Month: April 2022

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got new albums by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pup, Machine Gun Kelly, and more.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Unlimited Love

Red Hot Chili Peppers returned with the ambitious album Unlimited Love this week, a 17-track epoch that marked their first studio LP in six years. The album is fun but also contains surprising depth, combining breezy hooks with groovy chords (thanks to the return of guitarist John Frusciante) and proving RHCP haven’t lost their edge.

Machine Gun Kelly — Mainstream Sellout

Machine Gun Kelly is no stranger to critics, something he’s self-aware about on his newly No. 1 album Mainstream Sellout. The pop-punk inspired LP features ripping power chords and catchy choruses. While MGK has moved away from making rap music, the album includes a number of high-profile guest verses by rappers like Lil Wayne, Gunna, and Young Thug.

Christian Lee Hutson — Quitters

Frequent Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Christian Lee Hutson dropped his reflective sophomore album Quitters. The project is filled with wistful, ballad-like tracks which sometimes include a thoughtfully arranged orchestral section. Over all, the album shows Hutson’s timeless and resonating sound.

PUP — The Unraveling Of PupTheBand

Beloved Toronto emo rockers PUP dropped their energetic LP The Unraveling Of PupTheBand this week, a polished album that expertly combines both self-effacing humor and generalized dread into a collection of smart and catchy songs. Tracks like “Totally Fine” cope with the band’s newfound fame over spirited riffs with others like “Cutting Off The Corners” have more cathartic melodies.

Pillow Queens — Leave The Light On

Dublin-based four-piece Pillow Queens‘ sophomore album Leave The Light On arrived on Friday. To draw inspiration for the album, the band looked inward. The result is a vast and complex 10-track project exploring contradicting truths within themselves: To be soft-yet-hard, delicate-yet-muscular, alone-yet-together.

Angel Olsen — “All The Good Times”

Fresh off a soulful collaboration with Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen has some exciting news about her solo music. This week’s lulling track “All The Good Times” officially announces her seventh studio album Big Time. The tender ballad is infused with some country twang and details the experience of coming out as queer to her parents in her 30s.

Kevin Morby — “Rock Bottom”

Prolific artist Kevin Morby continues the roll out of his album This Is A Photograph with the upbeat, folksy single “Rock Bottom.” The track was written as a tribute to the late Jay Reatard and is inspired by some of the Memphis greats who made boundary-pushing music in their time, but didn’t get recognition until after their death.

The BLSSM — “Not Today”

LA-based musician The BLSSM is a rebel without a cause in their latest track, “Not Today.” The ’90s grunge-inspired anthem is about focusing on all the good life has to offer. About the single, The BLSSM said: “It was written about the small nuances of joy I thieve, collect, and steal to keep in my pocket to get me through an ever rat-race agenda of wanting more, wanting everything and wishing.”

Beach Bunny — “Fire Escape”

On the heels of their buzzy 2020 album Honeymoon, Chicago-based four-piece Beach Bunny returned with a new single and album announcement. Their electrifying track “Fire Escape” opens with a burst of energy before singer Lili Trifilio details the all-too-familiar feeling of being paralyzed by nerves. The track heralds their LP Emotional Creature, which is set for a July release.

Kelly Lee Owens — “Sonic 8”

Two years following the release of her intricate album Inner Song, producer Kelly Lee Owens is ready for a new era of music. Releasing a pair of singles this week, “Sonic 8” and “Olga,” Owens is readying the release of LP.8, an album inspired by her subconscious. Contrasting the ethereal “Olga,” “Sonic 8” features a jarring mix of high-pitch synths and brassy beats.

NoSo — “David”

LA-based musician NoSo returned with the dreamy coming-of-age tune “David.” The song points to their upcoming debut album Stay Proud Of Me and is an energetic and wildly catchy single inspired by a bittersweet dream.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

New music from Future may be coming sooner than we think. In a series of tweets, the “Jumping On A Jet” rapper said he may drop a new project in the next few weeks.

Last night, Future tweeted, “Scooter said drop album this month,” referring to his friend and frequent collaborator, Young Scooter, not to be confused with Scooter Braun, manager of Kanye West and Justin Bieber.

In follow-up tweets, Future said, “When the time right that’s when u throw ah strike…” and warned us that he has “[m]ajor heat coming fast.

In February, Future dropped a single called “Worst Day,” on which he says “Valentine’s Day the worst day.” Last weekend, Future joined Gunna for a performance of “Pushin’ P” on Saturday Night Live. He also collaborated with Lil Durk on the single “Petty Too,” the video of which shows the rappers treating lady friends to a private shopping spree.

