Australia” and “the xx.” (laughs) So that’s just a really fruitful place for us. AK: I think it’s because we have so many days off when we go there. We were just hanging out. WT: Yeah, that’s true, when we fly into Australia, usually there’s a few days before the shows start. And, you know, it’s lovely weather, we usually go there in February or something when it’s winter here and summer there, and, yeah, it’s a really fun time to hang out and that’s what ended up happening there. AK: Yeah, so, Melbourne. If anyone wants to make music, go to Melbourne, Australia. But yeah, “Saturday’s For The Boys” for me, for sure. If you want to hear more from Andrew Katz and Will Toledo, be sure to check out “1 Trait Banger”s by 1 Trait Danger, out now on all streaming services! Or, if you’d prefer, you can listen to the Pitchfork-approved “Twin Fantasty” (error theirs).
Source: Medium.com
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brain in a vat by Emma Shahin 15
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Art by Skyler Foley
How Tik Tok Changed the Music Industry and My Life By Skyler Foley
I try to write songs early in the morning. I like to type a couplet or two into my notes app; every now and then it’s a full verse. I find that this is the time of the day where I judge my writing the least - the part of my brain that tells me something is too stupid to write down isn’t quite awake yet. One day I woke up early and wrote down the following lines: You’re gonna outlive Mitch McConnell You’ll probably outlive Mitch McConnell He’s 78 and that’s pretty late You’re gonna outlive Mitch McConnell Somewhat disappointed in myself for writing this garbage instead of something actually good, I went back to sleep. I recorded a TikTok of the song later that day. I thought my 30 or so friends might think it was funny. I woke up the next morning with about 1000 new followers. That number has since grown to 15K. While there are certainly drawbacks, I love what TikTok is doing to the music industry overall. It has reintroduced the idea that anybody can make it. Alternative Rock charts used to be almost entirely defined by which of their songs were featured in advertisements - “Feel It Still” by Portugal. The Man got popular off of a Vitamin Water commercial. The rise of TikTok has led to the popularity of music being determined less by marketing teams and more by actual human beings. Frances Forever’s “Space Girl” is a good example of this phenomenon, growing in popularity based on a popular dance to the song. Even though marketing teams may try to hack it for success, they often failed miserably (hello, “Yummy” by Justin Bieber - a song that caused the pandemic if there ever
was one. For those not graced with Bieber’s social media flop, his constant pleas for fans to get his song to number one came off as desperate with him even reposting a graphic asking fans to play his song on repeat while they sleep to boost streaming numbers.) TikTok’s algorithm has led to thriving music communities on the platform. My goal in starting to post music was to become a part of one of those communities, maybe gain 50 new fans before I release my next EP, but I got much more than I bargained for.
I thought my 30 or so friends might think it was funny. I woke up the next morning with about 1000 new followers. The number has since grown to 15k. There’s a lot of things that are part of being a musician for me now that I never thought would be. I never thought I’d have to think about “posting times” or “tricking the algorithm.” I never thought I’d need a consistent upload schedule. I didn’t wear sweatpants during the first three weeks or so after the song went viral because I felt like I had to look presentable for TikTok. I’ve never in my life worn makeup as consistently as I do now. In some ways it’s nice to kind of be forced to take care of myself, and I try not to forget how remarkable and rare the opportunity I’ve been given truly is. But it’s also stressful. I have to play everything exactly right or people will point out every mistake - it’s nothing like live performance. I recorded a full version of “You’re Gonna Outlive Mitch McConnell” as quickly as I could, and two weeks after its release, it had 17
close to 7,000 streams. That is more than I thought I’d get in a lifetime! I found myself checking notifications constantly. Before the song went viral, I never thought that I could realistically pursue a career in music, but now I have been given a taste of it.
I didn’t wear sweatpants during the first three weeks or so after the song went viral because I felt like I had to look presentable for TikTok. I’ve never in my life worn makeup as I do now. There were negative consequences too, though. I’m not a conflict-driven person, and suddenly I had people telling me I was ugly and couldn’t sing every ten minutes or so in the comment section of a “Hey There Delilah” parody that I posted on Instagram. One guy made a TikTok duet of my Mitch McConnell song where he pretended to kiss me. I’ve also received enough creepy dms that I won’t disclose that I go to William & Mary on my music accounts. When enough people ask you where you live you start to get concerned about them paying you a visit. The consequences of TikTok’s algorithmic features can also be seen on a community level. Take the Gen-Z vs. Millennial “beef” that circulated Twitter threads and YouTube cringe
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compilations, for example. To my knowledge, this supposed “beef” was popularized in part by Sarah Hester Ross, a musician and comedian on TikTok. Most of her videos focus on positivity and self-confidence, especially body positivity and feminism. I assume she saw the Millenial vs. Gen-Z TikToks start to pick up, and as a millennial, Ross felt the need to make a song about how she was confident in her skinny jeans and side part, regardless of whether the zoomers thought these styles were outdated. The video was cheesy and in my opinion misguided, but her Gen-Z putdowns were limited. The video was mostly meant as being about self-love in the face of change - it fit well with her wholesome brand. The video went infamously viral, and now the singer is regularly told to jump into traffic in the comment sections of her posts by teenagers. To be a successful musician on TikTok is to prioritize comedy over art, and to hop on every trend in the hopes of staying relevant, it seems. One viral misstep and your career is forever changed. Overall, not too much about how I make music has changed. I do write the occasional short-form song just for TikTok, but I find it difficult to write the types of songs that go viral consistently. It turns out that people tend to share funny songs the most, and those just aren’t usually the songs I care about all that much. I assume my following will probably dwindle over time regardless of the amount of videos I’m putting out. All that said, I’m thankful for this weird once-in-a-lifetime type experience given to me by the internet.
Skeleton Night Live
If Phoebe were to Meet David Crosby
Isabel and Emma absolutely shredding
Skeletons by Laura Reitze
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He Died Sitting Down
When you Walk into the Cafeteria in Hell and Don’t Know Anyone
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Tambourine Players are the Main Characters
Cosi After Dark
The Bones are their Money
Sickly Solo 21
Anyway, here’s wonderwall...
When you walk into the other side of the Cafeteria in Hell and Still Don’t Know Anyone
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Guitar Villain
Next Time I’ll Hit ya with my Arm Bone
Yet Another Sickly Solo
Are These Things On?
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bro i am simply too gecc’d up right now
by Van Monday 24
Source: Aiden Cullen for Fader
“Wait, Van,” you may be saying, “What even is hyperpop? Is it a genre? A group of artists? A lifestyle?” Ultimately, it’s all of the above and none of the above. The advent of hyperpop is, ostensibly, the creation of the eponymous Spotify playlist in August of 2019. However, as much as I love paying homage to our corporate overlords and their inabilities to adequately pay artists, this is both reductive and inaccurate. It is also, ultimately, unimportant. In many ways, genre is a facsimile of bygone eras in which there wasn’t infinite music available at the press of a button, and perhaps even eras where we could go outside and spend time doing things other than gatekeeping music and creating exclusive clubs of artists that fit a certain tailored aesthetic. 100 gecs defies aesthetics. For some, this represents their refusal to make music that panders to Boomers, but I dismiss these individuals as piss babies. Certainly, the duo, composed of Laura Les and Dylan Brady, brought their variety of infectious synthpop to the mainstream, but they built off the success of a decade of alternative pop music. PC Music, SOPHIE (rest in power), A.G. Cook— these are the names tied to gecs by virtue of similarity and trailblazing. But these are not the only influences on the newly manufactured genre. Bladee, Ecco2k, and Yung Lean are contemporaries of the PC Music scene, but Les, Brady, and their fellow playlist-dwellers also cite Fall Out Boy, 3OH!3, and YouTube nightcore remixes as inspiration. Despite the nuanced origin story of the genre, there is one undeniable truth: hyperpop is inextricably linked to queerness. SOPHIE, who tragically passed away this year, was a trans icon whose legacy is cemented not only in SOPHIE’s own music, but also Vince Staples, Madonna, and Charli XCX. SOPHIE paved the way for other trans artists,
like gecs’ Les, as well as nonbinary Chicago-based Fraxiom, Dorian Electra, and countless others.
