Month: October 2021

Does the phrase “craft bourbon” really mean anything? I don’t write that flippantly. But in a world where chefs and influencers are sourcing and creating their own brands (from small, medium, and huge distilleries) and even the tiniest distilleries and blenders might have international distribution, can there even be a single definition of “craft bourbon” in 2021? See, we’re already in the weeds and we’re only three sentences in.

For me, “craft” can mean anything that’s not (directly) associated with the huge brands — Beam Suntory, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, Diageo, Brown-Forman, Luxco/MGP of Indiana, Sazerac, Heaven Hill. But… there’s already an argument to be made with Heaven Hill. They’re technically an independent operator. They’re huge but still doing their own thing. Is that craft? And then where do the tiny brands that are contract distilling at big distilleries fall? I’m giving myself a headache thinking about it all.

Let’s just say this. For this exercise, a craft bourbon whiskey is one made by a small producer (distiller or blender) that isn’t owned by one of the huge multinationals (listed above). Now, that doesn’t mean some of the whiskeys below aren’t associated with big distribution companies. It just means that they’re all small, bespoke, and making juice that no one else is making (sourced, contract distilled, blended, own-make, or all of the above). Cool?

Okay, our lineup for today is:

• Woodinville PX Sherry Cask Straight Bourbon Whiskey (WA)
• Barrell Armida (IN & TN)
• Widow Jane Aged 10 Years (KY, IN, & TN)
• Paul Sutton Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (KY)
• FEW Straight Bourbon Whiskey (IL)
• Peerless Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (KY)
• Pursuit United. Blended Straight Bourbon Whiskies (KY, NY, & TN)
• Bib & Tucker Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey Aged 6 Years (TN)
• Hudson Whiskey NY Four Part Harmony 7 (NY)
• Garrison Brothers Small Batch Texas Straight Bourbon Whiskey (TX)

Let’s get into it. As always, click on those prices if you want to try these yourself!

Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of 2021

• The Single Best Bottle Of Whiskey From Each Of The 50 States
• The Best Bottles Of Bourbon Whiskey For Under $20, Ranked
• Our Favorite Bourbon Whiskey From Every Price Point Between $10-$200
• All 19 Brands From The Buffalo Trace Distillery, Ranked
• Here’s Who Won Our Big Barrel Proof Bourbon Whiskey Blind Taste Test

Part 1: The Tasting

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

There’s a clear sense of holiday cake spices tied to dark orange oils with a hint of damp dried roses on the nose. The palate carries along the same route with a deep sense of that holiday cake next to a dark chocolate orange with a cinnamon stick woodiness and a touch of toffee. The finish leans into an apple tobacco sweet/spicy vibe, which is pretty nice.

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

This bursts with ripe and fresh pear from the get-go. Hints of orange zest, and spicy-but-wet cedar pop in on the nose too. The taste leans into brandy-soaked raisins and dates with hints of cedar boxes full of sweet tobacco next to a vanilla husk and sweet orange candy. The end circles back around to that pear with a candied feel next to a touch of vanilla-laced tobacco leaf.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

Wow! This has a matrix of rich vanilla pudding next to oranges infused with mulled wine spices and … Irish Spring soap. It definitely works and draws you in. The palate is all marzipan and dark chocolate-covered brandy cherries that lead towards a dry maply syrup mid-palate. The finish dries out a bit more while still holding onto the cherry, bitter dark chocolate, and what I called in my notes “almost woody maple syrup.”

(Not a bad line by me if I do say so myself.)

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

Woah, again! The nose on this has a distinct barnyard funk tied to wet bales of straw that leads to a salted caramel sweetness with a twinge of a pine box full of cherry pits. The taste veers away from most of that towards sweet corn cakes with a touch of vanilla cream and eggnog spice. A Caro syrup-soaked pecan sweetness and nuttiness drive the mid-palate towards a cherry tobacco finish with a hint of dark cacao powder.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

The nose on this is wild. It starts with a pretty standard dark cherry with a hint of holiday spices and vanilla pudding that slowly morphs into an old plastic silver holiday garland that’s fresh out of the decorations box but still has a touch of last year’s evergreen on it. The spices take over on the palate with cinnamon and nutmeg leading towards buttery toffee and a dry note that’s kind of like almond shells. There’s a slight cornmeal graininess on the mid-palate that sweetens towards caramel and cherry candies on the backend.