While he did not reveal an actual release date for new music, Future implored us to “stay ready stay woke.”

Future’s upcoming album will mark his first since 2020’s High Off Life, which featured collaborations with Youngboy Never Broke Again, Travis Scott, and Drake, the latter of whom appeared on the hit single “Life Is Good.”

The Los Angeles Lakers are rapidly nearing the end of their season, as they currently sit in 11th in the West, two games behind the Spurs with four games to play and San Antonio holding the tiebreaker for the 10-seed.

The eulogies have already begun for this Lakers team, with players lamenting what could’ve been had they stayed healthy, while some prominent figures, like Magic Johnson, are already looking ahead to how the Lakers will approach this summer. It’s all fairly jarring to see a LeBron led team bowing out before the postseason, particularly in the new expanded play-in era, but there will be plenty of time for assessing what went wrong and where blame should be assigned for this season’s failure.

One person who is a mortal lock to take some of the fall for this season is Frank Vogel, as the Lakers head coach is expected to be fired as soon as the season officially ends — with it coming as a mild surprise he made it through this season in full. Vogel’s been on the hot seat since the slow start and was nearly fired midseason, and the lack of marked improvement in the back half of the season has sealed his fate. The bigger question is who will replace him, with some major names currently at the helm of playoff teams leading the way.

According to Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report, two big names come up the most among league personnel when discussing the Lakers soon-to-be vacancy: Doc Rivers of the 76ers and Quin Snyder of the Jazz.

As Marc Stein first reported, Utah Jazz head coach Quin Snyder is perhaps most often mentioned by league figures as a possible Vogel replacement. For now, Snyder remains entrenched in Utah and told Andy Larsen of the Salt Lake Tribune: “My focus is on our guys and our team. And as I said, addressing hypotheticals in these types of questions in any form I feel like is disrespectful.”
…
Doc Rivers, the Philadelphia 76ers’ head coach, is another active bench leader being mentioned by league personnel as a potential Lakers candidate. Rivers’ tenure in Philadelphia has also come into question of late, spurred by team president Daryl Morey’s deadline acquisition of James Harden and the mounting speculation that followed about a potential reunification with Harden’s former Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni.

Fischer notes that there is some question as to whether Snyder would want the Lakers job over other opportunities that could be available to him, namely replacing Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, where job security is far greater. As for Rivers, he’s noted as a possible replacement for Snyder in Utah given his connection to Danny Ainge who is now in the Jazz front office. Still, it’s clear the Lakers plan on going big game hunting (again) for their next head coach, and the prospect of coaching LeBron and Davis will certainly be alluring, given what we saw as the potential in 2020.

However, the last time the Lakers went through this process they banked on prestige and the chance to win a title as being enough to lure the biggest names in coaching to their sidelines, only to see them balk at lowball offers and go elsewhere — namely Tyronn Lue. Whether they’ve learned their lesson this time remains to be seen, because the situation in L.A. is even worse this go around, as they’re coming off of a performance we’ve never seen from a team that had LeBron healthy for the majority of the season, which proves the floor in L.A. is lower than previously imagined. If they want Snyder or Rivers or someone else to pick them over other jobs (including the ones they currently have), they’ll have to come with not just a great pitch on what they’re going to do with the roster, but also be willing to pay like one of the top jobs in the NBA.

If they don’t, the search gets murky once again, with Kurt Rambis’ name (somehow) appearing once again in rumors, among others.

After Cardi B won her defamation lawsuit against YouTube gossip blogger Tasha K, the blogger refused to delete the posts that sparked the suit. In them, the YouTuber claims Cardi is a drug addict and previously contracted an STI; during the case, Cardi claimed the fallout from such posts had a devastating effect on her mental health. Tasha, who filed an appeal in March, argued that she has a right to post whatever she wants regardless of those effects.

Unfortunately for her, a judge disagreed, granting Cardi’s request for the court to order Tasha K to delete the offending posts and stop making new ones. According to Billboard, Tasha now has five days to delete 21 posts about Cardi per a “permanent injuction” imposed by Judge William M. Ray preventing her from posting references to the rapper in the future — especially with regard to sex work, STIs, or drug addiction.

Tasha K — real name — Latasha Kebe was previously ordered to pay nearly $4 million in restitution, with $2.5 million in damages and $1.3 million in legal costs, after a jury found her liable for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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

Back in October, Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian got engaged after the Blink-182 drummer’s grand, romantic beach proposal. Now, after a few months of being engaged, it appears the two have gone ahead and officially tied the knot.