New world order, no more gods, only SOPHIE Y’all know God is trans, so let’s pray to her and stream Trophy. -Mos Thoser by Food House
Source: Transgressive Records
In a global pandemic, there is no better soundtrack than pure unadulterated chaos, and very few current genres handle the uncertainty that comes with daily historic events better than hyperpop.
As mentioned earlier, hyperpop found a wider audience at the advent of the pandemic. Locked down, young people found themselves less pressured by the social norms that had previously governed their day-to-day. Hyperpop artists, too, adapted far easier to an entirely digital world, many hosting concert livestreams in Minecraft or Roblox. Because of this, and perhaps an unhinged desire to feel something by listening to distorted vocals and chugging Monster in the face of a world filled with fear, hyperpop became officially mainstream. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t before—100 gecs toured with Brockhampton in 2019, Charli XCX worked extensively with PC Music’s A.G. Cook, and SOPHIE was a pop icon, but their names were rarely mentioned outside of the hallowed halls of college radio stations or the front-rows of mid-capacity venues in mid-sized cities. However, the cultural zeitgeist of the movement hit its peak in early March’s dread-filled quarantine walks, complete with color-customizer TikToks and newly-developed caffeine addictions. A strange part of me, someone who found comfort in 100 gecs chaos prior to the pandemic, found this fascination bizarre. It often felt like these people viewed hyperpop as a joke the creators themselves weren’t in on. And perhaps it’s just that—a feeling I got, the kind that one notices when the thing they love so dearly is now not so much their own. Do you remember when you were in mid25
dle school, and there would be a talent show? And, being the kind of person who was far too insecure to put themselves on display, you sat in the back, surrounded by the other people not brave enough to face the scathing glares of seventh-and-eighth graders? All of a sudden, the “weird kid” gets up on stage and begins to perform. It’s…not bad? And so you sit there, rapt, peaceful, appreciative of the courage they hold and you so lack. But afterwards, instead of polite applause, there’s a roar, somewhere not quite akin to jeering but not apart from it either. It’s uncomfortable and anxiety inducing, and you hear the crowd murmuring things they wouldn’t dare shout.
Source: James Baroz
Insert Quote
I feel stuck, straddling the thin line that divides gatekeeping and justified frustration. A really large part of me feels as though the jokes directed towards hyperpop artists stem from a discrete desire to laugh at queer artists, inherently contributing to homophobia and transphobia. At the same time, the more streams and fans that are accrued by minority artists, the larger their platform and ability to speak out on these very issues. Thinking about these things makes my brain feel very numb and very lost. The fog of nearly a year of the global pandemic hangs heavy over my eyelids, never quite lifting but always catching glimpses. These are the feelings that underpin the rise of hyperpop in the pandemic era. Somehow, through screeching bass and pitch-shifted vocals, artists are able to bring clarity. I think, at its core, hyperpop captures the way it feels to struggle with no outlet and simultaneously gives it one. It’s cathartic and artful. The fact that it’s just music, but gives us so much, is pretty gosh-darn cool.
performing artist and musician
fraxiom of food house 26
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Photo Credit: Jim Kean
One More S Revisting th e Grateful D
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aturday Nig ht
ead’s final sh ow at Willia m and Mary By Barrett S mith
The date is April 15th, 1978, a partly cloudy Saturday with winds that makes it impossible to do work outside, but it is not really the wind that keeps students from getting their studying done. For most of America, the ides of April is Federal Income Tax Day, but for loyal fans of The Grateful Dead, it means a concert at William and Mary Hall that evening. For the horrified parents visiting campus for Family Weekend, it means the stench of pot and damn hippies, everywhere, and for the College of William & Mary, it means a PR Nightmare that resulted in the band never being invited back to campus.
capture the spirit of the event. Seeking primary sources, I stumbled upon an archived Flat Hat article that summarized the show. Messina, the writer of this article, gives account of the concert in a style typical of a reporter: clear, objective, and dry—occasionally offering inconsequential details that do nothing to add credibility to his presence, like when he pointed out pianist Kieth Godchaux’s weight loss for some reason.2 Nitpicky comments like these dominate the entire piece, even if they hide in plain sight. Despite the slightly negative comments, the review is fairly positive. Messina writes:
I am not what many would consider a ‘Deadhead:’ I only know a handful of songs by The Grateful Dead, but not many deep cuts. I remember hearing “Casey Jones” on the radio, “Scarlet Begonias,” and a few others, but generally, I am no Dead scholar, which is why it was so interesting to see that they have played at William & Mary on the Grateful Dead’s instagram account. They announced that their 1978 show was selected for The Grateful Dead’s latest volume of their ongoing archival series: Dave’s Picks1. Intrigued, I bought the CD so that I could re-experience such a historic moment on campus.
The Dead put together a professional performance, manipulating the pace tantalizingly, building the musical and energy crescendos strongly and steadily.3
Anybody who knows the slightest about The Dead knows that they are a “live band,” so the recording would not be sufficient to fully
Even if the review was positive, it still felt alienated from the actual event, like when it described a group of concertgoers as “garbed in the plumage of a decade ago.”4 Language like this felt useless to read and not in any way relevant to documenting the concert. Messina sounds like he wants the reader to think he is acquainted with the Dead. He mentions the “smoothed-out, easy flowing “Friend of the Devil”” and Phil Lesh being “his usual buoyant self,” but nothing from this article has any of the ardent energy that kept the Dead a cult classic well into the 70s. Messina is not
From Left to Right, Phil Lesh, Donna Godchaux, Jerry Garcia 29
writing about the same Grateful Dead that was described to me by my 6th Grade History Teacher. Mentioned briefly in The Flat Hat article is a group of Deadheads from New York City that rode a bus to see this show, so it was hilarious to read recounted stories of the trip in the Concert’s CD Booklet. A Deadhead named Malcom Kaplan had organized the trip by convincing his high school to take a bus so they could tour William & Mary’s campus, but it was just a giant front to see the Dead.5 As Rob Bleetstein put it: What we might have learned in school about historic Williamsburg, Virginia was about to get an entirely different spin put to it… Probably not one of us had any idea who William and Mary really were, but we did know about the Dead playing there in ’73 and ’76.6 When he wasn’t boasting about how high he was, Bleetstein, a Deadhead, shares his experience with the passion of a thousand acid tabs. His retelling of his experience used language that didn’t just describe the music ele-
A poster advertising the bus trip
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ments and additional pointless nonsense like The Flat Hat’s did; he also included how the music made him feel, like when he explained that the 10-minute rendition of “Mississippi Half-Step” “hit everyone like a bolt of lightning.”7 It is hard to tell if this was because of the LSD or artistic choice—probably the LSD. Regardless, it is a visceral account of the evening. Why then, do these two accounts of this concert differ so drastically? How come what The Flat Hat saw as “a few hours of high-powered American Rock n’ Roll” was to the passengers an experience that “would find their lives forever changed?8”” These disparities in opinion are frequent throughout both sources, and another example is the extended drum solo that takes place in “Rhythm Devils.” The Flat Hat sees this segment as “excruciatingly drawn-out,” while Bleetstein gives it much more credit than (I think) it deserves.9 He describes this “mindfuck of the wildest kind” in much more detail, recalling how it was not just any drum solo, as all the band members came together to simultaneously play different percussion instruments, like the steel drum and roto toms.10 Surely, these radically different views of the concert could be the result of hallucination or journalistic oversight. Furthermore, neither of these analyses explain why the Dead had the staying power that they did. There must be other dynamics at play for there to be such a divisive recollection between the journalist and joint smoker. Religious allusion is a common motif in all the sources I found, which reveals an ingroup/out-group relationship between journalist and subject. Arango, another Flat Hat writer, struggles to understand what makes the Dead so popular among their loyal fanbase, believing that Deadheads must “conceive of the Dead as prophets in their own pseudo-religious-cum-rock ideologies11.” The Flat Hat sees the Dead’s music as the Deadhead’s Gospel, LSD as their communion, the Saturday Night show as their mass, and Bleetstein does not seem too opposed to this conclusion. When describing what made him originally interested in the Grateful Dead’s music, he writes:
