Month: October 2023

Record Store Day has unveiled the titles that they will be releasing for Black Friday 2023, just next month on November 24. Among the pressings, there are a few key titles that fans will be hoping to get their hands on.

Here’s what to know.

Noah Kahan is putting out a vinyl version of his Cape Elizabeth EP for the first time. Originally released in 2020, it will be available on a color marble vinyl as his “thank you to the fans who stuck around, came to shows, watched my livestreams and listened.”

Another RSD First release, Post Malone‘s The Diamond Collection will be available on clear vinyl.

Rilo Kiley will be reissuing their Under The Blacklight album on a translucent “blacklight” vinyl — available for the first time in this form since 2007.

Joni Mitchell’s Court And Spark Demos exclusive vinyl will include the never-before-heard recordings made during the album’s creation process.

Grateful Dead fans can also grab a vinyl copy of their Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 3/2/1969 show. This will be limited to 7,500 copies and be a 5xLP pressing.

Other artists on this year’s list include releases from Dr. Dre, The Doors, The Jonas Brothers, The Beach Boys, De La Soul, Phoenix, Kim Petras, and more.

For a complete list of Record Store Day Black Friday 2023 titles, visit here.

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

Thanks to his new memoir, Making It So, Patrick Stewart is spilling some tea about his adventures in Hollywood. The iconic stage and screen actor, best known for his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, gets candid about his own behavior (“I could be a severe bastard,” he writes.) as well as some of his co-stars over the years.

In one notable excerpt from Making It So, Stewart opened up about his experience with a young actor named Tom Hardy. The two worked together on the film Star Trek: Nemesis where Hardy played Shinzon, a clone of Stewart’s Picard. However, despite the opportunity to emulate one of the most beloved figures in sci-fi, Hardy kept entirely to himself during production.

“He was by no means hostile — it was just challenging to establish any rapport with him,” Stewart wrote via Insider.

According to Stewart, the “odd, solitary” Hardy spent most of his time in his trailer with his girlfriend, which did not make the best impression on the veteran actor who was confident that Hardy’s career would go nowhere. However, Stewart is quite pleased that clearly wasn’t the case.

“On the evening Tom wrapped his role, he characteristically left without ceremony or niceties, simply walking out of the door,” Stewart wrote. “As it closed, I said quietly to Brent [Spiner] and Jonathan [Frakes], ‘And there goes someone I think we shall never hear of again.’ It gives me nothing but pleasure that Tom has proven me so wrong.”

As for Nemesis, Stewart was less gracious with his thoughts on the film.

“[It] was particularly weak,” Stewart wrote. “I didn’t have a single exciting scene to play.”

(Via Insider)

1. Last Friday, I traveled to Las Vegas to see U2 perform the first show of 25-night residency at a new, state-of-the-art, $2.3 billion entertainment venue called the Sphere. The residency is billed as “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere,” and it includes a complete performance of their classic 1991 album. (Though not in the original sequence.) I then spent four days processing the experience. My goal is to understand what this all means for one of the world’s biggest rock bands, one of the world’s largest spherical buildings, and the future of live music.

2. However, I recognize that not everybody cares about meaning, only yay-or-nay verdicts. For that crowd: I thought the Sphere was pretty cool! The enormous screen was dazzling! The sound was incredible! Achtung Baby is one of my favorite albums ever! I’m glad I went!

3. Here’s what I’m somewhat “nay” on: Is this extremely expensive bowling ball at all practical for non-Irish stadium acts who don’t have 18 months to prepare a two-hour spectacle? Plenty of artists could play at this venue. But who should? Harry Styles is rumored to be interested. I assume Chris Martin is already trying to get Coldplay in there. Any top pop star you could name — Taylor, Beyoncé, The Weeknd — would work. The jamband accounts I follow on what used to be known as Twitter are hyping Phish for the Sphere, but I wonder if that would be a good fit? (I don’t know that you can “improvise” video effects that humongous.) It takes certain delusions of grandeur to function in this space. You need ideas big enough to fill that huge canvas. Not even U2 is able to pull that one off completely.

