Month: April 2024

Before George R.R. Martin’s Westeros endured the Game of Thrones, Aegon the Conquerer set up his House of Targaryen to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Now, HBO is gearing up to show us the mayhem that happened when this house splintered into two sides that each claimed the Iron Throne. In one corner, Rhaenyra Targaryen had been named rightful heir by her father. On the other side, Aegon Targaryen II had been erroneously elevated to king after his wife, Alicent Hightower, mistakenly interpreted King Viserys’ deathbed ramblings.

Let’s get real though — Alicent was headed in this direction regardless of whether it happened by mistake or by plan.

With that said, House Of The Dragon‘s second season shall soon arrive to continue filling in the gaps before the A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Night debuts (supposedly in 2025) to bridge the Westeros timeline before GoT. Much ground will be followed, but the HBO streaming service, Max, will take the story to the skies. Let’s get down to business on how to brace ourselves for more of the Fire and Blood book moving from mere “historical” account to a fully realized wall of fire in our living rooms.

Plot

Obviously, the show will continue to track the Targaryen lineage about 300 years prior to near-extinction level on Game of Thrones. Yet whereas the first season charted the mistakes that were made (mainly by King Viserys, RIP) that led to the dominoes being lined up, this season pits the two teams — Black (Targaryen) and Green (Hightower) — against each other atop dragons. So, we’ll see the “Dance of the Dragons,” so nicknamed by the civilians of Westeros, take place with mass casualties as a result.

Sure, that’s a bummer, but on the bright side, we will definitely meet new dragons following the first-season debuts of many air-bound creatures. Also, more dragon riders will be needed to fill those seats, and in Martin’s lore, Targaryens do look outside the family for those who are worthy to take those rides. It’s sad to realize that so many lives will be lost after the catalyst of Luc Targaryen’s death, which sparked vengeance from Rhaenyra, but then there’s this ridiculous question: Will there be time for any icky foot-thing scenes? We can only hope.

With that said, this series has been plotted out for four seasons, and that plan could change, but it’s unlikely that we will see the entire war take place in Season 2. Hopefully, we will at least see the inevitable showdown between Daemon and (Mini-Me) Aemond, and if that plot point follows the Fire and Blood book, both men should be very afraid.

During this Targaryen Civil War, George R.R. Martin killed off half the population of Westeros and, as noted previously, nearly every member of the blondest family. However, the HBO series has already tweaked parts of the book, so there’s no reason to believe that everything will go down as Martin wrote in the lore. Queen Alicent and Otto Hightower will definitely begin to see consequences of their long game, and Rhaenyra will be coming for the Iron Throne with Blood and Cheese (wait for them, oh boy) paving the way.

First, Daemon must zoom around Westeros to gather as many houses as possible for that fight. The Hightower side will do their recruiting, too. I suspect that the strategy set-up will take up much of this second season, but unlike with the book, Rhaenyra might even leave Dragonstone to participate. And we will literally see fire rain down from the sky when the two sides have to force allegiance from reluctant settlements.

Cast

The stage is set for repeat turns by Emma D’Arcy (Rhaenyra Targaryen), Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen), Olivia Cooke (Alicent Hightower), Matthew Needham (Larys Strong), Fabien Frankel (Ser Criston Cole the terrible), Steve Toussaint (Corlys “Sea Snake” Valaryon), Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen), Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower), Ewan Mitchell (Aemond Targaryen), Tom Glynn-Carney (Aegon Targaryen II), Phia Saban (Helaena Targaryen), Harry Collett (Jacaerys Velaryon), Phoebe Campbell (Rhaena Targaryen), Bethany Antonia (Baela Targaryen), and Sonoya Mizuno (Mysaria/that White Worm).

Millie Alcock and the rest of the first-generation Targaryens and Hightowers will, as far as HBO has indicated, not be returning this season in flashbacks. That doesn’t mean that we won’t see them again someday, but at least Paddy Considine does not have to jeopardize his own health for another stunning performance that the awards circuit decides to ignore.

We shall also meet an endless stream of new character including Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), a mysterious healer from Harrenhal, who plays a pivotal role in the book. Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) will step up as Castellan of Harrenhal, Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) will surface as Otto Hightower’s son, and Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) will follow up on his work in the Stepstones campaign.

Release Date

June 16! Hold onto your wigs.

Trailer

HBO delivered both Black and Green versions:

‘House of the Dragon’s first season can be streamed on Max.