Phil Lesh signing autographs
The Dead seemed to reach out their proverbial hand, inviting us to take to the open road, live out our dreams, to be a rider in the dopers’ rodeo.12 The ingroup/outgroup relationship forms naturally and inevitably. Even if journalists may understand the motives/behavior behind the average Deadhead, they are ultimately not a part of that community. For a weekend, Williamsburg was the bastion of 60s Psychedelia. Williamsburg gets a lot of visitors, but when the Deadheads showed up, they made this tourist town their home. Deadheads from all over came to see their beloved band, and the town became something unrecognizable to most residents. One Deadhead described what it was like in Williamsburg that day: The Deadheads took over the town in our own friendly way. Walk in to ye olde ice cream parlor, and there are Deadheads helping the counter help apply extra whipped cream to sundaes, and discreetly breaking up mushrooms into their milkshakes.13 The Grateful Dead wasn’t in Colonial Williamsburg. Instead, The Grateful Dead’s ambiance enveloped Colonial Williamsburg, and The Grateful Dead became Colonial Williams-
burg. This wasn’t what the usual Colonial Williamsburg tourists were expecting. Following the journalistic tradition of using phrases that suck any and all life out of comradery, The Flat Hat called The Grateful Dead, “a social institution,” and it makes sense why.14 The concert wasn’t fit for local Williamsburg news. Before this show, they couldn’t even document an event that wasn’t meant for them; they were outsiders peering into the world of The Grateful Dead. I didn’t listen to the recording of this concert in the open and crowded Kaplan Arena, but rather in the quiet isolation of the WCWM Station. Tucked away in the Campus Center Basement, I broadcasted the show to cover another DJ’s shift. At first, I tried taking notes on the music, but after a while, it all started to blend into the signature Grateful Dead sound (minus the Drum section. That stuck out like a sore thumb). I thought the music was great; perfect to listen to after a long week. After listening to the recording of the concert, I think I understand why The Dead remained such a cult favorite for so long. The music gives off the same warmth as a campfire, but a campfire’s warmth is meant to be enjoyed with others. This was an oversight 31
made by The Flat Hat. While they were complaining about the breaks in-between the two sets and the drawn-out 5 minutes it took to tune between songs, Bleetstein appreciated the break as a time to chat about the previous tune and socialize with fellow Deadheads.
Dead were the hushpuppies of Rock n’ Roll. Their songs give off the same soul-soothing feeling as Home. What made the Dead such a cult-favorite goes beyond technical skill or innovation, because nothing on this Earth is special as the intimacy of sharing an experience.
Set breaks were another piece of the Grateful Dead environment that could often hold a hidden charm or two. Be it running into an old friend or meeting a new one, or just taking a deep breath, the step back into the “other world” with the house lights up let the social/ party aspect flourish.15
The Grateful Dead stuck out as a band that held a close relationship with their fans, and what grew out of that was a consistent fanbase whose identity was always evolving. What it meant to be a Deadhead has changed over the years, but it is certain that nobody, not even the band themselves, have much control over their fanbase’s collective identity. Without the Deadheads, there would be no Dead, and the band ran with this fact until the very end. They knew that they could not survive by capitulating to an identity that journalists and critics had built around them. That did not matter to The Grateful Dead because identity is understood subjectively. I would argue, however, that not all subjective understandings of the Dead matter equally. The band decided that the only conception of them that mattered was the collective understanding amongst their most loyal fanbase. It did not matter if their fans saw them as deities or good songwriters; all they wanted was to play for people who appreciated their music. The result was a strong relationship between the Dead and their fanbase that lasted longer than what haters would have preferred.
Bleetstein shows that several different types of harmony can exist between the notes: musical and social harmony. Someone who has little to no investment in a musical subculture cannot understand the strong, unspeakable bonds that are formed from enjoying this music with someone else. The friendships that we share music with reveal a side of music that cannot be captured by someone who has little to no investment in that musical subculture. I myself got a handful of phone calls in the station from people who were listening along with me, and I cannot put into words how much I cherished being able to catch up with old friends and getting closer to new ones over the phone. Even if we weren’t all physically together, it felt comforting to know we were all appreciating the heartwarming music that the Grateful Dead had to share. In a way, The
A Ticket Stub of the concert 32
Endnotes 1. David, one of our fellow Vinyl Tap contributors, recommended to me their show on September 11th, 1973, “They had so much fun they decided to stick around another night. My favorite China/Rider ever” 2. Messina Jr, John. “The Dead on a Saturday Night: Not Perfect, But Still a Major Rock Event,” The Flat Hat (Williamsburg, VA), Apr 21, 1978. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Coincidentally, the venue’s name was changed from William and Mary Hall to Kaplan Arena in 2005, years after the Dead’s final performance in 1978. Bleetstein calls it “a final twist of fate.” See Bleetstein, p. 17. 6. Bleetstein, Rob. “A Historic Ride Down I-95: The Electric Bus Trip of a Lifetime.” Dave’s Picks: Volume 39. Rhino, 2021. 3,5. 7. Ibid., 7. 8. Menissa Jr, “Dead on a Saturday Night.” & Bleetstein, “Historic Ride,” 5. 9. Ibid. 10. Bleetstein, “Historic Ride,” 14. 11. Arango, Ish. “The Grateful Dead Play Here Saturday,” The Flat Hat (Williamsburg, VA), Apr. 14, 1978. 12. Bleetstein, “Historic Ride” 4. 13. From a Commenter on the Grateful Dead Forums, “One of the best shows ever. No; really. Here’s why:” The Grateful Dead, Jun, 2007. https://www.dead.net/show/april-15-1978. 14. Arango, “The Grateful Dead Play Here Saturday.” 15. Bleetstein, “A Historic Ride,” 8-13.
The audience awaits the Dead at William and Mary Hall
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A Brief History of Taylor Swift
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By Jack Stewart
Art by CrazyLoveDigitalArt via Etsy Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Fearless: I am eight years old in my parents’ basement looking up at my sister, who fiddles with the CD case before her clumsy hands drop the disc to the laminated brick floor. It spins once in a circle and stands on its edge before clattering down. She puts the disc in a radio (a walkman?) and skips once, twice, and we sit and listen to “Love Story,” perking up our ears as our water heater (or dryer?) rumbles and crashes, like a misplaced instrument in the arrangement. I don’t know who Romeo or Juliet are, but in my young and silly head, their lives are scored with subtle mandolins and driving drums. Every breath is on beat. Speak Now: I am ten years old in the back of my mom’s car, driving home from a little league game (piano lessons?) and I am crying in a way that only a child can, with hot tears flowing over cold skin and my chest heaving with blistering anger that festers and fights against the seat belt wrapped around my torso. It’s April (May?), and the disappointing spring of New England is in full swing, with naked branches that crick and split like rivers, covered by pale green moss clinging to bark. Trees rise and speed by us as I push my head against the window, aching to be anywhere but this silent car. I think mom is mad at me. The case for Speak Now is on the floor of the backseat, its formerly glossy cover now stained by its home on our dirty car mat. “Innocent” is playing. I study the strange color and texture of her dress on the flat cover of the CD, and its implied movement seems so out of place on the still dirty case. I try to stop sniffling and catch my breath so I can sing along to the line “32 and still growin’ up now” like it means something to me, because for whatever reason it does. Red: I am twelve years old, and it gets dark outside at 4:30 PM. On the warmer days, the snow melts just enough to mix with the dirt buried underneath it so that the whiteness of the snow becomes something ugly and confusing, a heavy brown slush that freezes every night when darkness ushers in the cold and melts every morning under the white sun.