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

This is bold yet delicate with a nose full of berry brambles hanging heavy with dark fruits with a touch of tart next to old leather, a spicy plum pudding, and a touch of old cedar. The palate takes that cedar and leans into the wet bark as a moment of espresso bean bitterness leads into a mid-palate that’s the softest and moistest vanilla cake with poppy seeds. Those berries tumble onto the cake, now dusted with powdered sugar and ground cinnamon, as the finish slowly melts into pure silk.

Taste 7

Tasting Notes:

There’s a tannic woodiness with a nice dried red fruit vibe on the nose with a touch of eggnog spice and pine. The taste has a lovely salted caramel with extra butter covered in deep dark chocolate with a hint of orange oil. The finish sweetens with a hint of burnt sugars over vanillas the chocolate ties itself to spicy tobacco.

Taste 8

Tasting Notes:

The nose on this is all wet, almost earthy, cedar bark and crispy wafers filled with rich vanilla cream. The taste has a ginger snap quality in spiciness, graininess, and sweetness next to cinnamon-infused apple cider. The mid-palate to finish is very light and sort of just touches back on the spice but really leans into sweet apple tobacco.

Taste 9

Tasting Notes:

This has a funky nose that’s almost an old-world rye bread mixed into a sweet cornbread with buttery vanilla lurking in the background. The palate leans into the vanilla creaminess with dark, dried berries, a hint of fat nuts, and thinness that sort of dissipates towards spicy tobacco and burnt corn husks.

Taste 10

Tasting Notes:

There’s a dry straw funk on the nose that leads towards new leather, and cinnamon toast with plenty of butter and sugar. The butteriness turns into proper shortbread cut with vanilla and lemon. The mid-palate has an orange oil spiciness that leads towards a sweet yet spicy caramel apple and a final note of dry campfire smoke from far away.

Part 2: The Ranking

10. Hudson Whiskey NY Four Part Harmony 7 — Taste 9

ABV: 46%

Average Price: $85

The Whiskey:

This brand new release from Hudson is their first age-statement bourbon. The juice is made from locally sourced NY grains: 60 percent corn, 15 percent rye, 15 percent wheat, and ten percent malted barley. The whiskey then spends seven years resting before it’s batched, proofed, and bottled.

Bottom Line:

I think I need to try this again. It was… fine but definitely read a little thin for me today.

9. Bib & Tucker Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey Aged 6 Years — Taste 8

ABV: 46%

Average Price: $54

The Whiskey:

Bib & Tucker pulls barrels of Tennessee whiskey from an old and quiet valley in the state. They then blend those barrels to meet their brand’s flavor notes. While they are laying down their own whiskey now, this is still all about the blending of those barrels in small batches.

Bottom Line:

This was really good. The only reason it’s not higher is that there wasn’t an “x-factor” that really helped it stand out today.

8. Pursuit United. — Taste 7

ABV: 54%

Average Price: $65

The Whiskey:

This is a vatted from 40 total barrels from three different states, making it a “blended” straight bourbon whiskey. While the team at Pursuit United doesn’t release the Tennessee distillery name, we know the juices from Kentucky and New York are from Bardstown Bourbon Company and Finger Lakes Distilling, respectively.

Bottom Line:

It’s always baffling where a bourbon you really like ends up on a blind taste test list. This is really solid bourbon but just didn’t pop as brightly as the others on this particular list.

7. FEW Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 5

ABV: 46.5%

Average Price: $51

The Whiskey:

This grain-to-glass craft whiskey from outside of Chicago is quickly becoming a craft classic. The grains in the high-rye mash bill are all sourced within 100 miles of the distillery. The juice is then aged for just under four years in small format Minnesota oak before it’s small-batched, proofed, and bottled.

Bottom Line:

It was hard to square the plastic silver holiday garland with this one. That being said, this was really goddamn tasty and will definitely be going into some holiday cocktails this year.