4. At the same time I’m having trouble imagining a band that isn’t U2 in that space. The Sphere is overpowering and ridiculous, technologically advanced and rooted in an old-time “more is more” show-business sensibility, and supported by some of the industry’s most powerful players even though it’s possibly unsustainable. Put another way: The Sphere is U2.

5. Important formatting note: I understand that the “correct” way to refer to the Sphere is simply “Sphere.” But I am going to continue with “the Sphere,” because 1) it just feels better and 2) it seems way less Orwellian. Or should I say Bradbury-ian? James Dolan, the comically terrible owner of the New York Knicks and a part-time blues guitarist who dreamt up the idea of the Sphere, told Variety last week that he was inspired by the 1950 Ray Bradbury short story “The Veldt,” about a futuristic nursery outfitted with video screens that virtually transports children to exotic locales. “I don’t think that we quite achieved Bradbury’s vision with it,” Dolan confessed, “and I don’t really want to completely achieve his vision, because in the end of his story, the parents get eaten by the lions.” A billionaire reads a cautionary tale about hubristic humans who are destroyed by technology, and he decides to ignore the warning by doubling down on his own hubris. What could possibly go wrong?

6. To be clear: I did not witness anyone in the audience being eaten by lions. At least not literally. We will have to see about the figurative part in the weeks and months ahead.

7. At the end of opening night, Bono thanked Dolan from the stage, along with (among others) U2’s manager Irving Azoff — a man once referred to as “Satan” by Don Henley — and Live Nation’s oily CEO Michael Rapino. This is the cursed blunt rotation one must puff with in order to play a venue like the Sphere.

8. U2 played the same setlist the first two nights. The first eight songs were taken from Achtung Baby. Then there was a four-song acoustic set culled entirely from 1988’s Rattle & Hum. After that, they played the remaining four songs from Achtung Baby, followed by a six-song encore. The most effective use of the Sphere in the main set occurs during “Until The End Of The World,” in which an enormous gas flare burning in the form of a flag towers over the band, an apocalyptic image that evokes both the Book Of Revelation and U2’s own 1983 live album Under A Blood Red Sky. (It is based on a piece by the Irish artist John Gerrard taken from images captured in the South Pacific Ocean by the artist and activist Uili Lousi.) The flare is hyperreal — it looks like something you could feel while also resembling a dream. As U2 brought the song home, the burning flag cut an awe-inspiring and chilling figure, a nightmare brought to vivid life that made the horror tucked inside one of U2’s most reliable warhorses palpable again.

9. The screen is big. Really big. I’m talking “goddamn big” big here. I sat in the 100-level section above the standing-room-only G.A. section, and I was probably too close. The 200 or 300 levels might be preferable. You could also sit at the blackjack tables inside the Venetian Resort and still have a good view.

10. The weirdest use of the Sphere is during “Even Better Than The Real Thing,” which is set to a garish collage of images that depict various eras of Elvis Presley, with particular focus given to his Vegas years. At one point the images stream downward behind the stage, fooling the eye into thinking the stage is rising. It was the single most disorienting part of the set, and pretty unpleasant. It was meant to be excessive, and it was excessive but to an overly excessive, “This is too excessive!” degree.