I hide inside my house for most of the day, maybe shaking my stillness once or twice to shovel some snow off a small stretch of walkway while I listen to “State of Grace” on my iPod, moving just enough so that when my mom finishes making stir fry (quiche?), I am hungry enough for a plate. I sit on a black leather couch with my eyes peeled on the TV screen as I watch some terrible TV show like The Big Bang Theory (NCIS?) until it is finally late enough to go to bed with no questions asked. It has been dark for five hours now, and even though I haven’t done anything today, I still have to drag my thin limbs up the stairs and into my room. I lay in bed and listen to love songs, twisting Red’s lyrics around in my head so that every love story becomes real, manifested physically, curled around the manicured sound of strings and guitars. I fall asleep dreading the promise of a cold white sun.
I try to stop sniffling and catch my breath so I can sing along to the line “32 and still growin’ up now” like it means something to me, because for whatever reason it does. 1989: I am fourteen years old, and I consider myself an adult. I’m in the back of my friend’s sister’s car, and “Shake It Off” is on the radio. Shannon (Colleen?) laments Taylor’s ascent into pure pop stardom, pining for the days of mandolin and acoustic guitar. I say it is a good album, not really knowing why, and I am met with silence. The headlights segment Stony Brook (Channel View?), and I join my friends in a basement somewhere, our bodies and mouths like mirrors, reflecting and folding into each other, until I can look Daniel in the eye and tell him that I do, in fact, love “Out Of The Woods,’’ and that his sister is wrong. His eyes return and he smiles, revealing the braces that he’s had for over a year now. He breaks into song, a surprisingly beautiful tenor, and belts the cho35
Source: Ethan Miller- Getty Images for ACMA
rus of “Wildest Dreams’’ as we hustle up the steps and out the door to play manhunt in the balmy June night. I hide in the woods, breaking into the occasional quiet sprint. My hands lead the way as thorn bushes wrap around my thin legs. Crickets score the dark. reputation: I am seventeen years old, and I am now too cool for Taylor Swift. I wake up in the dark on Saturday morning and curl cold fingers around a steering wheel, and I don’t wait for the engine to heat up before I start the car. I stumble in the backdoor of the bakery and I clock in on an iPod that Melissa (Erin?) has turned to “Today’s Hits” on Pandora. My eye roll is a performance when it is announced that the old Taylor can’t come to the phone because she’s dead. Outside it is so cold that the spill of coffee near the trash has frozen into slick brown ice. The ovens hum a low note as the world wakes. Lover: I am nineteen years old and alone on a bus somewhere near Hartford (New Haven?). This is what it means to be grown. My sister texts me and tells me to listen to “Cruel Summer,” and I do, but then I lie and say I 36
listened to the rest of the album. It is early Spring now, and in a month or so, the green will return to the trees that surround I-95, but for now, Connecticut is a gray and soundless hell. The cracks in the pavement are spaced out just so, and each time the bus barrels over one, the shuttering glass windows are on beat. The woman next to me leafs through a magazine, glossy and lifeless, and I almost make a joke about the woman on the cover, Taylor Swift. I lean my head on the window and imagine I am a fly trapped in a jar. Everything looks the same in Connecticut. The shaking window lulls me to sleep.
I join my friends in a basement somewhere, our bodies and mouths like mirrors, reflecting and folding into each other, until I can look Daniel in the eye and tell him that I do, in fact, love “Out Of The Woods,” and that his sister is wrong.
folklore: I am twenty years old, and the world has made me a child again. Each day is warmer than the last and each night there is noise and rage to keep me company in my childhood bedroom. In the mornings I walk to the dirty pond behind my house and sit and cast, but I never catch anything. Taylor Swift’s newest album has forced its way into my personal zeitgeist. She made all the right moves to win me back, after all: the Dessner brothers helped produce this! Bon Iver is a feature! She was in Cats! I make each song into its very own love story, with faces that ring like ghosts in my head. When the night comes my fury is replaced, tempered by the balmy air and replaced by a quiet and fervent prayer that I will wake up washed anew. I envy Taylor Swift. Every reinvention is dexterous and successful - from country to
pop to whatever this is now, her success has, strangely enough, never wavered even in moments of discomfort as she readjusts to the new world she’s creating. She is omnipresent now, sewn into the fabric of pop culture and inextricable from memory. Swift knows this, I think. She knows that her life has become a story for us. In folklore, she says she is attempting to tell other people’s stories, despite beginning her music career telling her own, with the understanding that her work will be viewed as an extension of where she is in life. She began by telling us stories that weren’t her truth. She didn’t marry a boy from her hometown and she’s not Juliet. She’s always been writing love stories for us. Now, when I have nothing else, I listen to love songs. My days are scored by guitars and harmonicas ringing with life and memory.
Source: Kevin Mazur- Getty Images for Amazon 37
Photo Credit: John Shearer
Golden Boys: The Music Industry and Accountability How Morgan Wallen and Ariel Pink show how far the music world have to gotwo artists’ falls from grace By Aidan O’Halloran
Photo Credit: Frank Hoensch/Redferns via Getty 38
In the last several months, there have been two particular falls from grace that have caught my attention. Sure, a lot of entertainers and performers have seen downfalls since the pandemic began, but those of Morgan Wallen and Ariel Pink seem to speak to the problems that allow these incidents to keep happening. Wallen’s most recent album, Dangerous, recently became the first album to spend its first ten weeks at the top of the Billboard charts since Whitney Houston’s 1987 self-titled. Which is surprising, given within the span of a year he was captured saying an anti-Black slur on camera and violating SNL’s Covid policies prior to his musical performance, but less surprising if you namesearch him on Twitter. At least half but maybe more of the results are going to be unqualified stanning, without acknowledging any controversy. Occasionally, you’ll see claims that he’s probably changed; maybe an embarrassed but unreserved endorsement. Mostly, his fans just don’t talk about it. Whenever an artist or public figure engages in misconduct (or, as we will explore later, holds bad politics), the music industry will fail to hold them responsible in a meaningful way. Yes, Wallen was suspended from his label and temporarily dropped from multiple radio stations. But how can that be called accountability or consequences when it had zero impact on his success? With regards to the SNL incident, he was actually invited back on and joked about breaking quarantine. It’s worth noting that Wallen has told fans not to defend him, and has donated album sales to the Nashville NAACP. I won’t spend time trying to unpack whether these actions should be taken as sincere or not, but it’s frustrating to observe that Wallen was operating from a relative position of power in this scenario, as the only attempt to hold him accountable that was effective was entirely self-inflicted. Something I think about a lot is Craig Jenkin’s review of Dangerous for Vulture, released before the racist incident, with the ominous and prescient title, “Sorry, But Get Used to Morgan Wallen.” But it’d be a disservice to pretend that country is the only genre where this happens. So let’s turn our gaze to disgraced alternative golden boy Ariel Pink. He was widely praised as an innovator in his field, but his reputation would be tarnished due to a combination of racist and homophobic statements and domestic abuse allegations from ex-girlfriend Charlotte
Ercoli Cole At the time there was no concentrated attempt to hold him accountable from within the industry, but his actions reached a breaking point when, as a supporter, Pink attended the 1/6/21 Trump Rally that led to the attack on the Capitol building. (Pink did not participate in the actual attack, just the rally.) Pink and Wallen do differ— Pink did not apologize for his actions in the way that Wallen did. After being dropped by his label, Pink appeared on, of all things, Tucker Carlson Tonight in an attempt to rehab his image. (Noted culture warrior Carlson did not ask Pink about the album cover of Round and Round, which is an illustration of a man kissing a dog. Missed opportunity, in my opinion.) What made this a particularly interesting decision was the choice of Carlson. Look, this world is full of unique and varied characters, but I have my doubts that even the most conservative Hypnagogic Pop scene kids are watching Tucker. This was not Pink trying to reclaim his audience. It was very nakedly him trying to reach a new audience, composed of Young Republicans and baby boomers obsessed with the culture war. His most recent tweet is just “Has anyone ever come back from being cancelled?” There’s enough people expressing support in the replies that it seems like a pointless question; Pink is by no means a superstar, but he has maintained a widely conservative -- and occasionally leftist, which makes me wonder how closely they analyze their politics -- fanbase in spite of being “cancelled”.
