Category: News

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. The Beatles: Get Back

I’m glad I wasn’t tasked with reviewing Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Lords Of The Rock documentary. How do you quickly assess a movie in which there’s twice as many hours as Fab Four’s? I feel like I’ll be regularly dipping in and out of this for as long as I keep my Disney+ subscription. (I assume a Blu-Ray with — dare I say it — additional previously unseen footage will soon be made available for certifiable Beatles lunatics like yours truly?) But here’s my immediate impression: This is the greatest depiction of a band’s inner life — how they work, how they interact, how they grow apart while always feeling like a tight-knit family — ever put on film. It’s hard for me to think of another film that even comes close. Maybe Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster? Though that 2004 film by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky is “only” 141 minutes and documents the making of a minor album. In Get Back, we see the creation of future rock classics like “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Let It Be” unfold in real time — the initial flash of inspiration, the lyrical dead ends, the arrangement choices not taken, the moment when the songs we all know by heart appear to suddenly (miraculously!) fall into place. (And then there’s the film director who won’t shut up already about Libya. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, you come off like a dope!) Most incredibly, there’s the scene from Part 1 in which Paul McCartney aimlessly strums his bass until he slowly discovers the skeleton of “Get Back,” one of the most illuminating depictions of the creative process I’ve ever seen. As it is, I can’t relate to anyone who feels this is “too much” Beatles. John and George are gone now, forever. Paul and Ringo are deep into their twilight years. In that context, eight hours of an immersive “hangout” experience with the greatest rock band ever feels, if anything, rapidly fleeting, like the most beautiful sunset in mankind’s history sinking too fast into the horizon. Even now, I’m left wanting more.

2. Big Thief, “Time Escaping”

The jamband-ification of Big Thief continued this month with this excellent single from their forthcoming double album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, due out Feb. 11. I am, of course, fully on board with one of the best indie bands on the planet sounding like a cross of Blind Melon and Billy Breathes. And I’m, ahem, high on the new bountiful LP, the promo of which I’ve been spinning regularly for the past few weeks. Beyond that, I should keep my mouth shut until closer to the release.

3. Nation Of Language,A Way Forward

I’m still catching up with young bands who had the misfortune of putting out debut albums in the shadow of the pandemic in 2020. One of my fave “Class of 2020” groups is this Brooklyn outfit, who make moody synth-rock in the mold of early Depeche Mode and Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark. Their first album released last year, Introduction, Presence, spotlighted these millennials’ close studying of delectably ancient keyboard tones. But this year’s A Way Forward ups the ante on songwriting, with tracks like “Across That Fine Line” and “The Grey Commute” leaning into their burgeoning pop grandiosity.

4. Neal Francis, In Plain Sight

Here’s an album I’ve enjoyed listening to this month, but I expect to love once barbecue season rolls around again in the spring of 2022. Born Neal Francis O’Hara, Francis is a recovering child prodigy who toured Europe in his teens and then fell into addiction. After cleaning himself up, he re-emerged with a throwback big-band sound that recalls the highs of 1970s funk and swamp rock — lovers of Dr. John, Leon Russell, and The Meters will immediately feel at home amid Francis’ fat-bottomed, bluesy bangers.

5. Snail Mail, Valentine

On the first Snail Mail record, 2018’s Lush, Lindsey Jordan focused almost solely on guitar, to the point of aligning herself with indie “shredders” like Kurt Vile and Steve Gunn. But on Valentine, she’s expanded her musical palate significantly, layering her songs with keyboards and strings in a manner consistent with “mature sophomore efforts” from young indie phenoms. For Jordan, the grown-up, MOR indie of Valentine is a subtle hint that she’s no longer a precocious wunderkind of Lush, and therefore shouldn’t be fetishized solely for her youth or confessional lyrics. And yet Valentine isn’t fully grown up, just as nobody at 22 is fully grown up. Jordan still portrays herself in these latest songs as a person who falls in love a little too hard, and then has to deal with the consequences when things fall apart. This, of course, is the most “young person” subject matter imaginable. (She apparently wrote the songs for Valentine back at her childhood bedroom in Baltimore.)