The latest single from Saba’s long-awaited project with No ID is “Head.Rap,” an introspective look at the Chicago rapper’s hair journey. In its verses, Saba unravels the complicated politics surrounding Black folks’ hair — particularly locs (you might call them dreadlocks) — and how each inch holds years worth of memories, hurt, growth, and glory.

The duo is joined on the track by a trio of vocalists including Madison McFerrin, who dropped her independent debut album I Hope You Can Forgive Me last May; Nigerian-American singer-songwriter Ogi Ifediora, who has worked extensively with No ID; and Jordan Ward, fresh off his breakout with “White Crocs” last year.

Saba and No ID gave fans the first inkling of their collaboration last year with the release of “Back In Office,” a confident display of the Windy City MC’s lyrical skill. Then, in June, they revealed the title and nature of their collaboration: A joint album titled From The Private Collection Of Saba & No ID. Originally billed for a summer 2023 release, the duo held back as Saba continued recording.

According to Saba himself, who appeared at an open Mic held by longtime collaborator Noname’s Book Club in Los Angeles attended by Uproxx, he’s still recording new verses for the project, but a release date should be expected soon. For now, you can check out the video for “Head.Rap” above.

I’ll call Microwave’s fourth album by its actual name just once and honor frontman Nathan Hardy’s desire to have everyone else just use the acronym going forward. “We just love drugs,” he deadpans without irony or scandal, as to be expected from someone who slipped a fairly straightforward cover of “Santeria” onto Let’s Start Degeneracy as a hidden bonus track. But really, acid is notably one of the substances that didn’t go into the making of LSD – inspired by an ayahuasca retreat in Peru, written with the help of Adderall, nootropics, and opening the subconscious with a really, really good shit. “A good probiotic goes a long way,” drummer Timothy “Tito” Pittard jokes.

Besides, drugs are one of the few throughlines in the Atlanta band’s strange, slow trajectory towards the upper-middle class of…whatever we’re calling this overlap of emo, pop-punk, and alt-rock nowadays. The core trio of Hardy, Pittard, and bassist Tyler Hill initially toughed it out in the southern DIY circuit playing a sort of skramz/twinkle hybrid – “Cap’n Jazz to American Football to Saetia and Pg. 99-type stuff” Hardy explains. In other words, they were a quintessential, early-2010s emo revival band. By 2014’s Stovall, Hardy mostly dropped the screaming and Microwave took on a more robust, accessible sound that wed spiritual turmoil to occasional arena-emo grandeur; a promising prospect for Manchester Orchestra and Brand New fans who still sorta missed the way those bands sounded in 2009.

Stovall had some good hooks, none better than Hardy’s story of leaving Mormonism in his early 20s and making up for lost time. “These drugs will be the death of us/at least whatever’s left of us,” he sang on the title track, while two of the best songs on the follow-up Much Love were titled “Roaches” and “Vomit.” That alone should give you a sense of the subject matter, though “Wrong” is actually the one about chain-smoking blunts.

Microwave spent Much Love getting even deeper their vices while leveling up, part of a bumper SideOneDummy class of 2016 that included PUP, Jeff Rosenstock, AJJ, and Chris Farren. Even if they got to play Warped Tour and open for Jimmy Eat World, two straight years of running through songs like “Dull,” “Wrong,” “Whimper” and “Drown” every night still left Hardy nearly broke and totally broken – the medical bills were piling up, the drugs weren’t working, the sex wasn’t working, and Microwave’s once tightly-knit scene was turning on each other. It seems like the only thing Hardy could look forward to was the sweet release of the afterlife and all of that got channeled into 2019’s Death Is A Warm Blanket. “Hate TKO”? That’s a good song right there.

Hardy envisioned a follow-up that went in an even darker direction, but found himself too depressed by his own music to find inspiration for lyrics. “During the pandemic, we had played around with doing even heavier songs than the last record, and those songs weren’t really getting completed,” Hardy sighs. But in shifting their focus towards a more wavy, R&B-influenced tone equally by Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Foxing’s Blonde-indebted masterpiece Nearer My God, Microwave knocked out singles “Circling the Drain” and “Straw Hat” in short order – both of which quickly became live staples and fan favorites. “Everything felt like it was falling into place,” Hardy recalls. “Like, ‘‘I think this is what we’re meant to do at this time.’”