At least half but maybe more of the results are going to be unqualified stanning, without acknowledging any controversy. Occasionally, you’ll see claims that he’s probably changed; maybe an embarrassed but unreserved endorsement. Mostly, his fans just don’t talk about it. So let’s look at Wallen and Pink as two halves of the same whole. The music industry and music fans have the tendency to build up performers as geniuses. Blame it on auteur theory, shallow cultural analysis, or parasocial relationships, but certain figures end up being revered. And eventually, they do something
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Wallen (left) on Saturday Night Live Source: Rosalind O’Connor for NBC bad, as people with power are wont to do. (There are, of course, different levels of bad. I’ve focused on the worst, but lighter actions— such as petty crime or bad politics— do not necessarily warrant a sanction). But due to this standing, said performers are either able to retain a significant fanbase that will ignore those actions or, failing that, pivot to embrace a new fanbase that embraces those actions. If we want things like this to stop happening, we need professionals in the music and wider entertainment industry to seriously consider the behavior of the people they choose to elevate. This goes beyond just labels and radio stations,
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and enters the world of live events and television. It is perhaps impossible to expect every entity to get on the same page, but if there isn’t a wide consensus on what actions must be held accountable, bad actors will be able to run between different venues, building an audience without facing the consequences of the harm they’ve done. Then, we, as a collective audience, need to look at our favorite musicians and do the same. As much as the music industry is to blame, the fact remains that this is a symptom of a public willing to overlook the misdeeds of public figures that they feel they know.
In the Comfort of their Home Studio Sketch Series By Laura Reitze
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Source: Michael Glenwood
Submitting to the Algorithm
How artists redefine themselves in the digital era By Justin Berg 42
After a couple decades of the internet and a year-long pandemic, it’s safe to say we’re more online than ever. As a result, our attention spans are decreasing – with so many stimuli presented to us at once, it’s hard to focus on any one thing. When it comes to finding something new to watch or listen to, there’s no shortage of options; if something doesn’t keep your interest, it couldn’t be easier to scroll to the next post, switch to the next app, or skip to the next song. In 2021, musicians have to work harder than ever to keep audiences’ eyes on them. One of the most important ways artists draw attention is by having a strong persona. It’s often more about the artist than the art, and the first step to getting fans is getting noticed. Whether it’s 6ix9ine or Emily Montes, listeners care about interesting people, no matter the quality of their music. For an ambitious artist, going viral is hitting the jackpot. Still, the internet only pays attention for so long. New musicians who want a longterm following must keep their fans engaged before they look away. Lil Nas X could have been a momentary sensation, but rather than leaning on the cowboy schtick that first made fans notice him, he hasn’t been afraid to redefine himself. By way of his witty online presence, distinctive fashion sense, and unapologetic sexuality, he’s managed to stay relevant to an easily-distracted audience. Rina Sawayama is another artist who gets fans excited. She’s got a fanbase name (“pixels”), a YouTube channel, and a modeling career. She’s relatable and interacts with her fans; on YouTube, she likes her viewers’ comments and makes videos with titles like “MY FIRST Q&A + GRWM” and “Reacting to reactions to MY DEBUT ALBUM.” Additionally, she’s openly queer, something that makes her a more natural gay icon than pop singers like Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, or Dua Lipa (no matter how hard they might try). It helps that Rina makes good music, but it’s worth noting that if you have a diehard fanbase,
you’ve got people who’ll focus on anything you put out. Doja Cat might have put it best when she tweeted, “I wish yall loved me like yall love these fuckin k pop hoes.” Another way musicians are taking advantage of short attention spans is through surprise releases. Since the first surprise album in 2007, Radiohead’s In Rainbows, the tactic has become more and more common. As long as an artist has a fanbase and the internet to spread the news, a drawn-out promotional campaign isn’t so necessary. When Taylor Swift announced folklore last July, it was all the internet was talking about, and even as a more casual fan, I couldn’t wait to listen to it the next night. Meanwhile, with slower, more traditional project releases, I’ve found myself losing interest over time. It’s been hard to stay excited about Taylor’s current rerecording of Fearless, for example, and it was only announced in February, two months in advance.
Lil Nas X could have been a momentary sensation, but rather than leaning on the cowboy schtick that made fans first notice him, he hasn’t been afraid to redefine himself. By way of his witty online presence, distinctive fashion sense, and unapologetic sexuality, he’s managed to stay relevant to an easily-distracted audience. However, it’s not just the way artists promote their music that’s changing – it’s the music itself, too. In the streaming era, musicians only get paid if their song is played for 30 seconds or more online. As a result, they often write songs that get straight to the point (likely the chorus), before listen43
ers with short attention spans get distracted and skip to the next track. In the streaming era, there’s no shortage of choices, and it takes zero time or money to discover and listen to something you’ve never heard before. At the same time, songs are also becoming shorter, because listeners are unlikely to stay engaged during long songs. These “bite-sized” tracks are more repetitive, more addictive, and more replayable.
There’s no better place for these songs to find listeners than TikTok. All a track needs is a catchy snippet to become a trend – just one impactful line, like “molly rocks in my green tea,” from XIX’s Kismet, does the trick. As users are exposed to a trending song over and over, it inevitably gets stuck in their heads, and they go to stream it. Music videos on YouTube are now full of “TikTok brought me here” comments, and Spotify hosts countless TikTok-inspired playlists. TikTok’s immense influence is evidenced by the fact that how well a song does on TikTok can predict how successful it will be off of the app. Huge hits like “Roxanne,” “Savage”, and “Dance Monkey” first became popular on TikTok before the Hot 100, for example. Some chart-topping songs, like “drivers license” and “Savage Love,” have been by TikTokers themselves. Thanks to one viral TikTok, the app has even brought Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac, back to Billboard’s top
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10 albums for the first time since 1977. The way the app works takes perfect advantage of our newly short attention spans. If you’ve ever used TikTok, you know that its algorithm is strangely accurate, curating exactly what you want to see, even when you don’t know it yet. If keeping your attention is the name of the game, then an endless-scrolling app with short, loopable videos and a miracle algorithm is sure to be a winner. What Vine did for comedy, TikTok has done for music. Having found such a perfect platform, music is more closely linked to social media than ever before. Whether any of this is good or bad is a matter of opinion. On one hand, artists may be diluting the messages they have to offer in order to make them as accessible as possible. For example, surprise releases remove the artistry of putting together a full album cycle, and bite-sized songs lack the ability to make much of a point. However, it’s undeniable that the internet has opened countless new doors for music. Any new artist can grab an audience’s attention and go viral without the help of a record label, for example. Meanwhile, as music becomes more recognizable and shareable, listeners can bond over songs in new ways and with new people. Music has always been a social experience, and the internet only amplifies that – at a time when we need it most.