11. Bono referenced Elvis throughout the opening night. He made the inevitable dad joke about how Elvis “has definitely not left this building” before christening the Sphere “an Elvis chapel” and “an Elvis cathedral.” Later, he sang “Love Me Tender” while images of JFK and a rocket launch flashed oddly on-screen. It all pointed to the familiar tension of 60something-year-old rock stars finally giving in to the temptation of a high-end Vegas residency. Nodding to Elvis tacitly acknowledges the (mostly) bygone stigma of Sin City being a bastion for show-biz has-beens, which more than anyone else Elvis signifies. But Elvis was only 34 when he made his late-’60s Vegas turn, nearly 30 years younger than Bono is now. He was in the midst of a creative and commercial resurgence. He was as handsome as he ever was in his life. His initial performances are rightly considered legendary. U2 meanwhile is in a less certain and more battered place. On opening night, they were almost apologetic about not playing with founding drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who is convalescing from a recent surgery. In interviews, Bono and The Edge have pledged that Larry will definitely be back while intimating that his recovery will be long and challenging. (His replacement is Bram van den Berg, a capable 41-year-old Dutchman who looks like Dax Shepard.) Creatively speaking, this is the second consecutive U2 live show centered on an old album, following the massive stadium tour celebrating The Joshua Tree in the late 2010s. In the encore, they debuted their new single “Atomic City,” which borrows liberally from Blondie’s “Call Me” and reads like an attempt to re-write two of the biggest (and worst) U2 hits of the last 25 years, “Elevation” and “Vertigo,” which naturally sandwiched “Atomic City” in the encore.

12. After those songs came the most publicized use of the Sphere so far, via the countless camera-phone videos that have circulated online: “Where The Streets Have No Name,” in which a desert vista is seamlessly replicated across the 160,000-square-foot LED screen. It is a spectacular presentation. What’s most impressive is how all those pixels create the illusion of natural light, even inside a dark orb at 10:30 on a Friday night. It is an inherently bogus trick that for about five minutes feels wholly authentic, the one undeniable “I have never witnessed anything like this in my whole life” moment of the concert. I can’t really compare it to any other large-scale concert I have ever seen. I can only liken it to “The Veldt,” only without those parents-eating lions.

13. If you hate it when people shoot videos with their phones at a concert, do not go to the Sphere. I doubt that any venue on Earth will more strongly compel the audience to capture images on their phones. I suspect that Kylie Jenner could hand each audience member a basket of adorable kittens and they would still keep their phones fixed on that screen.

14. I also shot videos on my phone. I justified this by telling myself that keeping some video records would help with the writing of this column. But in truth, I shot videos on my phone out of Pavlovian impulse. “The screen made me do it” sounds like the set-up of a David Cronenberg thriller, but I’m afraid I have to cop to being James Woods.

15. “I could barely take any videos which actually rules because I just FULLY was in it,” a friend texted me the next day. She also mentioned that she was on mushrooms during the concert. So keep that in mind if you end up seeing U2 at the Sphere. Personally, I would not take psychedelics in this environment. I’m more of a “cabin in the woods” drugs person. The “Even Better Than The Real Thing” sequence already feels like a hallucination on its own.

16. What all those viral videos of the Sphere haven’t conveyed is how, for about half of the concert, U2 used that big screen like it was a normal screen set up at a normal arena or stadium. This concert is not non-stop mindfuckery — much of the time you’re just staring at a giant Bono and a giant Edge and a giant Adam and (less often) a giant Bram. This was likely a good thing in terms of maintaining the audience’s mental health, though it does speak to a larger question: What exactly do you do with this thing?

17. Surveying my photos and videos, I can see that I framed them all the same way, and it’s how most people framed their photos and videos — heavy emphasis on the big screen, with the band positioned at the bottom to accentuate their relative smallness. This is meant to represent the scale of the Sphere, but it also depicts the simplicity of the stage itself. This was also lost in the deluge of phone videos: U2 appears to play on a platform no more elaborate than the typical set-up at a college campus open-mic night. It’s a circle designed to look like a turntable. (It’s apparently borrowed from Brian Eno. I wonder if he keeps it in his basement.)

18. Because the Sphere is designed like a theater, with the seats arranged into four levels plus the G.A. section facing the stage — rather than the wrap-around seating you get in an arena — U2 felt smaller and more vulnerable than usual, four fragile musicians surrounded by that honkin’ screen on one side and stacks of humans on the other.