Barker popped up at this past weekend’s Grammys, drumming as HER, Lenny Kravitz, and others performed Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” Barker’s night apparently didn’t end there, as TMZ reports that after the show, Barker and Kardashian made their way to a Las Vegas (where this year’s Grammys were hosted) wedding chapel at around 1:30 a.m. and got married, complete with a marriage license and an Elvis impersonator conducting the ceremony. TMZ notes having the Elvis impersonator officiate the ceremony was important to the couple.

Furthermore, TMZ notes that following the ceremony, there will be “several” other celebrations of the marriage.

This is Kardashian’s first marriage; While she and Scott Disick have three kids together, they were never actually married. As for Barker, this is his third go at matrimony, as he was previously married to Melissa Kennedy for nine months in 2002 and to Shanna Moakler for about two years before filing for divorce in 2006.

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been about four years since Joyce Manor‘s last album, Million Dollars To Kill Me. Since then, they’ve reworked old material and dug up unreleased songs with Songs From Northern Torrance, as well as remade their crashing 2011 self-titled debut in honor of its ten-year anniversary. Today, they’ve finally returned with brand new music, announcing their sixth studio album 40 Oz. To Fresno. The single “Gotta Let It Go” is out today.

“Gotta Let It Go” is an invigorating, building anthem that shows frontman Barry Johnson using his voice to his advantage by yelling, singing, and even coming close to screaming. 40 Oz. To Fresno was produced by Rob Schnapf, who also produced Cody, and the band recruited Motion City Soundtrack’s Tony Thaxton on the drums.

“This album makes me think of our early tours, drinking a 40 in the van on a night drive blasting Guided By Voices and smoking cigarettes the whole way to Fresno,” Johnson stated.

Watch the video for the searing “Gotta Let It Go” above. Check out the 40 Oz. To Fresno artwork and tracklist below, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

1. “Souvenir”
2. “NBTSA”
3. “Reason To Believe”
4. “You’re Not Famous Anymore”
5. “Don’t Try”
6. “Gotta Let It Go”
7. “Dance With Me
8. “Did You Ever Know”
9. “Secret Sisters”

04/11 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Union
04/13 — Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
04/15 — Royal Oak, MI @ Royal OakMusic Theater
04/16 — Chicago, IL @ Radius
04/18 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE
04/19 — Cleveland, OH @ Agora Theater
04/20 — Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head
04/22 — NYC @ Terminal 4
04/23 — Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
04/24 — Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
04/26 — Richmond, VA @ The National
04/27 — Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
04/29 — Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock
04/30 — Nashville, TN @ Cannery Ballroom
05/03 — Dallas, TX @ The Factory In Deep Ellum
05/04 — San Antonio, TX @ Vibes Event Center
05/06 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theater
05/07 — Los Angeles, CA @ Shrine
05/08 — San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
05/10 — Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
05/11 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo

40 Oz. To Fresno is out 6/10 via Epitaph Records. Pre-order it here.

In another life, he was an ex-Fleet Foxes drummer who transitioned with little fanfare to a career as a sad-sack singer-songwriter known as J. Tillman. Then Josh Tillman had a revelation. “Joseph Campbell and The Rolling Stones / Couldn’t give me a myth / So I had to write my own,” he sang on his 2012 debut under the name Father John Misty, Fear Fun. “I never liked the name Joshua / I got tired of J.”

But it was more than a mythic persona. Father John Misty became the protagonist of Tillman’s songs. He gleefully regaled listeners with stories of this outlandish provocateur’s drug-fueled dreams and problematic misadventures, never tipping his hand in terms of a tidy moral judgement for the charismatic cad. Even when he used his own name, it was through the Misty prism — a proxy commenting on the author commenting on the proxy. The character proved to be an effective vehicle for communicating Tillman’s core obsession, that omnipresent human paradox about how we all know that we’re doomed and yet we can’t stop caring about the multitudes of bullshit minutia that swamp us daily. In Misty, Tillman discovered the necessary subterfuge — ironic, sardonic, decadent, untouchable — to smuggle his own relatively straightforward earnestness about the need to love and be loved in an otherwise soul-crushingly ephemeral world.