In the Comfort of their Home Studio Sketch Series By Laura Reitze
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Source: Matador Records
Julien Baker- Little Oblivions Matador Records/February 26th, 2021
Julien Baker’s music has always been ripe with fantastic songwriting: from her debut Sprained Ankle to the more recent Turn the Lights Out. She falls somewhere in the intersection of folk, indie rock, and emo; with themes of substance abuse and struggles with faith. This sound and these themes are brought to new heights on Little Oblivions, Baker’s third studio album. Little Oblivions opens with a roar. “Hardline” builds one of the most impactful soundscapes on the album - it’s complex arrangement creates a full band feel that is bigger than anything Julien Baker has ever done before. One of the most intense tracks, “Hardline,” lets the listener know that they’re in for a bigger and bolder sound. The main element that sticks out to me about Little Oblivions is Baker’s lyricism. The second track, “Heatwave,” walks the listener through a panic attack Baker is having in her car on the way to work. The song is a downward spiral in motion:
“Before I make it to the ground
I’ll wrap Orion’s belt around my neck
And kick the chair out”
“Faith Healer” tackles relapse, the titular “faith healer” being a metaphor for a drug dealer. Addiction, like in Baker’s other work, is a major theme of the album. In my favorite song on the album, “Crying Wolf,” Baker uses the genius comparison of “crying wolf” to an addict repeatedly asking to be saved, only to get addicted again. The shame and self-hate may be tough to swallow, but it is also beautifully potent. Much of the album is also spent exploring what it means to be “good” and “evil” and Baker’s personal feelings of guilt. “Relative Fiction” is about the ‘good person’ narrative Baker creates for herself. She considers the song to be only that: a narrative, a story with omissions. Over washed-out keys, Baker croons “if I didn’t have a mean bone in my body, I’d find some other way to cause you pain.”
“Bloodshot” also tackles the difference between story and reality, but this time it focuses on a relationship between two people who long to see something that isn’t there in the other person. Layered with beautiful spaced-out harmonies, this song’s openness lets the lyrics breathe. Much of the project is downtempo indie rock, and while the instrumentals are certainly lush, the production has a dreamlike quality that makes everything almost meld together. Whether this sound is for you or not is a matter of personal preference. For me, I found that while a lot of the textures were interesting, the songs easily blend together. I think I could fall asleep to this album. Combine this sound with lyrics that demand focus, and I think there are areas where it takes away from moments that could have had more impact. “Ringside” is one track where the energy of the emotional climax is matched by the instrumentals perfectly. Baker’s vocal delivery of this song is more intense, and she belts most of the lyrics. It’s a story of compulsive behaviors: “Nobody deserves a second chance but honey I keep getting them.” There are too many highlights on this project to count. “Favor” describes a moment of guilt in crying while apologizing, as the tears seem manipulative when they truly come from a genuine place. There’s a moment on the second verse where the percussion falls out and is replaced by a trumpet harmony -- this is one of my favorite moments on the album sonically. Then there’s the piano ballad, “Song in E,” in which Baker sings about how she would rather be treated as if she were evil than to be forced to forgive. Her delivery is cathartic, but not quite as tearful as “Favor.” Little Oblivions is a triumph of songwriting over understated instrumentals. I think it would be a good album to drive to, especially if you are planning on having a good cry on the way to your destination. Baker ends the album with “Ziptie,” a haunting closer that asks why God hasn’t given up on humanity. “Oh good God / When you gonna call it off?” she sings, “Climb down off of the cross / And change your mind?” - Skyler Foley
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Source: Atwood Magazine
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard- K.G. Flightless/November 20th, 2020
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s wild, playful, and exciting sound, along with their penchant for genre experimentation, make them one of the best psych rock bands of the 2010’s, and a personal favorite of mine. 2017’s Flying Microtonal Banana, saw them experiment with microtonal tuning, a non-Western tuning style that sounds out of tune to Western ears, and to date is one of their most inventive albums. Since its release, Banana has become a fan favorite, and last year’s K.G. saw the band returning to this style. L.W. is the sister project to this album, and serves as the band’s 3rd overall exploration into microtonal tuning. Unfortunately, as with K.G., I find myself wishing for something a little more substantive. The album gets off to something of a weak start with the song “If Not Now, Then When?”. While its melody is cute and the lyrics are thoughtful, the instrumental still sounds bare, and Stu Mackenzie’s awkward vocals strain to hit the high notes. The following track “O.N.E.” picks up the energy with an instrumental that sounds like a throwback to Banana, but with a slightly more psychedelic update. I love the short guitar solo towards the end of the track and the haunting backing vocals buried into the mix. Later in the tracklist, King Gizzard leans into its microtonal experimentation, delivering two tracks that sound heavily influenced by Middle Eastern music. “East West Link” features a very catchy microtonal guitar line and some percussion that mimics the sound of a galloping horse, along with lyrics protesting the development of a new highway in Australia. “Static Electricity” has an infectious hook, and also has some very psychedelic whooshing noises on the chorus, which provides a nice contrast to the more straightforward production on “East West Link”. These two songs are by far the strongest on the album. My feelings on the rest of the album are a bit mixed. “Pleura”
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features some very heavy guitar passages and a frenetic chorus, but I could not get behind the vocals, which just sound silly to me. Towards the end of the album, the song “Ataraxia” runs out of steam halfway through, with an extended outro that adds nothing to the song. The track also features some of the worst vocals on the album and one of the most boring instrumentals. The following song, “See Me,” is alright, even if it doesn’t go anywhere unexpected for the band. At least the closing track, “K.G.L.W.,” ends the album on a strong note with a reprise of the first song off of K.G., this time with some heavy, chugging guitars and demonic lead vocals. On the whole, L.W. is a very hit-or-miss album for King Gizzard. Their experimentations with microtonal tuning are perhaps a bit more bold than on K.G., but still come nowhere near the catchiness of Banana. I appreciate the band’s willingness to return to this sound, but I do think it’s past time for the band to move on to the next thing. - Eamon Raftery-Sweeney
Source: Myesha Evon Gardner
Jazmine Sullian- Heaux Tales RCA Records/January 8th, 2021
In her fourth studio album, Jazmine Sullivan takes listeners on a journey through the lifecycle of a “heaux”-- from creation, to practice, to mindset. “Heaux Tales” presents a heroic tale in a beautifully-intertwined journey of intimate spoken stories followed by songs emphasizing the enticing recounts of strength, thrills, disasters, and female pleasure. From start to end, we follow lessons in self worth on the road to ultimate empowerment. The album opens with Sullivan’s “Bodies - Intro.” It sets the tone for the album perfectly, as she tells listeners to “get it together, bitch!” She is telling the hoes of the world to buckle up and get ready for the ride, because we all have a lot to learn from her. The album’s first story, “Antoinette’s Tale,” sets the stage reminding everyone that women, as humans, are sexual beings. Antoinette Henry says “[men] cannot handle if a woman takes the same liberities as them/ especially with regards to sex/...Plus... their egos are often way too fragile/ To ever handle a woman who owns and has any real agency over her body.” This is the origin of the “heaux” mentality. A mentality, Sullivan argues throughout this album, that was forced on women by men, but can be leveraged to the advantage of strong, hustling women. “Pick Up Your Feelings’’ rolls the audience into this mindset as Sullivan’s voice plays against funky baselines, calling men to handle their own emotions and stop using women as their dumping piles. Halfway through the album, we get the crown gem: “On It” featuring Ari Lennox. This beautiful melody, led by modern queens of rhythm and blues, evokes an insuppressible urge to rock back and forth, pushed and pulled by the sweet coos of Sullivan and Lennox in tandem. What better way to highlight the sexual prowess of women than to have two of the strongest vocalists of our age sing about making men prove their worth to women before they