19. The most obvious critical observation one could make about the camera-phone phenomenon is that it squares the circle on what U2 started with the Zoo TV tour 30 years ago. The point back then for U2 was using technology to comment on (and condemn) the use of technology as a means of cutting humanity off from their most essential selves. The big screens fed the audience a steady stream of stimuli while always pointing out that gorging on visual stimuli will rot your brain. This observation is obvious because it is true: Inviting 18,000 people inside of a giant metallic eyeball where they can stare at a Statue Of Liberty-sized video screen via the additional screens of their phones renders the satirical elements of Zoo TV officially moot. But it is not a deliberate “point” of “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere.” There is nothing post-modern or ironic about this show. It has no discernible ideology, just spectacle.

20. The most interesting quote in that Variety story comes from Willie Williams, U2’s long-time creative director, who was unusually blunt about the challenges of working in the Sphere. “With all the big stuff I’ve done for U2 and anyone else, we don’t start with the equipment, we start with the idea,” he said, “and then figure out what we need to realize that idea.” The Sphere meanwhile begins and ends with the equipment. The idea part seems a little lost.

21. Zoo TV is a nostalgic reference point for this residency, not a philosophical one. But I am not above nostalgia as it pertains to this era of U2. Before the concert, I stopped by Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience, a 12,000-square-foot installation at the adjoining hotel. Part U2 museum and part theme-park attraction, Zoo Station is where you can sit inside of a Trabant car, stare at Anton Corbijn photos, and nurse designer cocktails from the upstairs Ultra Violet Lounge. It was like stepping inside the liner notes of Achtung Baby, only without a naked Adam Clayton or (again) any trace of sardonic humor.

22. In the actual show, the most potent shot of Zoo TV revivalism comes right away with the first two songs, “Zoo Station” and “The Fly.” Bono theatrically puts on his Zoo TV shades at the start of the former number, and those familiar text phrases assembled by Mark Pellington flash behind the band during the latter song. Was I thrilled to see possibly the greatest arena-rock show ever assembled (which I never got to see in person) briefly recreated? Absolutely. It was my favorite museum piece of the night.

23. What Zoo TV obscured back in the early ’90s is made clear by this Vegas residency: Achtung Baby is a strange album to put into arenas and stadiums. It is not a larger-than-life, crowd-pleasing work naturally aligned with bombast and grand gestures; it is intense, introspective, and loaded with adult songs about marriage and divorce and the mysteries of the human heart. Zoo TV papered over that by leaving out certain songs. But because these Vegas shows pledge to feature the entire record, you can no longer hide tracks like “So Cruel,” “Ultraviolet (Light My Way), “Acrobat,” and “Love Is Blindness,” which formed a suite that closed the proper set. For me, those songs hit the hardest emotionally, though they weren’t quite suited for this specific environment. (“Elevation” got a much bigger response.)

24. The most surprising part of the residency’s opening weekend was the mini set of Rattle & Hum songs in the middle of both shows. I personally love Rattle & Hum, but the checkered reputation of the accompanying documentary has given the album an unfair reputation as the record where U2 unconvincingly attempts to present themselves as a grizzled American blues band. At my show, Bono intimated that the band might play a variety of tunes in their acoustic sets, but so far it’s been all Rattle & Hum. Two of the songs — “Desire” and “Angel Of Harlem” — are big hits that U2 plays most nights. One of the other songs, “All I Want Is You,” is rare, and the last number, “Love Rescue Me,” is super rare. (Before this residency, it had been played only four times since 1990.) To compound the shock of busting out this deep cut, Bono dedicated “Love Rescue Me” to the late Jimmy Buffett, which prompted me to later Google “Bono Jimmy Buffett” and learn that Bono and Buffett were once aboard a plane that was shot down by Jamaican police on suspicion of drug smuggling, an incident recounted in Buffett’s “Jamaica Mistaica.”

