Last year brought Microphones In 2020, Phil Elverum’s first new album as The Microphones in 17 years. Now he’s getting ready for some shows in support of the album, which will be his first proper Microphones tour in 18 years.
The tour, which was announced today, will consists of a handful of North American shows in February and March of 2022. The West Coast shows will see support from Ragana, while Emily Sprague will open the rest of the dates aside from the Brooklyn show at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church.
Back when Elverum announced Microphones In 2020 (which consists of a single long track), he explained the inspiration behind reviving the project, saying, “In the summer of 2019. I played a little local concert under the old name for no big reason. The little flurry of weird attention around this announcement got me thinking about what it even means to step back into an old mode. Self commemoration would be embarrassing. I don’t want to go backwards ever. There is nothing to reunite. So I nudged into the future with these ideas and came up with this large song.”
Check out the full list of tour dates below.
02/17/2022 — Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriets *
02/18/2022 — Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room *
02/26/2022 — Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall *
02/28/2022 — Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre *
03/01/2022 — Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center #
03/02/2022 — Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall #
03/03/2022 — Grand Rapids, MI @ Wealthy Theatre#
03/04/2022 — Toronto, ON @ Great Hall #
03/05/2022 — Montréal, QC @ La Sala Rossa #
03/06/2022 — Portland, ME @ Space #
03/07/2022 — Somerville, MA @ Somerville Theatre #
03/08/2022 — Brooklyn, NY @ St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Church
03/09/2022 — Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Sanctuary #
03/10/2022 — Washington, DC @ Miracle Theatre #
This week in pop music saw some summer-ready bops. Iggy Azalea dropped a club-primed track, Skrillex tapped international superstar J Balvin for a pumped-up single, and Taylor Swift once again worked with Aaron Dessner for a gentle tune.
Offering another preview of her upcoming album End Of An Era, Iggy Azalea made it more than clear that she’s ready for the return of nightlife with her pounding track “I Am The Stripclub.” The dance-ready track is Azalea at her best, delivering boastful lyrics about her self-worth over a cutting-edge beat.
J Balvin, Skrillex — “In Da Getto”
Skrillex is well underway with his comeback. The producer is gearing up for a new project by debuting a handful of EDM singles and this week, he teamed up with J Balvin for the wildly energetic tune “In Da Getto.” Skrillex’s thumping beat creates the perfect backdrop for J Balvin’s quick-witted flow, resulting in a track that’s sure to be heard on dancefloors everywhere.
Big Red Machine — “Renegade” Feat. Taylor Swift
Big Red Machine, the collaborative project between Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, shared “Renagade” this week, one of the Taylor Swift collaborations heard on their upcoming debut album. The song is reminiscent of Swift’s Folklore era as a wistful guitar accompanies Swift’s delicately-delivered lyrics about the trepidation of a new relationship. In a statement upon sharing the track, Swift described how meeting Dessner changed her musical outlook. “I was ushered into his world of free-flowing creativity where you don’t overthink, you just make music,” she wrote.
Maisie Peters — “Psycho”
As the latest signee of Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records, Maisie Peters goes bubblegum pop in her latest track “Psycho.” The punchy tune marks one of Peters’ most lively songs yet, showcasing her soaring vocals over an earworm beat. “‘Psycho’ tells a dramatic story of someone whose lies catch up to them, and who seem to feel very little when they hurt other people,” Peters says about the single. “I think this is something near enough everyone in the world can relate to, myself included.”
Sigala — “You For Me” Feat. Rita Ora
British DJ Sigala tapped Rita Ora for “You For Me” as their unofficial entry for this year’s song of the summer. The turned-up tune showcases Ora’s fluttering vocals over sunny synths and a shimmering bass drop. Ora fires off lovelorn lyrics contrasted by the song’s electrifying instrumentals, crafting an irresistible tune that’s tailor-made to be heard on beaches everywhere in coming months.
Magdalena Bay — “Chaeri”
LA electro indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay teased their debut LP this week with the hypnotic lead single, “Chaeri.” The synth-forward track draws comparisons to Grimes’ early catalog, combining atmospheric production with breathy vocals to create an enticing tune.
Faouzia — “Hero”
Hardworking songwriter Faouzia returns with yet another kinetic single. Faouzia’s tune “Hero” highlights her impactful vocals, melting together empowering lyrics with a buoyant beat that packs a punch. “I wrote ‘Hero’ late one night while taking a break from studying for my exams,” Faouzia said about the single. “Thematically, the song discusses having fair and reasonable expectations from the love you give and receive in a relationship or a friendship. It’s a two-way street and any healthy relationship needs both sides to be supportive of each other.”