6. Garrison Brothers Small Batch Texas Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 10

ABV: 47%

Average Price: $96

The Whiskey:

Garrison Brothers is a true grain-to-glass experience from Hye, Texas. The juice is a wheated bourbon made with local grains. That spirit is then aged under the beating heat of a hot Texas sun before the barrels are small-batched, proofed with local water, and bottled.

Bottom Line:

I was pretty surprised this ranked so low. It’s very distinct and tasty. It was more that nothing really reached out and grabbed my palate like some of the other drams. That’s really all. Otherwise, this is delicious bourbon.

5. Paul Sutton Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 4

ABV: 50%

Average Price: $75

The Whiskey:

Paul Sutton is a new bourbon from an old family recipe. I know, we’ve all heard it before. The new whiskey is not a blend of sourced bourbons. The brand took the time to release its contract distilled own-make juice. The bourbon mash bill has a touch of rye in it and it aged for up to five years in medium char barrels.

Bottom Line:

That funk on the nose was really interesting. Beyond that, this is a classic bourbon through and through. I’m looking forward to getting to know it a little better on ice and in cocktails.

4. Barrell Armida — Taste 2

ABV: 56.23%

Average Price: $120

The Whiskey:

Barrell Bourbon is one of the best blenderies and finishing houses in bourbon today. Their Armida expression is all about experimentation in finishing casks. The juice is a marriage of bourbons finished in pear brandy, Jamaican rum, and Sicilian Amaro casks. Those three barrels are then batched and bottled with no cutting or filtration.

Bottom Line:

This is where blind tastings can get a little ridiculous. This is a great bourbon and it only ranked fourth today. Wild.

3. Woodinville PX Sherry Cask Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 1

ABV: 47.5%

Average Price: $70

The Whiskey:

This whiskey takes Woodinville’s signature (and much-lauded) five-year-old straight bourbon and gives it a new finishing touch. The juice is finished in Pedro Ximenez sherry casks, making a sort of sibling to our favorite bourbon of 2020, the Port Cask Finish. But while there are similarities between the two, this feels like a step up in many small, tough to define ways.

Point being: It’s very special.

Bottom Line:

I would have bet $100 on me picking this as my number one. I love this micro-distillery and pretty much everything they do. But, hey! I was surprised a lot on this tasting and that’s the point, right?

2. Peerless Smal Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey — Taste 6

ABV: 54.65%

Average Price: $86

The Whiskey:

Kentucky Peerless Distilling takes its time for a true grain-to-glass experience. Their Single Barrel Bourbon is crafted with a fairly low-rye mash bill and fermented with a sweet mash as opposed to a sour mash (that means they use 100 percent new grains, water, and yeast with each new batch instead of holding some of the mash over to start the next one like a sourdough starter, hence the name). The barrels are then hand-selected for their taste and bottled completely un-messed with.

Bottom Line:

This could easily have been number one. The element of surprise from the Widow Jane put it over the top today, but this is near perfection in every way.

1. Widow Jane Aged 10 Years — Taste 3

ABV: 45.5%

Average Price: $75

The Whiskey:

This is sourced from Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee bourbons. The hand-selected barrels are sent to New York where they’re blended in small batches (no more than five barrels), proofed with New York limestone mine water, and bottled. What you’re paying for here is the exactness of a whiskey blender finding great barrels and knowing how to marry them to make something bigger and better.

Bottom Line:

I’m not going to lie, I was shocked this was my number one pick. I think it was the boldness of that Irish Spring note actually working and leading to something that really blew me away today. In the end, this was so above average and unique that it was the clear standout in the best ways possible.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

This was so goddamn hard to rank. I must have changed the top five about five times. Then I shuffled the bottom five as many, if not more, times too. Finally, I just ranked them fast and hard and let it be.

Was I surprised Widow Jane 10 was number one? Absolutely. That’s a whiskey I drink very rarely but seem to be enjoying more deeply every time I drink it. For whatever reason, it’s just speaking to me right now. And that’s what’s so cool about blind taste tests, you’re almost always surprised.