Nearly five years after Death Is A Warm Blanket, Microwave launched LSD with “Bored Of Being Sad” – though perhaps a bit shinier than their past work, it’s a sound and sentiment that could’ve fit on Much Love or Death Is A Warm Blanket. But on those albums, people who were bored of cursing the dark were more likely to spark a blunt than light the proverbial candle. Hardy had experimented with nearly all of the best-known narcotic acronyms, but never PMA. “People who are happy often just make a conscious choice to be happy,” Hardy muses. “And a lot of that is, ‘fake it till you make it,’ the things you say out loud just becomes your reality.”

Microwave had been releasing standalone singles for nearly two years before Let’s Start Degeneracy was announced, was there a point where you questioned whether you’d put out a full-length album again?

Nathan Hardy: We had actually talked about just releasing singles, but I think that people in this realm of music like albums and it gives an opportunity for a PR push and narrative surrounding a larger release. We had one album left on our deal with Pure Noise, plus we had also publicly implied that we were gonna be doing a whole record, so we were just like, “let’s hash it out.” But if “Circling The Drain” hadn’t done as well as it did – it became a crowd favorite live and it streamed really well – we may have been reconsidering whether we should just put out more singles. Instead, it was, “let this be the blueprint of a general direction.”

The general tone of Death Is A Warm Blanket also made me wonder if the band had discussed whether continuing at all would be possible, even before the pandemic.

Hardy: I think there was definitely an underlying sentiment of that, especially during the initial part of 2020. I feel like everyone was like, “will any band ever tour again?” We’re not an essential business. And we definitely gather people into groups for a living. Is this irresponsible at this point? I had started to rig at my work and then in 2022, I dislocated my shoulder, so I was on workers comp, which also fed into [working on the record]. I literally can’t work with my shoulder while I’m going to the doctors for the next six months, all I can do is sit at home. So I might as well hash this record out.

Tyler Hill: I definitely felt the sense of impending doom the whole time, it was hard to focus on music when I’m just worried about all my loved ones dying. We did eventually start getting back together – I don’t even want to say, “when it started to clear up” – but once vaccines started rolling out, we started jamming together and rehearsed Death Is A Warm Blanket all the way through. The first tour was mid-2021 and even then, tours were still getting shut down halfway through and bands were having to drop off stuff. Everyone’s trying, but it’s really, really challenging right now.

Despite not releasing much new music or touring all that much over the past five years, it seems like Microwave experienced a surge in popularity, Much Love became kind of a sleeper hit all over again.

Hill: Much Love seems to have gotten a third wind. When an album first comes out, it gets a little bit of attention and that trickles off. And then after Warped Tour [in 2017], it got a little second wind. And then right around the time we did the Story So Far tours [in 2022], it started getting attention again. Which is crazy, because at that time, the record was six years old. Maybe that has to do with the TikTok stuff and how old songs can blow up again, but I don’t know if we had anything on there.

Hardy: I don’t think we’ve ever had a viral TikTok or anything.

Timothy “Tito” Pittard: I think our most viewed TikTok is the one of all of us in the green room and we’re listening to JPEGMAFIA.
Hardy: I feel like we also benefited from bands in our scene like Hot Mulligan and Mom Jeans really taking off, that culminated around the time of that Story So Far tour. There was a lot of hype about that particular lineup and it became a thing where if someone listened to Mom Jeans or Hot Mulligan or something, people would be like, oh, “Hot Mulligan and Mom Jeans tour with Microwave, you ever listen to that band?” That gave Much Love a second wind also, because the first Mom Jeans record that really popped off was also from 2016 and that’s the era with Modern Baseball and Pinegrove, we’re adjacent to the bands that did well on TikTok.

Two days ago, I saw one of my brother’s friends post a reel where he and his daughter are at the Fall Out Boy/Jimmy Eat World show at Madison Square Garden and Hot Mulligan opened. It’s wild to think of them playing a venue like that. You guys also got to open for Jimmy Eat World back in 2018 with the Hotelier and I spoke to them recently about how a lot of bands in their wave would hit these career milestones and expect things to continue on an upward trajectory but it ends up being the peak.