Slush Puppy — “Barbie Doll”
Rising 20-year-old indie-pop producer Slush Puppy shares the gritty track “Barbie Doll” as a reflection on those who alter themselves for the attention of others. With a woozy beat and electrifying bass guitar, the addictive single expertly juxtaposes sunny instrumentals with bittersweet lyrics. “I wanted to creatively express what it feels like to overcompensate for being insecure,” Slush Puppy said about the track.
Laura Mvula — “Pink Noise”
UK musician Laura Mvula delivered her endlessly-fun third studio album Pink Noise this week. The LP’s title track gives a hip-shaking preview of the disco-tinged beats heard on the project, combining ebullient brass instruments with a bouncing beat to create a dance-ready tune. “This is the album I always wanted to make,” Mvula said about Pink Noise. “Every corner is made warm with sunset tones of the 80s. I was born in 1986. I came out of the womb wearing shoulder pads. I absorbed the dynamism of the 80s aesthetic right from my first moments on this planet.”
Caspr — “Duct Tape Lips”
New York-based artist Caspr fires off another alt-pop release with the heart-wrenching track “Duct Tape Lips.” The song was produced by Omar Apollo and acclaimed producer Andrew Watt and seamlessly combines emo and pop-punk sensibilities for an affecting melody. “Duct Tape Lips” marks Caspr’s third officially-released track, rallying excitement for what the artist has coming next.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
After what has felt like years of rumors that a new, more powerful, Nintendo Switch was on the way we woke up on Tuesday morning to the exciting news that those rumors were true…sort of. The Nintendo Switch (OLED model) is indeed here and it will be coming this October. Nintendo made the announcement via a tweet, YouTube video, and with surprisingly little fanfare. Why they chose to announce this now instead of during last month’s E3 presentation is anyone’s guess, but at least we finally have a Switch with information we can dive into.
Unfortunately, most of the information we’ve been given is kind of underwhelming considering all of the hype that came from those rumors. What everyone wanted was a new Switch that was going to run games at smoother framerates, allow for ports of more modern games, and increase the general power of the tiny device. Instead, this model is going to be more focused on making the portability of the Switch more viable. The OLED model improves the way games appear on the Switch itself and is going to have improved audio when portable. The kickstand on the back of the Switch, for anyone that wants to stand up the small device on a table, can now be adjusted and has been made wider so players can worry less about it possibly falling over. Players who like to take their Switch on the go are definitely going to see an upgrade.
There were some other additions to this new Switch as well such as a LAN port and an internal storage increase of 64 GB, but for an “upgrade” this feels extremely underwhelming. Yes, the Switch is a device that is meant to be played on the go and this does make that experience a little easier. They wouldn’t be able to advertise it as a home console that can be taken everywhere if the portability mode didn’t also receive upgrades but is that enough of an upgrade to justify calling this a “new” Switch. Well, that depends on if we consider this a new console or not.
Personally, this just seems like a new purchase option for anyone that is looking to buy their first Switch. Current Switch owners aren’t going to have much reason to own this unless they religiously play their Switch in portable mode. This “new” console does not feel like the kind of mid-life console upgrade that we saw out of, to use a recent example, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Will games look prettier, and maybe run slightly better in portable mode, yes and that’s awesome. However, as for the kinds of games the Switch itself can run, it’s going to be business as usual. That’s fine, but for those of us that want to see games run better on the Switch itself, it’s admittedly a little disappointing.
The “industry rule” Q-Tip revealed back in 1991’s “Check The Rhime” appears to hold as true as ever. For proof, look no further than the recent sale of A Tribe Called Quest’s catalog royalties as an NFT, which the band now says they never actually authorized. Group DJ and co-founder Ali Shaheed Muhammad responded to Billboard‘s report of the sale on Facebook, revealing just how Royalty Exchange came to offering 1.5% of the band’s first five album royalties as a non-fungible token at auction.
“No member of A Tribe Called Quest has entered into any partnership with Royalty Exchange,” he wrote, as he launched into a lengthy explanation of just how labyrinthine and convoluted record contracts can truly be.
In 1989 a dream unfolds. Two teenagers sign a 5 album recording contract with Jive Records. Q-Tip and I were represented by Ron Skoler and Ed Chalpin. Ed owned PPX Enterprises, google that ish. We had absolutely no affiliation with either of these gentlemen other than them representing us as our lawyer/“agent” in negotiating the deal with Jive.