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As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.

As Adrien Brody prepares to hit both the big and small screen with The French Dispatch and Succession Season 3, respectively, the actor sat down for a new video where he breaks down his most iconic characters. However, along the way, Brody also revealed some of the parts that he didn’t get to play, most notably a role in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.

“I, somehow, didn’t grasp it,” Brody explained to GQ. “I don’t know what part I would have been right for, but it was some Hobbit-like character. I was looking for something else.”

Considering Brody is famously tall, it makes sense that playing a Hobbit probably felt weird to him. However, once he took a date to see the first film in theaters, he immediately regretted passing on the role. Via The A.V. Club:

“I remember going to see Lord Of The Rings in the theater with an ex-girlfriend. And she turned to me and said, ‘You passed on Lord Of The Rings?!’” Brody recalls in the video. “I remember feeling so stupid. But I don’t think I would have gotten the role of Jack in Peter’s [King Kong]. I don’t think that would have translated.”

Despite missing out on one of the biggest film franchises of all time, Brody is genuinely content with getting to work with Jackson on the 2005 remake of King Kong, which is a perfectly fine film even though nobody punches Godzilla.

(Via GQ)

Ever since the Nintendo Switch launched back in 2017, it’s been one of those consoles that everyone wants. It makes sense why. With a killer library of franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Mario, and Super Smash Bros. there has always been a need to own a Nintendo console of some kind. And the Switch is something special. The ability to take a home console on the go is such a fun idea and every year there seems to be a new must-have game on it. Unsurprisingly, ever since November 2018, the Switch has led the United States as the highest-selling console in the country.

However, with new consoles in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, we always knew the Switch had a chance at being unseated someday. As of September 2021, the Switch has been overtaken by Sony’s PlayStation 5. Despite the difficulty everyone has had in getting a PS5, the console is incredibly popular and has been flying off shelves for almost a year straight. This is a return to the top for PlayStation as well since the previous generation PlayStation 4 was the original leader back when the Switch began its streak.

The popularity of the PlayStation 5 has been interesting because as great as the console is there’s also plenty to complain about it with. For starters, games that are on the PS5 typically cost $70, most of its library is also available on the PS4, and as previously mentioned it is incredibly difficult to get one. That hasn’t stopped everyone from going out and buying it though and whenever supply chains for it return to normal we don’t predict that slowing down anytime soon.

That said, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the Switch make a return to the list of highest-selling consoles in the near future. The Nintendo Switch OLED was just released in October and it has unsurprisingly flown off shelves. While it isn’t the massive upgrade that many were hoping for, it’s still a new Switch console and that means there’s going to be a push for them throughout the month.

What will be interesting to see is how sales fare for all the console giants throughout the holidays. There’s always an increase throughout November and December so we expect both console giants to do well, but will Sony be able to overcome its supply chain issues to surpass the Switch and Switch OLED? We’ll just have to wait for the end of the year to find out!

Young Thug, who just released his new album Punk, has become one of the most influential rappers from Atlanta over the past several years, both artistically and culturally. Not only has his slippery approach to melody and rhythm inspired imitators and a legion of successors, including Gunna, Lil Keed, and more, but he has also helped launch the career of Lil Baby, who is currently Atlanta rap’s people’s champ, becoming an influential and beloved figure himself over the past two years.

In a prior interview with T.I., Young Thug confirmed that he had to pay Lil Baby to leave the hood behind for the rap game, corroborating Lil Baby’s own recollection to The Breakfast Club radio show that the elder rapper had put up an impressive sum to convince him to leave the streets alone. Today, Young Thug appeared on The Breakfast Club himself to promote Punk and revisited that story to provide a little extra context, explaining just why he felt the need to invest so much money into the burgeoning younger rapper.

“I just didn’t want him to go back to prison,” he admitted. “I was scared for him to go back to jail because he had just did a bid. He got straight out of jail and went straight back to the same neighborhood, the same house, that the police busted him and locked him up…. He was popular too. Before rap, he was getting a lot of likes on Instagram.” Thug also explained that he brought Lil Baby with him to show him the alternative lifestyle and show him that “it was easy.”

