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Mapping Drake’s International Wave-Riding on More Life
Authenticity has long been a point of personal pride for Drake. Since Meek Mill called his authorship into question in the summer of 2015, Drizzy has recalibrated his approach to music-making, dialing...
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7 Albums to Get You Into OSR Tapes Before the Experimental Label Closes
In a music world rife with gimmicks, the Brooklyn by way of Brattleboro, Vermont label OSR Tapes has spent a decade sticking to the simple notion of releasing profound, purposeful music with no...
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How Does the First-Grader on ‘Big Little Lies’ Have Such Killer Music Taste?
Who died, and who did the killing?That’s the central mystery of “Big Little Lies,” HBO’s limited series based on Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name. But like the book, the show does not bask in...
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Breaking Queer Pop’s Last Big Taboo: Same-Sex Pronouns
When Sam Smith released a much-discussed cover of Whitney Houston’s hit “How Will I Know” in 2014, he made two key changes—one daring, the other depressing. He slowed the pace, inverting the original’s...
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7 Indie Labels On How Technology Has Changed Their World
By the time Other Music closed last June, it had become more than a record store—it was a creative hub for independent music in New York City. So when the folks who program the eclectic Sunday Sessions...
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Tracking Sufjan Stevens’ Fascination with Outer Space
Six years ago, on assignment from Dutch concert hall Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, Nico Muhly, the National’s Bryce Dessner, and Sufjan Stevens began working on what would become a project of near-endless...
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What Kendrick Lamar’s Been Up to Since To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar doesn’t need new albums to cement his cultural dominance. Between 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city and 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, he set the rap world ablaze with his scene-stealing verse...
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The Best Britpop Albums… That Aren’t British
In the UK, Britpop was no mere genre—it was a pop culture phenomenon that bred a new generation of rock stars, set box office records, and yielded Downing Street invites for its key progenitors. But in...
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The 10 Best DJ Mixes of March 2017
This month’s standout mixes traverse trance states, Japanese footwork, and Romanian minimal techno. New York’s DJ Voices and Unscented DJ dig deep into the jazzy garage that poured out of New York and...
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In Metal, Outer Space Is a Heavy Place
Welcome to Pitchfork’s new monthly metal column, where we’ll guide you through the genre’s new music and various happenings with an eye towards a specific theme. This month’s theme is space. Below...
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When Shazam Scoops Your Album Announcement
Last June, a Angel Olsenteaser video surfaced on her label Jagjaguwar’s YouTube channel. Looking for details about the enigmatic clip of Olsen in a tinsel wig, some listeners ran it through the...
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Live Music’s Biggest Mogul Is Tied to Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court...
In January, following Coachella’s lineup announcement, scrutiny fell on the festival’s owner, Philip Anschutz, over his financial ties to groups promoting anti-LGBTQ causes. The media-averse Colorado...
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To Be Young, Angsty, and Black: On Rap’s Emo Moment
Black girls searching for themselves in lyrics must often compromise. Surrender your blackness, your femininity, or both. Look past the harm or the invisibility, find what you need, and take only that...
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Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker Has Seen Some Shit
When Adrianne Lenker was 5, a railroad spike fell from the beginnings of a makeshift treehouse in her family’s Niswah, Minnesota yard, landing on her head and almost killing her. This moment moves into...
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Why clipping.’s Hugo Nomination Matters for Music in Science Fiction
Earlier this week, Splendor & Misery—the sophomore album by experimental L.A. rap group clipping.—was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The Hugo is the highest...
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Slowdive on Their First Album in 22 Years and Why Shoegaze Came Back
Until recently, it seemed unlikely that there would ever be a fourth Slowdive record. Just a week after the February 1995 release of third album Pygmalion, the British quintet was dropped from Creation...
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A Guide to the Internet (the Band)
From MJ to Bey to JT, there’s a long history of standout members in pop groups breaking away in hopes of solo superstardom. But last fall, L.A. R&B group the Internet decided against those unspoken...
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7 Songs Perfectly Capturing Pan Sonic’s Mika Vainio
I only saw Pan Sonic once, around the turn of the millennium, and when I did, I zonked out. Not because it was boring—quite the contrary: the sub-bass frequencies the Finnish noise duo wrung out of...
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Will the Mainstream Support More than One Rap Queen at a Time? A Charts...
To paraphrase a wise sage, you come at the queen, you best not miss. Indeed, Remy Ma’s ongoing war with reigning rap-pop monarch Nicki Minaj is a high-risk, high-reward gamble. Executed well, a...
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5 Takeaways from Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.
“Y’all got ‘til April the 7 the get your shit together,” Kendrick Lamar warned on “The Heart Part 4.” After another week of waiting, the TDE phenom has returned with DAMN., a follow-up to 2015’s To...
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