PPX aka Ed Chalpin added a clause to our agreement stating they get paid a percentage of our recording fund EVERY time we commenced to record a new album. We did not discover this hidden clause until we commenced to record The Low End Theory. We disputed this clause. Neither Ed or Ron ever told us about this bullsh*t language in the agreement. It was unwarranted and where I come from “crooked.” Ed sued us and he lost. He appealed the case. He was rich and had deep pockets to litigate. We however were not rich. We were kids with a dream, an album slowly selling and deeply in debt to our record company.
We were determined to not to be taken advantage of by PPX Enterprises. We wanted to fight on. Jive offered to help us with our lack of capital to litigate the appeal however they required us to sign a sixth album with them. Without any other means to get this (do not use slanderous adjectives) entity out of our lives, we signed for the 6th album, added Phife to the contract and Jive made the PPX issue disappear or so we thought.
It wasn’t until reading this incomplete article by Billboard on June 29, 2021 that I learned PPX Enterprises wasn’t entirely out of our business. Apparently PPX sold their share of a settlement they made with Jive Records to an individual whom entered into a partnership with Royalty Exchange. Be clear that is the NFT that was created and auctioned.
Had we known this percentage of our art was out there we would have bought it directly from PPX Enterprises as it should have never been sold by Jive Records.
So, there you have it. The group never wanted to sell their royalties but now, bidder Stephen F, who paid 40.191 in Ethereum ($84,765), will be receiving semi-annual checks from every stream, sample, or media appearance of songs from the first five Tribe albums (you know, the ones that have appeared EVERYWHERE since the ’90s revival boom in television and film over the past decade) until the copyright expires. Yikes.
In the wake of his recent altercation with fellow musician Saint Jhn, Lil Uzi Vert has been accused of physical and mental abuse by his ex-girlfriend Brittany Byrd, whose manager told The Shade Room that the rapper caused the confrontation after “stalking” Byrd. Byrd, a Los Angeles-based visual artist, dated Lil Uzi Vert briefly between 2014 and 2016, during which Byrd’s manager — referred to only as “Brianna” in the story — was “toxic and mentally and physically abusive.”
Brianna also claims that the rapper “has been stalking Brittany since they broke up,” and says that Byrd was hospitalized after the attack. The manager alleges that when Uzi arrived to the Dialogue Cafe in West Hollywood where Byrd was having a lunch meeting with Jhn, Uzi punched Byrd in the face multiple times and pointed a gun at her.
This contradicts the previous reports from TMZ that Uzi tried to punch Jhn and revealed a gun during their altercation. The report was updated after the fact to reflect new sources that said Uzi’s gun fell after his initial punch missed, Byrd approached him, and he pointed the gun at her and struck her. Byrd filed a police report at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s station.
Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Gorillaz leader Damon Albarn has a solo album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, coming out later this year. After sharing the title track last month, he returns today with another cut, “Polaris,” which is more upbeat than its predecessor and is carried by a bossa nova rhythm.
Albarn previously said of the album, “I organized musicians, string players, three bass trombones, some percussion, and keyboards into an interesting arrangement. […] I took some of these real-time, extreme elemental experiences [of Iceland] and then tried to develop more formal pop songs with that as my source. I wanted to see where that would take me. Sometimes it took me down to Uruguay and Montevideo. Other times I went to Iran, Iceland, or Devon. With travel being curtailed, it was kind of nice to be able to make a record that put me strangely in those places for a moment or two.”
Check out both the studio and live versions of “Polaris” above. Albarn also guests on a new episode of Mark Ronson’s Fader Uncovered podcast, so check that out below.
The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is out 11/12 via Transgressive Records. Pre-order it here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Paddington is a very good movie. Paddington 2 is one of the best movies of the 2010s (or if Rotten Tomatoes scores carry weight, of all-time). By this logic, Paddington 3 will transcend our understanding of what a “cinematic masterpiece” can be. It will unite Democrats and Republicans, it will bring peace to the Middle East, it will make marmalade as omnipresent in the United States as ketchup. You might say I’m excited.
Varietyreports that Paddington 3 is “among a host of slate titles revealed by Studiocanal” at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday. “Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh said that principal photography on the keenly anticipated project would commence in the second quarter of 2022.” If we’re kind and polite, the Paddington trilogy will see daylight.
Paddington 2 was a hit for StudioCanal, earning $228 million at the international box office on a $40 million budget (not to mention the near-unanimously positive reviews), so a trilogy-capper should have been a sure thing. But there was some concern when Paul King said he wasn’t going to return to direct. “At some point, you just have to stop. It might be time for somebody else to do a twist on it. I’m trying not to do a third bear movie, which is a huge, huge mistake,” he told Empire. King will, however, receive an executive producer and story by credit for Paddington 3, along with Simon Farnaby and Mark Burton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jon Foster and James Lamont.