You can watch Young Thug’s full Breakfast Club interview above.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Taylor Swift get inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame some day, as over the years, she has proven to be one of music’s most influential figures. Swift is not joining the Hall yet, but in the meantime, she is getting ready to make her first appearance at an induction ceremony. She’s making quite the debut, too, as she’s set to both induct and perform.

Carole King is among this year’s induction class, and Swift will induct her during the October 30 broadcast. On top of that, Swift and Jennifer Hudson will also perform with King.

Meanwhile, Paul McCartney will induct Foo Fighters, and Angela Bassett will welcome Tina Turner to the Hall, a fitting choice since she played the legend in the 1993 biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It. Christina Aguilera, Mickey Guyton, HER, and Bryan Adams will pay tribute to Turner with performances.

Beyond that, Drew Barrymore will induct the Go-Gos and Lionel Richie will present the Ahmet Ertegun Award to Sussex Records founder Clarence Avant. It is not yet known who will induct Jay-Z, Todd Rundgren, Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, Gil Scott-Heron, LL Cool J, Billy Preston, and Randy Rhoads.

The passing of Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state to George W. Bush, has been dominating headlines today. While other outlets examine the political heavyweight’s legacy and send well wishes to his family, Fox News is employing a different tactic.

Apparently, Powell’s death is as good an excuse as any for fear-mongering social media tactics and the spreading of misinformation to ta conservative base. Earlier this morning while reporting on Powell’s death, Fox News host Will Cain raised truly erroneous suspicions about the COVID-19 vaccine. Powell had received the vaccine but he still suffered COVID complications that resulted in his death. Now, another Fox News face is being dragged for suggesting something similar.

John Roberts took to Twitter Monday to do his own hypothesizing about the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine. (He’s since deleted his tweet, but everything lives forever on the internet, so here’s a screenshot of what he wrote.)

First, here’s some background on Powell’s passing and how it related to COVID-19 vaccines. Though he did get his shots, Powell was 84-years-old at the time of his death. He had been battling multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that weakens the body’s ability to fight infections. All of this is important information to share with your followers if you’re investigating the efficacy of vaccines by using this man’s tragic death. That’s just good journalism 101. But, this is Fox News, so here’s how Roberts explained his intentional gaffe.

Obviously, Twitter was not buying that.

Here’s hoping that Roberts grows a conscience sometime this year.

After two seasons competing for a playoff spot, the Memphis Grizzlies opted to shift their eyes a little closer toward the long-term view this summer, when they traded arguably their best player, Jonas Valanciunas, and the 17th pick of the 2020 NBA Draft to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for Steven Adams and the 10th overall selection. With that newfound focus on the future, while still balancing success in the present, it illuminates the vitality of Jaren Jackson Jr.’s development for this team’s ceiling. Using this season as a springboard to further clarify where exactly and how he thrives is paramount.

If two preseason games are any indication, Jackson will seemingly open the year alongside Adams in the frontcourt as starting power forward, but the hope should be he soon reaches a point where he becomes a two-way force and can credibly play the 5 for long stretches. Despite struggling offensively in the postseason this past spring, the dichotomy of his defensive chops between the 4 and 5 were evident. As a 4, tasking him with navigating screens, constantly playing on the perimeter and darting into help-side rotations proved challenging. Yet as a 5, his spatial awareness and mobility empowered Memphis to run an aggressive drop scheme against ball-screens.

And while he’s been less effective as a switch defender since his rookie season (which could partially be explained away by injuries), the foundation exists for some enticing coverage versatility, which is a hallmark of recent NBA champions. A defensive pick-and-roll duo of Jackson and De’Anthony Melton would be marvelous, and it’s a possibility if Jackson cleans up some holes in his arsenal.

The issue, however, is not everything about Jackson’s game is currently conducive to thriving as a center. His balance, center of gravity and underdeveloped core strength lead him to lose control of his limbs and foul. A lot. Like, all the time. For his career, he averages 5.2 fouls per 36 minutes in the regular season. Across five playoff contests, the mark stands at 5.5. It’s why he’s never averaged more than 28.5 minutes per game in a season. A starting center — or any high-minutes starter, really — cannot constantly be flirting with a sixth foul by night’s end.