25. Sadly, U2 did not play “Jamaica Mistaica.”

26. In the history of U2, Rattle & Hum is notable for being the album that drove them toward the Eurotrash pranksterism of Achtung Baby. After music critics accused U2 of being overly serious poseurs playacting at being American roots musicians, they moved quickly to remake themselves as the polar opposite of that caricature. This has been recounted numerous times in U2 lore, and Bono does it again in the residency tour program. (“The album could have been called ‘The Importance Of Not Being Earnest,’” he writes, repeating a line I’m sure I’ve heard him say in documentaries and his memoir.) U2’s relationship with spectacle grew even more extreme with their next tour, PopMart, which also debuted in Las Vegas back in 1997. That tour was much bolder in its embrace of crassness-for-crassness’-sake, a mirror for an exceedingly crass period in pop culture. But, like Rattle & Hum, it confounded critics and prompted U2 to do another 180 back to “earnest simplicity” for The Elevation Tour. Since then they have been slowly working their way back to a different kind of dogma-free spectacle embodied by the Sphere.

27. “That’s what we started out wanting from the very beginning of the band is just to smash the fourth wall, get to our audience,” Bono recently told CBS News This Morning. In the ’90s, U2 did this by using artifice to smash through artifice, pointing out the invisible wall of omnipresent media immersion surrounding us all in order to make it visible and therefore capable of being transcended on the journey toward something deeper and truer. This is not what the Sphere is about. The meaning of “get to our audience” has changed. Now it’s about cutting through the noise for the sake of getting noticed at all. Why does a band play a venue as ostentatious as the Sphere if they don’t want social media flooded with video clips of deserts rising and flares flaring?

28. U2 is nothing if not a band that believes resolutely in the power of its own gigantism to bring people together. This belief has not abated in the many years since their prime on the pop charts. It explains why U2 is known to people under the age of 30 as the band that gave away a new album for free by inserting it, without public consent, into tens of millions of iPhones. What they were trying to do was engineer an instant monocultural moment. What they found instead is that the average person now is more invested in the sanctity of technology than the sanctity of music. (At least the sanctity of U2’s music.) This is the lesson carried forward to the Sphere — U2 has stopped trying to be bigger than our machines. They let the lions eat them.

Uproxx was provided lodging for this story by Vibee. They did not review or approve this story. You can learn more about the Uproxx Press Trip policy here.

Record Store Day has been an annual tradition dating back to 2007. Originally started to celebrate (and potentially save) endangered independent record stores, it has since become an unofficial holiday for vinyl collectors and music lovers. Think Free Comic Book Day, but for fans of Amy Winehouse or Miles Davis instead of Batman and Spider-Man.

However, unlike Free Comic Book Day, Record Store Day happens twice a year: Once in April, and again in November — the day after Thanksgiving, in fact. You may know it as “Black Friday,” the day retail employees dread and early Christmas shoppers anticipate every autumn, when stores slash prices to clear stock for the coming new year. According to the official Record Store Day website: “Record Store Day and RSD Black Friday are different events” and the latter is an effort to “promote brick-and-mortar indie record stores in the face of a shopping frenzy.” The big difference is that “stores will launch the special releases on RSD Black Friday but may choose to carry them throughout the holiday season.”

What Day Is Record Store Day Black Friday 2023?

Thanksgiving falls (heh) on Thursday, November 23 this year, so naturally, Black Friday is November 24.

As far as what special edition releases are dropping next month, you can check out a list here. To find out if your local record store is participating, you can check here.

The Writers Guild Of America (WGA) strike has officially ended. To celebrate, several late-night shows have opened up their studios for interviews and, of course, live music performances. Last night, Jimmy Kimmel Live! welcomed Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit as the first musical act post-strike. The group delivered a moving performance of their song, “When We Were Close,” off the album Weathervanes.

Within Kimmel’s opening monologue, he addressed the five-month strike, jokingly saying, “This is a big win for the little guy. This is a big win for the chubby guy and the hairy dude and the weird girl who doesn’t make eye contact and for the two potheads in the Star Wars t-shirts that are too small for their bodies and the guy who is too old to have a ponytail and the lady whose two cats each have their own Instagram page. We call them writers, and they are all back to work.”

During an interview with Uproxx’s Steven Hayden, Isbell opened up about the creative process of creating “When We Were Close,” saying, “There are a few songs on the record that I call ‘The Old Assignment.’ ‘Cast Iron Skillet’ was one of those, and ‘King Of Oklahoma’ was one of those, where when I got about halfway through writing them, I thought, ‘Oh, this sounds like something I would’ve done for that band.’ So I just started thinking of them as a suite of songs that I called ‘The Old Assignment’ in the studio.”