Hardy: We had talked the other day about when we got dropped by [our booking agents] after the Jimmy Eat World tour. Or they said they were “restructuring.” I feel like when Much Love came out, there was the hype from the initial release and everyone was kind of expecting it to do a Modern Baseball or Pinegrove-type thing. We were able to get on that sick tour with the Hotelier and Jimmy Eat World, but it hadn’t really gained that much traction at that point. But we assumed that [our agents] were like, “I don’t know if this is happening for this band.” And that was right before we put out Death Is A Warm Blanket and then the pandemic. So somewhere in that 2018 to 2020 space, I would say, there was “how much bigger is this going to get?” Because it sure wasn’t providing income that was going to be sustainable without having a job.

It feels like Death Is A Warm Blanket really reflected that mindstate and even in the interviews from that time, a lot of the conversation was about the feeling of being in your late 20s without health insurance or any kind of monetary safety net. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a “positive” album, but there does seem to be a greater willingness to fight through the negativity.

Hardy: I would say that the theme of Death Is A Warm Blanket was the line, “it doesn’t really get better, that’s just something they say.” Everything just keeps getting worse and everything is awful and sucks and that’s life. But being in that headspace and continuing to work on the doomier songs, I just wasn’t completing lyrics. When you’re in that position of lacking optimism, some of your creative juices and dopamine get sucked out. I would have to take Adderall to work on music, I needed artificial dopamine to keep going. I’m definitely more hopeful than I was, but in 2022, I dislocated my shoulder, had another surgery, and then it just dislocated again last fucking November when we were on tour with Menzingers. A lot of the issues are still there, I was trying to find more hopeful, optimistic stances.

How do you find those optimistic stances?

Hardy: Honestly, a lot of the natural dopamine that went into this record came around when we did the Story So Far tour, and “Circling the Drain” was doing well. We did the headline tour at the end of 2021, which was one of our first things back, and there was some growth, but it wasn’t super substantial. Then after the Story So Far tour, it was like two times everything – two times the size in streaming and people at shows and selling merch and everything. And that really gave us a kick of “it’s working,” which fed into the optimism. When you have a sold-out headline show and everyone’s screaming your words and stuff, something’s going good.

It also appears that the ayahuasca ceremony you attended in Peru was a major factor. Was the intention “we need to do an ayahuasca trip” or “we went to South America and there just so happened to be an ayahuasca ceremony we could attend”?

Pittard: It was both, after we did the ayahuasca for 10 days, we had no cell phones and stuff. And then we went to Machu Picchu and Cusco. I do recommend if you’re doing ayahuasca, you go to Peru or somewhere in the rainforest because there’s just more of a connection when you’re listening to the wildlife and separate from the world. I went to Orlando to do ayahuasca at Soul Quest and it was bogus.

I can’t believe Orlando didn’t provide you with this authentic cultural experience.

Pittard: There was like 130 people there and you’re just hearing so much trauma in that room. It was just crazy.

I do empathize with people who are seeking alternatives to Western medicine, given the average experience with our healthcare system. And also, I get a sense that LSD is inspired by a greater mistrust of assumed societal truths, the lyrics that stand out to me are ones like “the sequel to politics” and “I love you because of the things you do for me” on “Straw Hat.”

Hardy: Yeah, that song is kind of a commentary – I’m polyamorous now, and I have spent a lot of time the last handful of years questioning the general incentives and the culture behind monogamy and questioning my own intentions in a reflective way. Do I love you or do I love you because of the things you provide me with, like the oxytocin and dopamine and the tangible benefits that come from relationships. [“Straw Hat”] was a cheeky sort of prodding at that. Because people have those notions of what love means, and a lot of it will be in a monogamous context where you can’t love more than one person. Ever since I left Mormonism, I’ve questioned a lot of the societal standards like, “if people don’t go to hell for having sex outside of marriage, why do people get married?” All these constructs got thrown out, I’d really internalized the fact that a lot of the basic foundational cultural habits or practices that we have are maybe not universally true.

She’s in two of the most acclaimed movies of the year. He’s starring in a much-anticipated West End production of Romeo & Juliet. How will Zendaya and Tom Holland celebrate their big 2024? By getting married, possibly.

“There has been talk of marriage, and that is a reality,” a source told People. “They are not the kind of stars who put their lives together out there on social media for the most part.” Both Zendaya and Holland, who met while making 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, prefer to keep their private life, well, private, and “work is important to both and that keeps them busy now.”

Zendaya — who gives a career-best performance in Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis movie Challengers — talked to Vogue about her and Holland’s lives changed once they joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “We were both very, very young, but my career was already kind of going, and his changed overnight. One day you’re a kid and you’re at the pub with your friends, and then the next day you’re Spider-Man,” she said. “I definitely watched his life kind of change in front of him. But he handled it really beautifully.”