can earn the right to experience women’s bodies. This song is very similar in both vibe and message to SZA and Kendrick Lamar’s witty, wispy praise “Doves in the Wind’’ off SZA’s 2017 album CTRL. The outro of this song consists of echoing runs reminding the listener of Sullivan’s soul cradling vocals on her 2008 song “Need U Bad.” She and Lennox fill up the soul of every listener with the sheer strength of their voices, leaving us begging for more. Sullivan tactfully rounds out the journey with the help of H.E.R on the closing track, “Girl Like Me.” This song uses a smooth guitar riff as a vessel for Sullivan’s raw vocals to float on. The lyrics “Wish I could return to sender/ But you don’t love me no more/ And I don’t even know what for” bring back the all too familiar pain Sullivan bared to the world in her breakthrough hit “Bust Your Windows.” She shows us how easy it is to blame other “hoes” for infidelity and heartbreak when really, the men are at the core of every heaux tale. She says, “ain’t wanna be/ But you gon’ make a hoe out of me/ That’s what you wanted, that’s what you get,” highlighting the emotional damage women carry in relationships. Sullivan outdid herself on this album with the full-circle lifecycle imposed on women in relationships. The listener emerges from the album with a new perspective on female agency and the wins and losses of sex and love. Jazmine Sullivan gracefully utilizes the liberating avenue that other female R&B legends have paved for her. “Heaux Tales” creates a communal safe space for anyone who has been slutshamed, and its music and intimate stories uncover the power and validity in the “heaux” life that we often overlook. Women should realize their self-worth to achieve their true potential, and this album nudges them in the right direction. - Kaley Haller
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Source: Americana UK
Langhorne Slim- Strawberry Mansion Dualtone Records/January 29th, 2021
The isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has inspired creativity for some while deepening depression in others. In the case of Langhorne Slim, aka Sean Scolnick, the pandemic has signified a personal renaissance. As Slim reached sobriety from prescription drug abuse before the pandemic, his new headspace allowed him to recognize the toll that addiction took on his creativity. Finding himself in a dark case of writer’s block, his struggles with anxiety made him doubt his ability to pick up the pen and write again. From March to May of 2020, however, Slim took his friend Mike’s advice and churned out a song a day. The emotional shock of COVID-19 seemed to have sparked a winning streak of songwriting within Slim, resulting in Strawberry Mansion, his triumphant return to the scene, in which he paints precise portraits of pandemic life. Slim’s impressive eighteen-track album is bursting with excitement. The warmth of this song collection is on-brand with Slim’s previous sixteen years of experience, featuring countryand-blues-tinged folk and a voice that sounds like it’s smiling no matter the darkness of the lyrics. Slim’s guitar-picking and piano playing in Mansion takes the genre of Americana to a deeper level. While the upbeat, fast-paced nature of the work as a whole seems antithetical to the slow tempo of quarantine, Slim’s whimsical, yet honest lyrics seem to flow out of him as if his drug abuse repressed his true emotions. The floodgates of creativity and social commentary noticeably opened while he wrote songs like “Mighty Soul,” “Lonesome Times,” and “High-Class.” While he offers a meditation on spirituality to those struggling with isolation in “Morning Prayer,” he cautions others in “Blood On Yer Lips,” almost shrugging as he sings, “The world looks dark when your head’s shoved in your ass.” Although we’re all well-acquainted with the discomfort of the pandemic’s emotional and political turmoil, Slim’s folky renditions of the anxieties that society faces are refreshing. In “Panic Attack,”
which is quite possibly the star of the lineup, Slim gets honest about his mental health. “I called a healthcare professional/Wanna speak to someone confidentially/Don’t know just how I’m feelin’/ But I’m feelin’ feelings exponentially,” he reflects as he strums his guitar at the rate of an anxious heartbeat. While he says that he wants to live despite the fact that he “feel[s] like shit,” he offers hope for the listeners that are feeling similar levels of isolation, smallness, and irritation by simply relaying the advice of his therapist: “Son, there may be no cure/But I swear that life’s worth living/It’s the only thing worth living for.” This empathetic and simple message is effective in adding color to the bleak reality of the pandemic, suggesting that maybe all we’ve needed is a touch of Slim’s optimism and simplicity in such complicated times. While many of Slim’s perspectives are empathetic, he realizes that some people may not be able to relate to his feelings. In “House on Fire,” he addresses the problems of privilege that have risen to the surface of society in the past year, observing, “‘Til their own house is on fire, some folks will never understand.” All in all, Slim dots his personal anecdotes and cultural comments with the message, “Love thy neighbor,” stressing the importance of this kindness in times of need. Slim processes this mix of frustration and hope in Mansion’s final bow, “Red Bird.” As the lyrics try their best to keep up with the quick, toe-tapping beat, Slim contemplates, “All these feelings all of us felt/Is this Heaven or is this Hell/Is there truth or is it all perspective/Look into the mirror to see if there’s a reflection.” While Slim uses Mansion to explore the personal pain that his drug abuse hid, as well as the universal suffering present in a pandemicridden society, he concludes that the best we can do is “laugh to keep from crying.” Slim’s empathetic, honest, and witty Strawberry Mansion is certainly the perfect album to cry to as the pandemic rages on and, hopefully, it will provide a good laugh when this time of mass suffering is a small image in our rearview mirror. - Laura Tutko
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Source: Rebecca Lader
Tiger Jaw- I Won’t Care How You Remember Me Hopeless Records/March 5th, 2021
As an avid fan of Tigers Jaw’s earlier work, I anticipated the release of I Won’t Care How You Remember Me for months. After listening to the album on repeat for a couple weeks, I can confidently recommend I Won’t Care How You Remember Me to any fans of Tigers Jaw or Midwest emo in general. I Won’t Care How You Remember Me is a return to Tigers Jaw’s earlier sound. The heavy guitar and vocals are reminiscent of their 2008 self-titled album, and the lyrical vocals coupled with the distorted electric guitar emphasize the Midwest emo sound that was so strong in the band’s earlier works. I Won’t Care How You Remember Me highlights both lead singers, Brianna Collins and Ben Walsh. The two trade singing lead vocals back and forth. Walsh starts the album with a slow, somewhat acoustic, song, “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me.” In the following song “Cat’s Cradle,” Collins takes over vocals, her unique voice piercing above the heavy guitar and drums. Her piercing tone coupled with the lyrics about realizing that sometimes it’s best to let a relationship fall apart create a cathartic mood that works well with the energetic guitar and catchy tune. Songs like “Can’t Wait Forever,” “Never Wanted To,” and “Anniversary” highlight both Walsh and Collins, with Collins singing a higher harmony to Walsh’s melody. Ultimately, Walsh and Collins work together in I Won’t Care How You Remember Me to create the haunting and catchy melodies that Tigers Jaw is known for. Perhaps the most interesting part of I Won’t Care How You Remember Me is the album’s focus on relationships. The album seems to tell the story of a relationship that is falling apart. The album starts with “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me,” and Walsh starts the story by stating that he does not and will not care how the other person in the relationship remembers him. Each progressive song focuses on an emotion surrounding this breakup, adding another layer to this relationship which is obviously broken beyond repair. By the last song, “Anniversary,” Walsh seems to be