Watch Jason Isbell And The 400’s full performance above.

Weathervanes is out now via Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers. Find more information here.

U2 kicked off their Las Vegas residency recently in the brand new opening of the massive Sphere venue. The group is currently set to play 25 shows in total of their U2: UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere shows through December 16.

However, some might be wondering who will play the venue after them, considering it cost $2.3 billion to build the giant globe. Right now, there aren’t currently any musical acts set to follow U2 — but there very well could be soon.

There will, though, be a premiere of director Darren Aronofsky’s film titled Postcards From Earth inside the venue. He was previously seen setting it up inside to see what the immersive experience would look like.

After social media users started to see photos of what U2’s set looked like inside the venue, many had suggestions of who should play the next. (The stage looked quite small, as it primarily relied on the images around the entire bubble to control the experience.)

“Before I say Taylor Swift I need to know the capacity of this glass ball,” one fan wrote.

Lots of other fans threw out ideas like NMIXX, Monsta X, aespa, and more K-pop acts who could deliver breathtaking visuals. While none of these acts have been confirmed, it is still fun to imagine. Continue scrolling for some more Sphere concept ideas from fans.

The 27-year-old murder case of Tupac Shakur took a turn last month when it was reported that Las Vegas Police had arrested Duane “Keefe D” Davis after raiding his wife’s home in July. Davis was charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon in Tupac’s death; he maintains that he in the vehicle with others who committed the drive-by shooting that killed the rapper in 1996.

However, Tupac’s fellow occupant of the other involved vehicle, Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, said that the police have the wrong man. Furthermore, he said he will refuse to testify against Davis despite being one of only a handful of people who might have firsthand knowledge of the shooting (and one of only two still alive to talk). TMZ reports that Knight expressly denied Davis’ account of events and that Davis’s nephew Orlando Anderson pulled the trigger. According to police, though, Davis was the owner of the gun used to kill Tupac in retaliation for a brawl at the MGM Grand just after Mike Tyson fought Bruce Seldon.

Although Knight has said that Anderson didn’t shoot Tupac and that Davis wasn’t involved, he will never tell who did — if he even knows. However, Davis has been adamant for years about his recollection, even writing a memoir that detailed the events leading up to the shooting. That memoir was a big part of what prompted the raid, and a copy was among the evidence collected. Knight’s reasoning for defending Davis is simple; per TMZ, “he’d never wish prison time on anyone.”

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 music from Slow Pulp, Wilco, Oneohtrix Point Never, Molly Burch, 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.

Truth Club — “Siphon”

From the colossal “Blue Eternal” to the eerie “Uh Oh,” Truth Club’s singles from their upcoming album Running From The Chase have been evocative and addicting. “Siphon” is no exception; the new song is a dreamy catharsis of enveloping, fuzzy guitars constructing an otherworldly atmosphere.

Liza Anne — “Internet Depression”

“My eyes are stinging / Is it the phone light or the weed? / I think I’m slipping / Can somebody catch me?” Liza Anne sings on the existential piano ballad “Internet Depression.” They capture the algorithm-fueled dread painfully well, narrating the paralysis it can create: “I think it’s f*cked up how I know what I need / But most days, I just don’t.”

Cherry Glazerr — I Don’t Want You Anymore

I Don’t Want You Anymore by Cherry Glazerr is grunge bliss. Haunted opener “Addicted To Your Love” is a tame but visceral introduction to the album. “You are my bad habit,” Clementine Creevy drawls simply on the disco-flecked “Bad Habit.” Things are heavier on “Touched You With My Chaos,” exploding with razor-sharp guitars as she sings apologies: “I just can’t forget about you / So sorry I did this.”

Slow Pulp — Yard

After all the wonderful singles, it’s no surprise that Slow Pulp’s Yard is an absolute delight. The whirlwind “Cramps” was a highlight, and the title track proves that their slower songs have the same magnetism. Emily Massey’s vocals are enchanting against the lively piano as she sings emotionally, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there enough / It’s on me.”