Maybe if / when they get married, people will stop referring to Zendaya as “Spider-Man’s girlfriend.” Actually, let’s cut that out now.

Challengers is out in theaters now.

(Via People)

After his solid collaborative release with fellow Compton rapper Tyga, YG returns to his solo grind with a raucous new single, “Knocka.” Tapping into a similar turnt-up vein as prior releases like “Left, Right,” and “BPT,” “Knocka” opens with one of YG’s signature banda samples but quickly turns into a hard-hitting street banger.

The track constitutes YG’s first solo output since 2022’s I Got Issues, which featured the fan-favorite single “Scared Money” with J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo.

In 2023, YG teamed up with Tyga to release Hit Me When U Leave The Klub, a breezy-but-effective joint album that spawned the upbeat party single “West Coast Weekend” with Blxst and the Str8 To The Club tour with Saweetie.

Speaking of Saweetie, the Bay Area rapper figured heavily into YG’s ubiquity in 2023 when they seemingly confirmed their relationship last spring. However, their low-key stance made them the subject of fan speculation, with some wondering whether they’d broken up as recently as this January — rumors they seemingly refuted at Rolling Loud California this year when Saweetie joined YG and Tyga onstage for some PDA.

The possibility that YG might have a new solo album on the way has already excited his fans on Twitter, who seem very ready for him to make his comeback — even though he never really left.

Watch YG’s “Knocka” video above.

Killer Mike pays homage to his late friend and fellow Dungeon Family member Rico Wade with a remix of his Michael standout “Exit 9,” now featuring Offset in addition to Blxst.

While much of the song remains unchanged, Mike reworks a line in his first verse to salute the fallen producer, rapping, “It hurts like hell to say but rest in peace to Rico Wade / He soundtracked the day when me and Slee were serving J.”

Offset also taps into his own recent loss, channeling grief for late Migos bandmate Takeoff along with other family members gone too soon: “Oh, my brother, look in the air, I see an angel done fly,” he intones. “15 years, brother gone, every day momma cry / Grandma died, I wish I could go back and get time.”

Wade was reported dead at the age of 52 earlier this month, with the New York Times printing a statement from the producer’s family. “We are deeply saddened by the sudden and unexpected passing of our son, father, husband, and brother Rico Wade. Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a talented individual who touched the lives of so many.”

He touched those lives in large part due to his role as the focal point of the Dungeon Family, the Atlanta-based collective that included such pioneering acts as Mike, Future, Goodie Mob, and Outkast. The group’s name was taken from its recording headquarters in Wade’s mother’s basement, where the crew coalesced around a love of hip-hop and soulful, out-of-this-world beats created by Wade’s production trio, Organized Noize.

Lyrical Lemonade announced their 2024 Summer Smash lineup last night (April 25) and it’s a good one, featuring Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, Chief Keef, Lil Yachty, Big Sean, JID, Denzel Curry, Destroy Lonely, Flo Milli, and others. Tickets go on sale soon, so here’s how to get some if you’re interested.

How To Buy Tickets For Summer Smash 2024

Three-day general admission tickets go on sale today, April 26, at 10 a.m. CT (11 a.m. ET, 8 a.m. PT) through the Summer Smash website. Aside from GA tickets, VIP, Diamond VIP, and Parking passes will also be available.

Per a press release, “Thanks to a new ticketing partnership with Dice, ticket-buying has been made faster and clearer because the price fans see is the price they pay with no bunk surprise fees. To learn more, download the Dice mobile app today and search ‘The Summer Smash’ where fans can access the event page before tickets get released. Interested ticket-buyers can quickly check out in just three clicks while avoiding a waiting room.”

The festival is set to take place from June 14 to 16 at Bridgeview, Illinois’ SeatGeek Stadium, which is a few miles outside of downtown Chicago, roughly 30 minutes away. The fest will feature three stages: As a press release notes, “one of them outdoors within a world-class sports stadium, while the other is custom-built and constructed on outdoor turf nearby including a smaller third performance stage placed underneath a massive open-air tent.”