6. Courtney Barnett, Things Take Time, Take Time

Is she underrated now? At the time of Sometimes I Just Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett seemed like the next great indie singer-songwriter. But now that indie rock is awash in guitar-slinging memoirists of a slightly younger generational vintage, Barnett seems a little taken for granted. It’s true that Things Take Time, Take Time doesn’t vary radically from her previous work. About half of the songs sound like “Avant Gardner,” and about half of the songs resemble “Depreston.” This is “merely” another collection of witty and winsome mid-tempo rockers with guitar solos that slowly rise from the malaise like a layabout peeling off the couch for a graveyard shift at a dead-end service job. But Barnett is still really, really good at this. In five years, people are going to wonder why this album was slept on.

7. Sonic Youth, Live In Austin 1995

As someone who would gladly buy a box set compiling every live version of “The Diamond Sea” performed by Sonic Youth during the Washing Machine era, I see this new archival release as a step in the right direction. Though, if I have to quibble, a “Sea” that is “only” about 14 minutes feels kinda skimpy. The album version is actually about five minutes longer. Can the powers that be at Sonic Youth HQ work on getting our “Diamond Sea” stats up, please? Fourteen minutes are rookie numbers. We need many more minutes, if not hours, of blissed-out distortion.

8. Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts

Only in a month in which an eight-hour Beatles documentary dropped would this incredible new live record and concert film from the Boss be overshadowed on the classic-rock part of my brain. But this really is a momentous release for Bruce heads, capturing him at an absolute sweet spot — one year after the fire-spitting fury of the Darkness On The Edge Of Town era (still my favorite Springsteen tour of all time), and one year before the release of one of his greatest albums, The River. Some of those songs are previewed here, including the desolate title track, which gets its live debut (!) in front of an appropriately stunned audience at Madison Square Garden. But the album (which compiles both No Nukes benefit shows) and film don’t dwell long on doleful ballads. This is Bruce at the height of his arena-rock powers, playing hard and long (though not as long as usual) in front of a band determined to kick as much ass as possible. The back half is especially supercharged, in which the band tears through a Stone Pony-approved collection of rock and soul oldies as well as the unbeatable live war horse “Rosalita.” Whereas Get Back is leavened with an air of melancholy, The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts is a blast of pure joy. Play it loud.

Now is Tony Bennett’s time to shine. The 95-year-old singer recently became the oldest artist to ever be nominated for the Album Of The Year Grammy Award, and he’s also fresh off the release of his One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett And Lady Gaga concert special. Now, CBS and Entertainment Weekly have shared a highlight from the show, the emotional moment when Gaga escorted Bennett off the stage for the final time.

Before doing so, Gaga says, “Tony, we’re all so grateful to have witnessed your talent, your generosity, your creativity, and your kindness, your service through all the years.” After pausing for applause, Gaga added, “Mr. Bennett, it would be my honor to escort you off the stage.”

Bennett gave a quiet “thank you” and nodded subtly as he gazed over the cheering crowd. Gaga then kissed the singer’s hand, locked arms with him, and walked as Bennett smiled and waved to the audience.

The Radio City Music Hall concerts were full of special moments, like one Gaga told Anderson Cooper about last month: “For the first couple of weeks that I saw Tony since COVID, he called me ‘Sweetheart.’ But I wasn’t sure he knew who I was. [Radio City Music Hall was] the first time that Tony said my name in a long time. I had to keep it together, because we had a sold-out show, and I have a job to do. But I’ll tell you, when I walked out on that stage, and he said, ‘It’s Lady Gaga,’ my friend saw me. And it was very special.”

It’s been a helluva year for London’s emerging seven-piece band Black Country, New Road. Released in February, their debut album For The First Time was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize given to the best album in the UK. They’ve wasted no time in keeping the momentum going by announcing their follow-up album, Ants From Up There, out in Febraury of next year.

The first two tracks from Ants, have seen them exploring the similarly chaotic punk of their debut on “Chaos Space Marine,” and then given way to the more doleful sounds of “Bread Song.” But on their latest track, “Concorde,” the group present a bustling folk arrangement that gets spritelier with the band’s signature horn section, and progressively builds into a bigger and bigger cathartic outpouring of emotions. Their best offering of new material yet, the six-minute “Concorde” is a deeper look into what this budding group is capable of and flashes a new dynamic wrinkle in their repertoire.

Listen to “Concorde” above and look out for Black Country, New Road as they embark on their first-ever North America headlining tour in 2022. Check out those tour dates below and grab tickets here.