Similarly, those same problems inhibit his defensive rebounding. That skill can be overstated in value, but somebody needs to conclude a possession with a rebound to kickstart the offense. Jackson is routinely outmuscled on the glass. Given Ja Morant’s transition dynamism, the Grizzlies would likely prefer to avoid a gang rebounding approach and trust their center to hold down the fort, so everyone else can fly into the open floor for easier scoring chances.

Rectifying some or all of these shortcomings to allow for full-time duties at the 5 would see his offensive game shine. Having canned 37.4 percent of his career triples, he’s one of the NBA’s best stretch bigs and even displays some off-movement prowess. He’ll launch from funky angles with a quick release and is one of a select few centers to routinely draw hasty closeouts and invoke concern from the defense.

When he’s at the 4 instead of the 5, odds are higher that more mobile defenders stay attached on the perimeter and contain his off-the-dribble attacks, which he busts out by leveraging that versatile jumper. Emerging as a viable full-time center this season (or soon) would reduce those occurrences, pair Morant with a stretch 5 to amplify his slashing nature (though, an interior play finisher is still welcomed too), and provide Jackson mismatch after mismatch on the offensive end.

Last season was largely a wash for Jackson. He returned in the thick of a playoff race and then had to wrangle with the top-seeded Utah Jazz for five games. There were still signs of everything he could offer, though. The Grizzlies will be competitive this year, as they simply roster too many good players not to. But their off-season signaled long-term priorities over the interim. Jackson’s growth sits squarely near the top of those priorities and this season is precisely the opportunity to achieve some of that crucial growth.

Over the last two decades, a once solidified divide between rock purists and pop fanatics has begun to dissolve. The die-hard supporters of “indie rock,” who once caped for the genre as some sort of purist alternative to pop music, have witnessed their subculture become similarly commercialized. And the latent — or sometimes blatant — misogyny that fueled some of the most dismissive attitudes toward pop in the past has been laid bare by a new generation of critics who are themselves women, queer, or just better educated than music writers past.

But, most interesting of all, are bands like Coldplay, who fought against the binary from the very start. Yes, Parachutes and Rush Of Blood To The Head sound a bit more rock than their later albums like Viva La Vida or Head Full Of Dreams — which literally has a Beyonce feature — but even a cursory listen of their earliest hit, “Yellow,” reveals a pop sensibility that was foundational from the very beginning.

If the impetus to slowly move toward pop has been gradually building, on Music Of The Spheres, the band has picked up the pace. This record cannot be mistaken for anything that would slot into the categories of “indie,” or “rock” and even “Britpop” seems a bit of a stretch. This is dramatically a pop album, with features from massive pop artists like BTS and Selena Gomez positioned front and center. One of the biggest moves an artist can make when they want to be seen as full-on pop is work with the genre’s celebrated architect, Max Martin, and the producer is credited on every single track of this new ninth record from the British band. The band’s aesthetic has shifted a fair amount, too — in place of moody videos Coldplay has adopted an aliens-in-space and emojis approach, one that, it should be noted, is perfectly suitable for young children.

Kicking off their new album with their ambiguously spiritual lead single, “Higher Power,” the full pivot was immediately clear — as was the presence of Martin, who ensured this song will softly enter your brain and remain there for a full 24 hours. Of course, their collaboration with BTS, “My Universe,” immediately shot up to No. 1 — as most BTS songs do — but managed to feel organically like a Coldplay song, and not just an attempt to chart. What might frustrate or delight fans the most, in fact, is how expertly Coldplay have shifted to maximalist pop. In some ways, Music Of The Spheres feels like the album Chris Martin has been trying to make since Mylo Xyloto, or at least since the flop of Ghost Stories back in 2014. Making a straight-ahead pop record, instead of aiming for alt-pop or attempting to straddle the line between rock and pop seems to have unleashed a freedom for Martin and co. that’s been missing for the last few records.