Hitmaking producer Metro Boomin’s recent successes with Future aren’t distracting him from his future plans. As the hip-hop world continues to reel in the wake of the chaos caused by We Don’t Trust and We Still Don’t Trust You, and prepares for Future and Metro’s We Trust You tour, the producer is maintaining his full docket of previously promised projects, including one that fans have been eagerly anticipation since its was first teased early last year.

Metro himself confirmed that his joint project with Atlanta rapper JID, which they originally announced last March, is “still a thing” in response to a concerned fan’s tweet. After @raptalksk wondered, “is that metro boomin & JID album still a thing?” Metro allayed their worries with a concise response: “very much so.”

The first word of the project came last year, when Metro tweeted, “Got a lot of new music but when me and @JIDsv drop .” Fans were hyped for a new JID song produced by Metro until JID himself corrected the speculation, revealing that they were actually working on a full album.

Since then, both artists have periodically updated the status of their plans but don’t expect this thing to drop tomorrow; JID teased a 10-song project titled Forever And A Day dropping before the joint project with Metro, while Metro said he plans to release at least three albums in 2024. While one of those could be his project with JID, Metro is also said to be heavily involved in ASAP Rocky’s upcoming album Don’t Be Dumb.

Still, that gives us even more great music to look forward to this year. Stay tuned.

Every month, Uproxx cultural critic Steven Hyden makes an unranked list of his favorite music-related items released during this period — songs, albums, books, films, you name it.

1. Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee

In just a few short weeks, Diamond Jubilee became one of the most critically acclaimed and — among a small-ish but quickly growing cult following — intensely adored indie albums of recent years. I heard about it in early April, after my podcast partner Ian Cohen recommended it on our show. Over the following weekend, I quickly became obsessed. Here was an immersive LP that tried to encapsulate a pocket history of modern popular music — ’60s Motown, ’70s bubblegum pop, ’80s C86 jangle, ’90s lo-fi indie — in a way that felt warmly familiar and fascinatingly alien. It was like a record you knew you already loved but couldn’t remember ever hearing before. The lyrics were lovelorn and miserably romantic, endlessly dwelling on doomed affairs in the manner of all classic pop tunes. And the music evoked the underground rock of the 1980s (particularly the “Velvet Underground meets Phil Spector” girl-group goth-isms of The Jesus And Mary Chain), the ’90s (think Broadcast meets Belle And Sebastian) and the aughts era acts that were similarly drawn to collisions of pure throwback pop and droning noise (The Concretes, Camera Obscura, Saturday Looks Good To Me). The pileup of references and allusions were irresistible for a critic inclined to dissect pop songs, but Diamond Jubilee ultimately exists outside of time or carefully curated genres. That’s what so cool about it. It’s like listening to the best of the past harmonize with an exciting future, right here in our boring present.

2. Pearl Jam, Dark Matter

A truism of late-period PJ records is that the songs that attempt to rock the hardest are usually the least compelling, and that’s true of “Dark Matter” and the album’s other consciously “heavy” tracks. (I refer to the second single, “Running,” as well as the nondescript album openers “Scared Of Fear” and “React, Respond.”) The difference with Dark Matter is that even the weakest material still sounds pretty great. And that’s due entirely to Pearl Jam working with relative quickness and leaning on their chemistry as a live band. (It was recorded in just three weeks at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio, where Martin Scorsese filmed interviews with The Band for The Last Waltz, a bit of trivia that naturally appealed to Vedder’s “classic-rock nerd” sensibilities.) The secret sauce of Pearl Jam’s classic albums in the ’90s was the presentation of their raw live sound with only a bare minimum of studio refinement. While Dark Matter never affects the raggedness of Vitalogy and No Code, it does approximate the flinty energy of those records in ways that their 21st-century output typically does not.

3. Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us

The application of distortion immediately sets Only God Was Above Us apart from the other VW albums. In 10 years, there will be no question from which record “Hope” or “Capricorn” or “Mary Boone” derives. (Whereas the tracks from Vampire Weekend and Contra, in Strokes-like fashion, kind of blend together.) OGWAU is definitely different. At the same time, the lyrics immediately ground the LP in an East Coast milieu that was seemingly abandoned after the beloved third-album masterpiece. It sounds like the disaffected narrator of Modern Vampires Of The City with 11 more years of wisdom. OGWAU is definitely similar. HIPPIE/GOTH-ness has been achieved. The album-catalog-as-book, once again, evolves.