02/19/2022 — Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
02/22/2022 — Brooklyn, NY @ Sultan Room, Turk’s Inn
02/23/2022 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
02/25/2022 — Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
02/26/2022 — Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz
02/28/2022 — Detroit, MI @ Third Man Records
03/01/2022 — Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
03/03/2022 — Seattle, WA @ Barboza
03/03/2022 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
03/05/2022 — Arcata, CA @ The Miniplex, Richard’s Goat Tavern
03/06/2022 — San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
03/08/2022 — Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
03/09/2022 — Los Angeles, CA @ Regent Theater

Ants From Up There is out 2/4/2022 via Ninja Tune. Pre-order it here.

Rihanna never sleeps. Though plenty of fans have voiced their complaints that we haven’t seen a new album since 2016’s Anti, it’s not like Rihanna hasn’t been busy. She became one of the only female billionaires in the world this year, due to the success of her Fenty Beauty and Savage Fenty respective lines, and she even dipped her toes back into the music game a little bit with a massive vinyl collection of all her old work.

But despite all she’s accomplished in her career, part of Riri’s heart will also be in her native Barbados. She’s always kept her roots there, returning for different festivals every year and making sure people know she hasn’t forgotten where she’s from. Well, tonight she’s also back in Barbados to help celebrate a very historic moment in the country’s history: officially becoming a republic. You see, in the past, Barbados was a royal colony, but they’ve opted to self-govern. But Barbados will still remain part of the greater commonwealth, despite their newfound independence.

Catch a glimpse of Rihanna’s appearance at the ceremony below, and keep an eye out for her own thoughts on the transition, likely to appear on social media in the next few days.

The Houston Rockets are riding a three-game winning streak after beating the Oklahoma City Thunder for the second time this season on Monday night. While much of the national conversation about Houston has focused on the John Wall situation, where he wants to return but in a starting role while the team wants him to come off the bench, the Rockets are quietly starting to look like a more competitive team with wins over the Bulls, Hornets, and Thunder in succession.

Christian Wood is leading the way, but Kevin Porter Jr. is also showing positive signs at the point guard position, as he’s averaging over 10 assists per game in the three-game streak. On Monday, he recorded his first career triple-double with 11 points, 11 assists, and 10 rebounds — the last of which took some serious effort on the part of he and his teammates.

With just over a minute to play, the Rockets worked extremely hard to get Porter his 10th board, with Alperen Sengun trying to tap the ball to Porter, Jae’Sean Tate then standing by the bouncing ball while Josh Christopher screams at KPJ to come get the ball.

The hometown scorer gave Porter Jr. credit for the rebound to get that triple-double, but we’ll see if that gets reviewed by the league. In any case, it’s some incredible teamwork to get Porter to a statistical milestone of his first triple-double and, for that, we must commend them. It’s not quite Ricky Davis missing a layup on the wrong basket on purpose, but it’s certainly the spiritual successor to Davis’ legendary attempt at getting himself a triple-double.

Things have been a little awkward for Chris Cuomo for a while now. On the one hand, he has a weeknight CNN show. On the other, his brother is Andrew Cuomo, who in August resigned as governor of New York following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. A new report released Monday claimed that Chris had been more involved in his brother’s defense than he’d claimed. But you’d have no idea any of this happened if you watched that evening’s episode of Cuomo Prime Time.

The CNN host devoted the opening stretch of the night’s show to the Omicron, the new COVID strain that was made public on the day after Thanksgiving, and about which still very little is known. The hour was business as usual, which is to say Cuomo never once mentioned the hot water in which he currently resides. The closest thing to an acknowledgement was when he passed the baton to colleague Don Lemon, who gave him a suspiciously warmer-than-usual greeting.

“I am grateful for your friendship and your love,” Lemon told Cuomo. “I think that you are fantastic. One of the kindest people I know on this planet.”

Records show that Chris Cuomo had been an eager part of his brother’s defense team. As sexual harassment accusations mounted, Chris was reportedly adamant that Andrew not resign, even willing to dig up dirt on some of his accusers. CNN announced shortly thereafter that they will conduct a “thorough review” of the report. In the meantime, their employee may simply have to pretend all’s hunky dory.