Molly Burch — Daydreamer

“I’m looking for something special / One in a million honey,” Molly Burch sings on “Made Of Glass,” ” Be careful I’m so fragile / It’s not even funny.” Daydreamer is aptly titled, as it drifts sweetly with the aura of a daydream. The heartbreaking piano ballad “Tattoo” is a standout, ending with the crushing sentiment: “And I’ll just see you when I’m dreaming / Like I’ve been doing for years.”

Oneohtrix Point Never — Again

An orchestra kicks off Oneohtrix Point Never’s new album Again, then dripping into sputtering, off-kilter synthesizers that grow into a deafening buzz. The album fluctuates between clamor and tranquility; there are hallucinatory voices and chirping birds on “Krumville,” and a peaceful, ambient landscape on “Gray Subviolet.”

Thank You, I’m Sorry — Growing In Strange Places

“Self improvement has proved / Itself hard to do,” Colleen Dow sighs on “Self Improvement,” a twinkling ballad from Thank You, I’m Sorry’s disarmingly honest new album Growing In Strange Places. From wanting to hide on “Mirror” to spending days scrolling on “Chronically Online,” the record narrates relatable struggles with an indie rock sound that buoys the songs along beautifully.

Duster — Remote Echoes

Earlier his year, slowcore icons Duster shared their album Moods, Modes, and now they’re already back with another, called Remote Echoes. Off the bat, it possesses the contemplative sonic landscapes that fans love them for with the meditative, sprawling “Before The Veil.” It only gets weirder from there, with the playful “The Weed Supreme” and off-kilter “Country Heather.”

Wilco — Cousin

The fuzzed-out opener “Infinite Surprise” is an intriguing introduction to Wilco’s new album Cousin. Throughout the record, the instrumentation is soft and introspective as Jeff Tweedy sings pensively, “Why worry about the rain and the wind / When I know it comes from within?” he contemplates on the gorgeous “Levee.”

Blonde Redhead — Sit Down For Dinner

Blonde Redhead’s first record in nine years is here with the dreamy Sit Down For Dinner. Aside from the wonder album artwork of a strawberry, the music itself is engaging, idiosyncratic indie rock, from the mysterious “Melody Experiment” to the enchanting “I Thought You Should Know.” The songs flow into each other with ease.

A story that recently went viral on Reddit’s AITA forum asks an important question: What is a parent’s role in taking care of their grandchildren? The story is even further complicated because the woman at the center of the controversy is a stepparent.

The woman, 38, met her husband Sam, 47, ten years ago, when his daughter, Leah, 25, was 15. Five years ago, the couple got married after Leah had moved out to go to college.

Leah’s mom passed away when she was 10.

Last year, Leah became pregnant, and she wanted to keep the baby, but her boyfriend didn’t. After the disagreement, the boyfriend broke up with her. This forced Leah to move back home because she couldn’t afford to be a single parent and live alone on a teacher’s salary.

Leah’s story is experienced by many young mothers who are facing difficulties. The father isn’t involved in the baby’s life as a caretaker or financially. Sadly, 33% of all children in the U.S. are born without their biological fathers living in the home.

The new mother is a teacher and can’t afford to live on her own with a child. A recent study found that out of the top 50 U.S. cities, Pittsburgh is the only one where a new teacher could afford rent.

The stressors of taking care of the baby made Leah realize she needed help.

“But once she had the baby around 4 months back, Leah seemed to realize having a baby is not the sunshine and rainbows she thought it was,” the woman wrote on Reddit. “She barely got any sleep during the last four months. All the while Sam was helping her with the baby while I did almost all chores myself.”

“Now her leave is ending. She did not want to leave the baby at daycare or with a nanny,” the woman continued. “Sam and I both work as well.”