4. Cloud Nothings, Final Summer

How is it possible that one of the most reliable brands in indie-punk has been around for nearly 15 years? Cloud Nothings don’t feel like a band with that long of a resumé. And yet here we are, with their eighth (!) album and (in my mind) one of their very best. Attack On Memory will likely always be Cloud Nothings’ landmark, but Final Summer feels like a summation of their strengths that also manages to push their signature sound forward. Which means that Dylan Baldi’s angsty howl and serrated melodies and drummer Jayson Gerycz’s hellacious drumming are laser-focused like never before, giving the music an extra zip that makes Final Summer positively fly by. I’m going to assume the “final” part of that title is not a warning sign — Cloud Nothings sound like a band with plenty of highlights on the horizon.

5. Phosphorescent, Revelator

Matthew Houck makes music that is the opposite of Cloud Nothings in every possible way, but his work with Phosphorescent has been similarly consistent and enduring. Houck finally closed the too-long gap since 2018’s C’est La Vie this month with a new Phosphorescent LP, and it reestablished his easy way with gorgeous, contemplative folk rock. While Houck doesn’t drift much into the rockier side of Phosphorescent — there are no “Ride On/Right On”-style hitters on this record — he does show off his knack for mid-tempo stunners with sighing pedal steel and cinematic string sections.

6. Hovvdy, Hovvdy

This extremely likable Austin-based duo came on my radar with their fourth record, 2021’s True Love, an instant patio-music classic that reimagined the friendship anthems of Japandroids in the mode of Alex G’s URL-folk experiments. Hovvdy’s new self-titled record is their most ambitious to date, moving through 19 songs briskly in under an hour. Though the songs themselves often come across as modest and unassuming, moving along with just a jocular guitar strum, a drum-machine skitter, and two voices interacting sweetly. But the emotional impact is surprisingly strong. It’s the kind of record you wish you could hug.

7. Ben Seretan, “New Air”

One of my favorite songs of 2024 so far. The songwriting approach appears to be straightforward: Listen to “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” study “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” and write a song that evokes the best parts of “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” without directly ripping off “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” If that was the approach, it was genius and I fully endorse it. Either way, I am looking forward to the new album from Seretan — whose previous LP, 2020’s Youth Pastoral, was a pandemic era cult hit — due in July.

8. Lost Angel: The Genius Of Judee Sill

Judee Sill put out just two albums in the early ’70s, and then she died tragically at the end of the decade at the age of 35. Her passing was not deemed notable at the time — there wasn’t even an obituary printed. Forty-five years later, Sill is more famous than she ever was during her lifetime. Her baroque folk-rock songs are touchstones for the current generation of indie acts ranging from Fleet Foxes to Big Thief to Weyes Blood. But that’s only half the story, as this fascinating documentary (available now via VOD) explores. Most musician docs have low-stakes problems — artist gets popular, artist struggles with the pitfalls of popularity, artist learns how to navigate popularity. Sill, meanwhile, lived a genuinely extraordinary life. Before she recorded a note, she was a heroin addict who committed robbery and dabbled in sex work. Just a few years later, she was on the cover of Rolling Stone and palling around with L.A. music royalty like David Geffen and Graham Nash. It’s an incredible story. Lost Angel makes a convincing case that Sill is an all-time cult icon.

Lyrical Lemonade is an influential force in the hip-hop community and their Summer Smash festival has become a must-attend event in its own right. Organizers just unveiled the 2024 lineup last night (April 25) and it’s another winner. The festival goes down from June 14 to 16 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, Illinois, just outside of downtown Chicago.

The headliners set to lead the fest are Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, and Chief Keef. Re: Scott, though, it’s not actually just him, as the performance slot is credited to Cactus Jack and will also feature Don Toliver, Sheck Wes, Chase B, Luxury Tax, SoFaygo, and WondaGurl.

Beyond that, the lineup also includes Lil Yachty (as his performance at the 2021 edition of the festival is having a meme moment), Big Sean, JID, Denzel Curry, Kodak Black, Destroy Lonely, Flo Milli, Lil Tecca, Ski Mask The Slump God, Cash Cobain, TiaCorine, Ken Carson, Waka Flocka Flame, YG Marley, Lil B, and more.

Three-day general admission tickets go on sale starting today, April 26, at 10 a.m. CT (11 a.m. ET, 8 a.m. PT) via the Summer Smash website. VIP, Diamond VIP, and Parking passes will also be available. Ticket prices will include “no bunk surprise fees,” per a press release.