The director and cast are “currently under wraps,” but we have some ideas on who could play the villain (make it Tom Hardy, you cowards).
As Matthew McConaughey continues to test the waters of making a gubernatorial run in Texas, the actor released a bizarre video on July 4th where he drops one of his growing list of McConaughey-isms by saying America is “going through puberty.” It was an odd line in an odd video, but that’s been par for the course as the actor continues to ride the the fence on whether or not he’ll run for governor, and where he stands politically.
Coming off the holiday weekend, CNN’s New Day batted around the new McConaughey video as host Michael Smerconish laughingly dismissed the actor’s thesis. “Puberty? Nah. I think it’s midlife crisis and let’s all buy the Porsche and move on.”
.@smerconish on Matthew McConaughey’s July 4 message: “You’re popular up until the point when you formally decide to get in the race, and then all of a sudden your numbers change … Secondly, puberty, nah. I think it’s midlife crisis, and let’s all buy the Porsche and move on.” pic.twitter.com/YJOYeW3iIf
He dispensed more advice for the possible Texan politician while on CNN’s “New Day,” too: “You’re popular up until the point when you formally decide to get in the race and then all of a sudden your numbers change so be careful, Matthew McConaughey. Love your work, but those numbers don’t remain where they are today.”
Despite the video having that signature McConaughey blend of Texas ruggedness with a dash of new age guru, the actor did a fairly decent job backing up his puberty metaphor.
“This is not an excuse, this is just the reality, and this is good, because we gotta keep learning, we gotta keep maturing, we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta keep building,” he said. “And we gotta make sure we maintain hope along the way, as we continue to evolve.”
It turns out that world-class success runs in the Springsteen family. There’s Bruce, the New Jersey artist who has made generation-defining music. His wife, Patti Scialfa, is, like her husband, a member of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, for her work with the E Street Band. Then there’s their daughter, Jessica, who is getting ready to do something that neither of her uber-prosperous parents are likely to ever pull off (unless they develop a dedication to figure skating): compete in the Olympics.
It was announced yesterday that Jessica, an accomplished equestrian, will represent the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics (which are still named that despite their postponement to 2021) in Tokyo this summer, as part of the show jumping team. Jessica and her 12-year-old horse, the wonderfully named Don Juan van de Donkhoeve, will be part of a team that also includes McLain Ward, Kent Farrington, and Laura Kraut.
Jessica shared a reaction to the news today, writing on Instagram, “Been dreaming of this since I can remember! Endless gratitude for my team, friends and family for helping me make this a reality. We are Tokyo bound!! Honored to be a part of this team with [Kraut, Farrington, and Ward]. There’s no horse in the world I’d rather be on this journey with, thank you Don! You’re my horse of a lifetime. Let’s go USA!”
For months, pillow overlord Mike Lindell has promised his “dozens of us” followers that Donald Trump would be reinstated as president in August. “Donald Trump, I believe, will be back in by the end of August,” he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in May before taking credit for planting the idea in the former-president’s mushy mind.
“If Trump is saying August, that is probably because he heard me say it publicly,” he told the Daily Beast, adding, “It is my hope that Donald Trump is reinstated, after all the proof comes out, by the end of August, but I don’t know if it’ll be that month, specifically… I spoke about it with my lawyers who said that they should have something ready for us to bring before the U.S. Supreme Court by July. So, in my mind, I hope that means that we could have Donald Trump back in the White House by August. That’s how I landed on August, and I’m hopeful that that is correct.” Lindell has now landed on a specific date.
“The morning of August 13, it will be the talk of the world, going, hurry up, let’s get this election pulled down,” he said on the conservative Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network. “Let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out, you know that have taken over.” You’ll have to forgive Lindell. What he meant to say is “let’s alt-right the right.”
According to media watchdog Patriot Takes, which flagged the clip on Twitter, Lindell also claimed, “There will be many down-ticket senators that will have different election results… You’ll see when I say that, and they’ll say what’s going to happen to all the people that were involved. I don’t know, right now the biggest concern is getting this election pulled on,” Lindell added. “Donald Trump won. It’s pretty simple, OK?”
Unfortunately, Trump believes him.
Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information). https://t.co/kaXSXKnpF0
When August 13 comes and goes and the talk of the world is Free Guy finally coming out, Lindell will blame the communists or the mainstream media or Jimmy Kimmel for why Trump isn’t president again. My money’s on it being Jordan Klepper’s fault.
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