Leah asked her stepmother if she would stay home with the baby. The stepmother said no because she never wanted to have a baby and she has a job. “I asked why Leah can’t stay home with the baby herself,” the woman wrote. “She said how she was young and had to build a career. I said many people take breaks to raise kids, and she broke down crying about how she was so tired all the time being a mom and needed something else in her life too.”

After the woman told her stepdaughter no, her husband pressured her to stay home with the baby. But she refused to give up her job to raise her stepdaughter’s child. “Leah said yesterday how she wished her mom was alive since she would have had her back. She said I didn’t love her, and my husband is also mad at me,” the woman wrote. The woman asked the Reddit community if she was in the wrong for “refusing to help my stepdaughter with the baby,” and the community responded with rapturous support.

“[The woman] should tell her husband to knock it off and stop trying to pressure her into raising his daughter’s baby. If he wants a family member to look after her baby while she works, then he can do it,” Heavy_Sand5228 wrote.

“This is Leah’s baby that she alone chose to have. That doesn’t obligate you to change YOUR life to suit her desires. The whole business of saying you don’t love her because you won’t quit your job to watch her baby is manipulative and messed up, and I’m shocked your husband is siding with her,” SupremeCourtJust-a** added.

Leah and many women like her are in this situation because, in many places, teachers are underpaid, rent is high, and not all dads pay child support, even those required by law.

Another commenter noted that the baby is much more the father’s responsibility than the stepmother’s. “To add, Leah should consider seeking child support from her ex. Her kid should be getting that money,” Obiterdicta wrote.

“Amazing Grace” may just be the world’s most beloved and recognizable hymn, with people from all faith traditions and walks of life finding meaning and comfort in its lyrics. It was written in 1772 by John Newton, a former slave trader, after a near-fatal shipwreck caused him to reevaluate his life, convert to Christianity and become a devoted abolitionist.

Newton’s spiritual has been sung by countless people in countless renditions, but there’s a good chance you’ve never seen it sung quite like this.

Heavy metal singer Dan Vasc recorded a solo rendition of “Amazing Grace” and shared it on his YouTube channel, where it has received over 7 million views. If you’re thinking that the grungy, high-pitched scream-singing that marks metal music is a strange match for a traditional Christian hymn, you could be right. But give Vasc’s version a listen before passing judgment because he might just change your mind.

It does help that Vasc begins the song in a more traditional way, with his rich tone and impressive vocal control making his classical singing training evident. Then it builds and goes up an octave. A harmonica comes out of nowhere. Then it builds more. Another octave. And finally, that scream-singing that you don’t expect to work but totally does, making believers of even the most ardent metal music skeptics.

Oh, and for the record, Vasc arranged and recorded all of the instruments and vocals here himself.

Enjoy:

If you’re sitting there picking your jaw up off the floor or reaching for the replay button, you aren’t the only one. People in the comments—young and old, religious and non-religious, metal fans and non-fans—shared similar reactions:

“I’m a 62-yr-old Scot and have always felt this song was meant to be belted out, your version is how this should be sung. I bet yours rattled the doors of heaven, absolutely brilliant.”

“The best most passionate version I have ever heard in my 60 years! I felt every powerful note into my soul! Incredible performance.”

“This was sung at our wedding. Wow, this is such a powerful version. I love the history of the song. While not super religious, this moves me.”

“This song was written to be sung EXACTLY like this! With honor, respect, and power! This isn’t just a quiet little song. Thank you for doing this song the way it was designed to be done. It’s beautiful! I’ve never heard it sung like this in my entire life. You have a beautiful voice!”

“I am a 64-year-old preacher’s son. I grew up singing this song and have done so my entire life. You, sir, captured the true emotion John Newton intended for us to feel. The most beautiful rendition I have ever heard.”

“I’m not a metal fan….but I am a music and musician fan. You have delivered a powerful and beautiful rendition of this song. Your control of your gift is fabulous. Timing, diction, expression and air control. As someone else mentioned….I’ve heard it done a thousand ways and sung it myself too many times. I felt it in my heart as you sang it here. A great and stirring performance. Thank You.”

Find more of Dan Vasc’s music on YouTube.