reflecting on this relationship from a detached perspective, singing that he sees “a stranger in [their] family portrait / I know I’ve seen you before but I just can’t place it.” By the end of the album, Walsh resigns to the fact that this relationship has crumbled and can never be put back together again. The songs in the middle of the album focus mainly on the emotions and details surrounding a break up. In “Hesitation,” Walsh sings that “You hollowed me out if only for the loneliness / Controlling all your stories,” noting that toxic relationships can be emotionally draining. In “Body Language,” Walsh sings “Your body language tells me everything / Cause you won’t tell me anything,” emphasizing how when a relationship goes wrong, it almost becomes impossible to understand the other person, despite the history you might have with them. Each song adds another emotional layer or detail which contributes to the album’s story about a dying relationship . Walsh and Collins sing through denial in “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me,” frustration in “Cat’s Cradle” and “Hesitation,” confusion in “Body Language,” and finally acceptance in “Anniversary.” Though each song evokes strong emotions on its own, listening to the entire album is crucial to understanding the full story. This might be one of my favorite Tigers Jaw albums so far. As a fan of their earlier albums, like Tigers Jaw and spin, I was excited to hear the same heavy guitar and drums that made me fall in love with the band the first time I heard them. I Won’t Care How You Remember Me has been a long-anticipated album, since Tigers Jaw has been waiting to release the album since 2019, but delayed its release due to the pandemic. The pandemic has largely impacted artists everywhere, and Tigers Jaw was no exception. Hopefully, the band will be able to tour again soon, but until then, fans can pop in their earbuds and immerse themselves in the midwest emo sound of I Won’t Care How You Remember Me. - Ceci Hughes
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Source: Capitol Records
Paul McCartney- McCartney III Capital Records/December 18th, 2021
While the rest of us spent the majority of 2020 in lockdown, Sir Paul McCartney was living in his own “rockdown.” It seems as though, regardless of what goes on in the world or what challenges come his way, there is nothing that the ex-Beatle can’t do. Even amidst a pandemic, McCartney found a way to release his third endeavor in writing, performing, and producing a record entirely on his own since the release of McCartney in 1970. The resulting LP, McCartney III, was set free on December 11th to a world of COVID-fatigued souls, hungry for new music from the one man we can always count on for infectious tunes. The album cover features a singular, somewhat ominous die on its cover, emphasizing that we never know exactly what to expect from a new McCartney album. Both of McCartney III’s self-titled predecessors marked significant moments in Sir Paul’s musical career. McCartney (1970) served as his first solo endeavor without his fellow Fabs after the breakup of The Beatles, while McCartney II (1980) saw the veteran musician experiment with synth on tracks such as the striking “Temporary Secretary’’ and “Front Parlor.” Prior to the release of McCartney III, fans were left wondering what tricks McCartney would pull out of his hat on his new album. The driving, acoustic guitar melody that emerges on the first track, “Long Tailed Winter Bird,” is quickly met with electric guitar, drums, synth, and McCartney’s vocal, “Do you, do-do, do you miss me?” marking a triumphant return since his 2018 project, Egypt Station. Within the first seconds of McCartney III, it’s clear that Sir Paul has returned to pop music with a vengeance and an appetite for rock. Optimism rests at the forefront of McCartney III’s themes in songs like “Find My Way,” “Seize the Day,” and “Winter Bird/ When Winter Comes.” With its opening, jovial piano chords, “Find My Way” addresses quarantine uncertainty in its lyrics, “You never used to be afraid of days like these / But now you’re overwhelmed by your anxieties,” and McCartney extends a helping hand to the
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listener, offering “Let me help you out / Let me be your guide / I can help you reach / The love you feel inside.” Even while flourishing in his own rockdown, Sir Paul understands his listeners’ feelings of unease surrounding the pandemic and life in isolation. Relaying a message of soaking up the good in the present on “Seize the Day,” McCartney declares, “When the cold days come / And the old ways fade away / They’ll be no more sun / And we’ll wish that we had held on to the day.” Further emphasizing the theme, Sir Paul resuscitates seasonal imagery on the acoustic, pastoral “Winter Bird/When Winter Comes,” which harkens back to his 1971 “Heart of the Country.” “Winter Bird” is certainly darker, alluding to the days “When winter comes / And food is scarce,” but McCartney sings whimsically about the prospect of “Fly(ing) away and find(ing) the sun” at his farmhouse. At the time of McCartney III’s December release, Sir Paul didn’t shy away from acknowledging the dark days of the pandemic that were sure to lie ahead. Instead, he encourages listeners to follow the sun, if you will, even on the gloomiest of days, as difficult as it may seem. Regarded as one half of one of the greatest songwriting duos in pop music, McCartney has made a name for himself as a composer capable of writing gorgeous love songs, both profound and frivolous. From “And I Love Her” to “Silly Love Songs,” Sir Paul wears his heart on his sleeve. Throughout his solo career, as well as his ten-year stint with Wings from 1971-1981, McCartney released a plethora of touching ballads. McCartney III is no exception, with the sentimental “The Kiss of Venus” and the heavier “Deep Deep Feeling,” with a run-time of over eight minutes. All the while, Paul shows off his rock chops on hard-hitting, distortionfilled rockers like “Slidin’” and “Lavatory Lil.” With its amusing, rhyming lyrics like “She thinks it’s hunky-dory / When she’s telling you a story,” “Lavatory Lil” could be the long-lost sister of John
Lennon’s Beatles-era “Polythene Pam,” retold by McCartney. Even at seventy-eight, Sir Paul is rocking as though he’s still in his twenties. Following the release of McCartney III, the rocker took to TikTok, creating short videos capturing his “Mr. T” tea towels and his home studio. As bizarre as this marketing move might have been, was anyone really surprised to see Sir Paul conquer TikTok? If you’re not on Paul McCartney TikTok, you need to find your way there. The content on his account consists of everything from McCartney III pancakes and guitar tape loop orchestras to three Pauls performing interpretive dance moves and high kicks to “Find My Way.” Recently, McCartney posted a cryptic video of multicolored dice in order to tease the release of McCartney III
Imagined. This new album will feature a range of artists, including Phoebe Bridgers, Beck, St. Vincent, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, performing their own renditions of McCartney III songs. The 78-year-old has a busy 2021 ahead of him. A sequel to his children’s book Hey Grandude!, titled Grandude’s Green Submarine, is set to be released in September. His memoir “The Lyrics” comes out in November. In the meantime, it’s clear that Sir Paul will continue seizing the day, making the most out of life in rockdown, and, heck, maybe he’ll convince Ringo to join him in his TikTok conquest. - Mary Beth Bauermann
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total entertainment forever by Emma Shahin
Haiku Reviews The Avalanches We Will Always Love You bundle of samples weave a quilt; melodies pure psychedelic bliss - Barrett
Lucy Dacus “Thumbs” crisp and sorrowful, words painfully succinct ...Dacus understands - Emma
Buck Meek Two Saviors hazy coffee mood folksy vocal inflections contain much comfort - Emma
Adrianne Lenker songs effortless; and yet there are so many broken hearts scattered on wood floors. - Van
Field Medic Floral Prince chamomile tinted. to yourself, say, “i love you.” healing is selfish. - Van
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Laura Les “Haunted” searching for something. are you really afraid of me? reflections destroyed. - Van
Taylor Swift evermore perfect winter vibe lovely and mysterious very good features - Isabel
The Paper Kites Roses love letter to love: ethereal, close your eyes. sway slow, back and forth. - Laura
Erick the Architect Future Proof damn, where’d he come from? listen once for beats, twice for perspective, repeat. - Laura
Madison Cunningham “Broken Harvest” existential dream melancholy lyrics coo wistful melodies - Mary Beth
Foo Fighters Medicine at Midnight guitars wail; drums pound suddenly a pulsing groove Dave Grohl goes disco? - Mary Beth 56
Staff
Editor-in-Chief Emma Shahin
Design Editor Isabel Haber
Design Team Justin Berg Caroline Leibowitz Naomi Marin Daniella Marx Van Monday Aidan O’Halloran Laura Reitze
Writers Mary Beth Bauermann Justin Berg John Dietz Skyler Foley Kaley Haller Ceci Hughes Van Monday Aidan O’Halloran Eamon Raftery-Sweeney Barrett Smith Jack Stewart Laura Tutko
Photography Cara Davis John Dietz Isabel Haber
Artwork Laura Reitze Emma Shahin 57
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