(Via Deadline)

Marilyn Manson has been facing multiple allegations of abuse since his ex, Evan Rachel Wood, came forward this February about the abuse she endured in their relationship. Since then, a timeline around accusations against Manson, real name Brian Warner, has been necessary to keep track of the outpouring from women who have suffered at his hands. Of course, that hasn’t stopped plenty of other male entertainers, like Kanye West, from collaborating with and supporting Manson regardless of the pain he’s caused his victims and the illegal behavior he allegedly engaged in.

Law enforcement is actually involved in investigating the charges against Manson, though, and today they took steps in their investigation when the LA County Sheriff raided the performer’s residence. “What I can confirm is there was a search warrant that was served this morning,” a source from the LA County Sheriff told Rolling Stone. “It’s confirmed it was his address, his location. It’s confirmed that it was Marilyn Manson’s location. It was a search warrant for his belongings. I don’t know what was taken. It occurred this morning, and it was for him.”

Rolling Stone reached out to Manson but hasn’t received a comment about the raid. This story will be updated if that changes.

It’s been a long road for Britney Spears, who was only very recently freed from the abusive conservatorship she’s endured for years. After the singer opened up about how much she was suffering, including being forced to take medication that dehabilated her, Britney’s father was removed from the situation and then the setup was finally terminated. Things are looking up for Britney even though she clearly has a lot of healing and adjusting to do, and as we head into the holiday season she shared a picture of a cozy fire to Instagram, along with some updates for fans.

“That beautiful … nice … and warm fucking fuzzy feeling when you’ve been waiting patiently for 13 years to be able to live your life however you choose and it’s finally here !!!!” she captioned the post. “Lighting my candles sure is a joy folks !!! And you might be surprised cause my prayers are pretty damn powerful ESPECIALLY when you’re on the right medication just a month ago !!!! Damn I can actually pray …. it feels so good to just BE HERE !!!! I’M HERE … thanks to no doctor or conservatorship people … good God my friends … it’s good to BE HERE and be PRESENT !!!! Since I can actually PRAY now hopefully in just 3 months there will be a shift for me … I mean who knows … I’m not gonna thank anyone I’m gonna pull a @snoopdogg and say I thank ME for believing in ME !!!!! Let’s watch watch watch some TV folks !!!! ”

On that note, how about this latest season of Succession, eh?
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Chucky the killer doll has been with us for nearly 35 years now, surviving countless sequels, a couple tonal revamps, a big screen reboot, one vocal change that was quickly reversed (sorry, Mark Hamill), even a blundered Amber alert. And it appears he’ll live to terrorize unwitting everyday folk yet again: As per Variety, the Chucky TV show is coming back for a second season.

The series, whose first season only boasted seven episodes, debuted on both USA Network and SyFy in early October, with Brad Dourif returning as the serial killer who finds himself trapped in the body of a freckled, ginger doll. This time he winds up in a yard sale in the sleepy city of Hackensack, New Jersey. On top of providing the audience with killer doll kills, it’s also a coming-of-age story about his 14-year-old charge, dealing with real issues, such as sexuality and bullying.

Along with Dourif, Jennifer Tilly also returns, revamping Tiffany Valentine, his main squeeze in the before-time, who joins him in dolly possession and murder. Tilly was added to the franchise with 1998’s Bride of Chucky, which revived the series by amping up the winky-winky camp element and offering a more lighthearted look at serial murder. A movie reboot, from 2019 starring Aubrey Plaza, only did moderate business.

(Via Variety)

According to a report from TMZ, Trey Songz is linked to a sexual assault investigation in Las Vegas. The R&B singer has been under scrutiny for this kind of behavior many times in the past, including allegations from earlier this year that he hit a woman with his car, allegedly punched a bartender, and fought with a police officer at an NFL game (he won’t face charges for this one). He also faced allegations of sexual misconduct in 2020, including a surprise “golden shower” and actions that are in the realm of kidnapping and coercion. Songz denied those at the time.

The latest allegations involve the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department investigating a sexual assault incident at The Cosmopolitan hotel. Songz is reportedly cooperating with the police, and no charges have been filed so far in the investigation, which began on Sunday. The performer was in Vegas to celebrate his 37th birthday, and also performed at Drai’s Nightclub on Saturday night. According to TMZ’s source, a group of women accompanied Trey and his crew back to The Cosmopolitan, which is when the incident occured. So far, there’s no comment from Trey’s camp, though TMZ did reach out to get his side of the story. This is a developing story and might be updated as more details come to light.