By 2018’s God’s Favorite Customer, however, the mask appeared to be slipping. The Misty/”Josh Tillman” character now seemed shattered, exhausted, and a little too vulnerable. A song cycle about a dark six-week period in his marriage, the album blurred the line between “Josh Tillman” and the real Josh Tillman like never before. This was no longer a man adopting a pose as both artistic license and personal protection. The myth had been breached, revealing the broken man behind the wall.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise then that the new Father John Misty album out this Friday, Chloë And The Next 20th Century, is the least FJM-centric FJM record yet. In fact, the usual protagonist has gone completely missing. Rather than write about the familiar swaggering anti-hero, Tillman has instead focused on his other made-up characters — the titular “borough socialist” Chloë, a striving entertainment biz creative named Simone, the actress known as Funny Girl, an unnamed pair of ex-lovers who are reunited by their recently deceased cat Mr. Blue. As for revelations about Tillman’s personal life, it appears that the author has (smartly) retreated into the life of a family man who is suddenly averse to oversharing or further exposing himself to a hostile outside world. (This extends to the promotion of Chloë — once a reliable driver of traffic for indie-music sites, he hasn’t given an interview in several years.)

For some long-time followers, this might register as an unwelcome development, like tuning into a new season of Mad Men and noticing that Don Draper no longer is part of the show. As it is, Chloë is by far the least accessible album Tillman has made under the Father John Misty moniker. The easy entry point that the character provided — like Draper, Misty provided both vicarious bad-boy highs and bracing morning-after lows — has gone missing. The album presents Tillman at his most writerly, unfolding more like a collection of short stories observed from a distant remove than the exaggerated autobiography of the previous records. Also, the lustrous folk rock he is known for has been leavened with cocktail lounge jazz and dreamy bossa nova, giving the album a somewhat distant, ghostly vibe that evokes the chilliness of The Shining-era Stanley Kubrick.

This is not, in other words, a record that immediately ingratiates (in the manner of previous FJM albums) with stately piano melodies and gripping revelations about armageddons both personal and universal. It takes a while for these songs to reveal their dazzling charms, but Chloë ultimately is another breakthrough for Tillman — as a lyricist, as a melodicist, as a singer, as a builder of worlds. If concocting the Father John Misty persona was a way for Tillman to transform into something more than just another indie-dude guitar-slinger who stares at his shoes too much, this new album feels like him coming full-circle. After a decade as the hip-swinging, journalist-taunting, and buttons-pushing shaman, he is back to being merely an excellent songwriter.

While Chloë And The Next 20th Century feels like a break from the other Father John Misty albums, it is tethered in one crucial way via Tillman’s long-time collaborator, producer Jonathan Wilson. These men are connected musically over their mutual interest in creating big-sounding (and occasionally even hyperbolic) records. After the relatively stark God’s Favorite Customer, they’re back to filling the sonic frame with loads of expertly executed instrumental tones, including a string quartet and a small orchestra rounded out by trombones, bassoons, oboes, and clarinets.

But whereas I Love You, Honeybear and Pure Comedy could be almost aggressively grandiose, Chloë is markedly gentle, echoing the intricately wrought, story-oriented lyrics. Comparing the stunning “Goodbye Mr. Blue” to Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” is such an obvious observation that Tillman must have welcomed it, but the impossibly warm melange of acoustic guitar, keys, and strings truly speaks to the high level of craft here. Equally lovely is “(Everything But) Her Love,” in which Tillman finally perfects the mellow, semi-psychedelic, post-Pet Sounds SoCal pop sound he’s been chasing since Fear Fun.

The music on Chloë is so consistently beautiful and well-conceived that it can lull you into a false sense of numbness. And that is precisely where Tillman wants you. What felt like a weakness upon my early listens — nothing on the album hits with the emotional directness of “Holy Shit” or the most confessional God’s Favorite Customer songs — gradually turned into a strength as the songs slowly opened up, like a novel that comes together in the final third.

In his previous work, Tillman has exhibited a fascination with how life-changing swings of fate appear suddenly amid the banality of daily existence, often in ways that said banality prevents us from noticing or understanding in the moment. But this theme really comes to the fore on Chloë And The Next 20th Century, with Tillman repeatedly putting his characters in situations they are incapable of comprehending until circumstances overwhelm them. In the title track, a woman who acts as a Benzedrine hookup for the narrator takes a shocking plunge off her balcony on her 31st birthday. In “Q4,” an over-ambitious playwright plagiarizes her own dead sister before being “outed for her privilege.” In “We Could Be Strangers,” a romantic encounter between two ships passing in the night eventually is shown to be a near-death dialogue between two car-accident victims.

These are the kinds of songs that you can see in your head as you hear them, and then long to read on the page once you play them again. Tillman’s ability to craft a witty quip lampooning contemporary discourse cliches remains unmatched — “What’s ‘deeply funny’ mean anyhow?” from “Q4” is a personal favorite — but his eye for narrative details really makes Chloë come alive. I’ve taken to describing verses from this album as scenes, like the part in “Funny Girl” in which the author muses that a young starlet’s “schedule’s pretty crazy / doing interviews / for the new live action Cathy.” I’m now deep enough into the world of this record that a new live action Cathy kind of already exists in my mind.