Instrumental interludes are sprinkled throughout the record, mostly distinguished by their emoji titles, but the longest of these, “,” is a collaboration with Jon Hopkins that retains some of the nimble, euphoric impulses that have earned the English producer loads of critical acclaim. Another collaboration, “,” features both multi-harmony wunderkind Jacob Collier and We Are KING, a pair of Minneapolis-born sisters whose independent R&B is also buoyed by their massive harmonies. By the time Martin’s voice is doubled and tripled in with these collaborators, the song sounds more like a full choir doing an arrangement of a pop song than an original version. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a notable departure from the tighter, more focused tracks on the project.

In that realm, “Humankind” and the Gomez collab, “Let Somebody Go” hew closer to the record’s overall theme — also echoed in “” — that our connections hold us together more than our differences tear us apart. Of course, this isn’t a new subject, any more than bringing in Max Martin to massage your songs into perfect pop is a new strategy, but, both remain common for a reason — no matter how many times they’re employed, they still work. As the human race begins to seriously contemplate life on another planet, perhaps it’s more important than ever to remember what qualities we want to bring with us into outer space. For a record that’s mesmerized with science-fiction plotlines, the songs stick with simple subject matter, and don’t venture into any Wellsian plotlines or three-part epics that unfold against the cosmos.

There’s a bit of a misstep on “Biutyful,” where Martin sings a duet with an “alien,” but every album is allowed at least one clunker, especially when dealing with the slippery subject of sci-fi. Music Of The Spheres might be the ninth album from a band who has been in the game for 25 years, but in plenty of ways it feels like a new beginning. Chris Martin keeps hinting that the band might be wrapping up their run, but if they’re this good at being a pop stars, why stop now? There’s a whole universe out there.

Coldplay is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After failing to move the needle in both the 2020 Democratic primaries and a run for New York City mayor, Andrew Yang has formed his own political party, and the logo has children of the ’80s doing double takes.

Dubbed “The Forward Party,” Yang hopes to become a viable alternative to America’s current two-party system, which historically, has been an uphill battle with minimal signs of success. However, that’s not stopping Yang from coming out swinging. Although, he should probably hire a new marketing team because the new logo for his Forward Party looks a heck of a lot like the logo for Top Gun. Within moments of its reveal on social media, people were quick to point out this hilarious similarity.

But the Top Gun jokes weren’t the only thing flying after the Forward Party logo reveal. Other users picked up some strong G.I. Joe vibes, and they were sure to let Yang know about it.

During a recent interview with The Donlon Report on Friday, Yang cited the growing polarization in America as his reason for starting a new third party. However, he does recognize that his chance of success exist mostly with smaller ballot initiatives instead of aiming directly for the White House as other third parties have tried. More importantly, he feels that something needs to be done before things get out of hand.

“This country is heading towards political violence, that’s real,” Yang said. “And the only way out is for us to have a genuinely more multipolar system where it’s not just two sides, clashing and clashing and getting nothing done.”

How ripping off logos from the ’80s will accomplish that goal remains to be seen, but best of luck.

(Via WJHL)

In Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, Olivia Colman stars as Leda, a woman on a vacation who becomes consumed by a mother, played by Dakota Johnson, and her young daughter. She’s soon forced to “confront the secrets of her past,” as the official plot description reads. The Lost Daughter premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it was greeted with overwhelming positive reviews — and Oscar buzz for Colman.

“I asked to direct it and to adapt it,” Gyllenhaal explained to Screen Daily about why she wanted to turn Elena Ferrante’s novel into a movie. “To be completely honest, there was a part of me that was afraid. I had never directed before. I hadn’t adapted a book before either. She almost sensed my fear and said, ‘I will give you the rights to adapt it. But all of this will be null and void unless you direct it.’ There was no going to her saying, ‘Could Jane Campion do it? Could Lucrecia Martel do it?’ She said it has to be me, which I took as a real vote of confidence. I needed that at the time.”

The Lost Daughter, which also stars Jessie Buckley, Peter Sarsgaard, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Paul Mescal, and Ed Harris, premieres on Netflix on December 31.