Whether Chloë And The Next 20th Century marks a new era of Randy Newman-like story songs remains to be seen. But I suspect we won’t be seeing as much of Father John Misty on future Father John Misty albums. The album’s most menacing and ambitious track, “The Next 20th Century,” comes last and points away from all that precedes it. A slow-moving seven-minute synth-pop crawl that erupts into a startling prog-rock guitar solo, the song revisits a theme that Tillman last explored on Pure Comedy, describing a world that’s changed so fast that humans are unequipped to rationalize it, so we instead retreat into an imaginary nostalgic existence fostered by technology, the media, and our own collective narcissism. A 20th century that never ends.

“I don’t know ‘bout you,” he finally sings. “But I’ll take the love songs / if this century’s here to stay / I don’t know ‘bout you / but I’ll take the love songs / and the great distance that they came.” Like the characters in his songs, Tillman doesn’t know the way out, so in the meantime he’s blissing out on the minutia. If transcendence eludes us, perhaps a new myth will do.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is about a shell named Marcel who wears shoes. It’s just about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. Created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp, Marcel was a viral hit in 2010 (the original video has over 32 million views) that was later turned into a children’s book series. It’s also been expanded into a feature-length film by A24, the home of less-cute fare like Green Room, Spring Breakers, and The Witch (Black Phillip the Goat with Satan Horns On?).

You can watch the whimsical and poignant Marcel trailer above. Here’s more:

Marcel is an adorable one-inch-tall shell who ekes out a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie and their pet lint, Alan. Once part of a sprawling community of shells, they now live alone as the sole survivors of a mysterious tragedy. But when a documentary filmmaker discovers them amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans, as well as unprecedented dangers and a new hope at finding his long-lost family. A beloved character gets his big-screen debut in this hilarious and heartwarming story about finding connection in the smallest corners.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On opens in theaters on June 24.

Tucker Carlson could barely contain his glee after learning that Elon Musk now owns a significant 9.2% of Twitter‘s shares. Despite admitting that Musk isn’t an “orthodox conservative” like the overwhelming majority of Fox News viewers, Carlson praised the power grab as a victory for free speech. The controversial host thinks the social media platform is sorely lacking in that department because it does things like (barely) moderate comments for hate speech and violence. There’s also the fact that Twitter is a private company, and not the government, therefore it has a right to censor the content on its platform, but why let reality get in the way of a good Fox News rant?

“He’s already the world’s richest man, he does not need the money,” Carlson said. “Could this be the first move in a hostile takeover of Twitter that transforms Twitter into a platform for free speech? Seems that way.”

Via Mediaite:

“Not a lot of CEOs talk this way. In fact, none. They’re not allowed. The fact that a CEO who does talk this way may take over one of the most communications platforms in the United States is cause for celebration. Real celebration. The censors are powerful but it turns out they may not be all-powerful.”

Like Lauren Boebert, who is someone you never want to be compared to, Carlson assumes that Musk will have control over the day-to-day operations. If anything, Musk is in a position to be bought out and make a tidy profit because, even though he doesn’t “need” the money, when has that stopped a billionaire from trying to get some more? That’s Capitalism 101, Tuck.

(Via Mediaite)

Syd returns with her much-anticipated second studio album Broken Hearts Club this month. Ahead of the album’s release, the “CYBAH” singer spoke with NME about the creation of her new project and the events leading up to it.

Looking back at her days in Odd Future — the hip-hop collective comprised of the likes Tyler The Creator, Frank Ocean, and Earl Sweatshirt — Syd admitted she doesn’t think about those moments fondly.

“It feels like a lifetime ago,” Syd said. “I don’t have any real memories of that time. I was just floating through it. I wasn’t in a good place then and so I don’t really reminisce on those moments.”

In the early 2010s, Odd Future became infamous for their homophobic and misogynistic lyrics. While the men of the group were revered for their craft, Syd, then known as Syd Tha Kid, was often the one held accountable by the public for the group’s behavior. The openly queer singer left Odd Future in 2016 and released her solo debut album, Fin, the following year.

Earlier in the interview, Syd, who is also the lead vocalist of The Internet said, “The next Internet album will also be our last. I have no idea what’s next. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll create an Internet label. We talked about that — just signing ourselves.”

Broken Hearts Club is out 4/8 via Columbia. Pre-save it here.