Category: News

Childhood tennis star. Academic genius. MTV Award winner. Style icon.

Take a good look at Tkay Maidza’s myriad credentials — she’s quite the polymath. In fact, at just 23-years-old, the hip hop queen-elect has more talent than you can shake a racket at. If touring with Mark Ronson and Charlie XCX and starring in a Champagne commercial alongside Usain Bolt wasn’t enough to convince you that this girl’s going places, then maybe a refresher of the past six months will:

After signing to British indie label 4AD (Grimes, St. Vincent), Tkay dropped the most banging-est mash-up album you’ll likely hear this year when, back in August, Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 came into the world. The second entry of a trilogy of works, it combines influences as diverse as Missy Elliot, Janet Jackson, and The Beatles on tracks like ‘Shook’ and ’24k’. And since the release, the Zimbabwean-Australian starlet has popped up everywhere from Vogue and Pitchfork to the FIFA 2021 soundtrack.

With her freshest songs racking up over two million plays apiece on Spotify in just a few short months, the latter half of 2020 has been “like a crazy adrenaline rush,” Tkay says. “Everything just feels like a bigger splash than the last.” At the rate she’s going, Tkay will be riding a tsunami into 2021.

It’s clear to see why. Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 is a record that bursts with color and energy — and Tkay has built a whole universe around it by utilizing the same creative verve in her visual presence as she does in the music. With vibrant music videos, ’90s-inspired photoshoots, and high-concept merchandise all combining under one roof to present a Last Year Was Weird package that bursts with personality, Tkay has few rivals in her field.

“It was always meant to be a statement to say that I can exist in different ways,” she says, flanked by an array of pot plants while speaking from her parents’ house in Adelaide. It’s just like she told Nike back in 2017: “If you really want people to notice you, you need to have a really cool visual package.”

It’s clear that no part of the Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 presentation has been an afterthought. With Pinterest mood boards, video treatments, and a book’s worth of Instagram pages informing every element of the graphic design process (from pointed, blocky type fonts to bubblegum color schemes), Tkay has been plotting the look of her most recent release from the very earliest stages of development.

“I let the music write itself,” she exclaims. “But then I see a whole world evolve around it. When I know the song is good, I can picture exactly what I’m going to wear — and what the vibe of the video is going to be like.”

Her most recent video, ’24k,’ is as good a place to start as any. While the Mad Max “tech romance” inspired clip for ‘Shook’ (directed by Beyonce and Dua Lipa collaborator Jenna Marsh) made a massive statement combining junkyards, biker gangs, dancers, and deserts, ‘You Sad’ and ‘Don’t Call Again’ dialed back the scale and amped up the color with kaleidoscopic CGI and references to Charlie’s Angels. The latter two had to be shot on green screen due to COVID-19 restrictions, so when given a chance to get out into the world again for her latest single, Tkay made sure she made the most of it.

“It’s so important to get my personality in there because this project represents everything that I’m about,” she says assertively. “I’ve played sport my whole life — tennis, soccer, everything — so I wanted to have that balance of being feminine, but in a masculine way. Sport feels like an honest representation of that. It’s what being a tomboy is all about.”

No surprises then — ’24k’ turns the energy up to 100, filling out gym halls and boxing rings with breakdancers and strobe lights to amplify the boisterous energy supplied by the track’s pumping beat and rhythmic vocals. Most striking, though, are Tkay’s bodacious outfits; they’re the kind of high-concept get-ups that hark back to the golden years of MTV.

A jumpsuit-mermaid-wedding-dress hybrid and a zebra-print trenchcoat are among the highlights in ’24k’. “It’s a way to express how fun you are,” says Tkay, citing the couture garmets supplied by Berlin label Namilia as central to the concept from the get-go. So much importance was placed on styling, she admits, that they ended up postponing the shoot for three weeks to wait for the clothes to arrive from Germany: “It was in the middle of the pandemic — DHL was like, “We don’t know where the parcel is!”

But for Tkay, fashion means more than just surface impressions. “With strong, structured clothes you create new shapes. Your existing body doesn’t matter — you can become whatever you want.” And since the Last Year Was Weird story is “all about growing, and evolving,” it’s important to reflect that in the imagery. “When I’m making all these Pinterest collages, I’m thinking of the ultimate Tkay. If she were a real person, what would she wear?”

As the Pinterest mantle ‘POWERPUFF BITCH’ rightly suggests, this determination and zeal stems back to her childhood. The ’90s, Tkay says, was a “simpler time,” where people expressed themselves through color and comfort; baggy pants and big shirts. “You could really tell what kind of person someone was based on what they wore back then,” she continues, citing the “hyperreal” and “tomboyish” looks of Lauryn Hill, Naomi Campbell, and Aaliyah as key inspirations.

“When you grow up, you want to find where you come from more and more,” says Tkay, laughing as she sends over a photo of her younger self, dressed in a crop top and shorts. “A lot of people mirror who they were as a child in their clothes — I literally don’t think my style has changed since then!”

It’s “future nostalgia,” as she describes it, that is at the heart of her identity: a sense of longing for the sounds and sights of her youth, seen from the vantage of the present, and powered with the energy to take it somewhere new. With this concept in mind, it’s no surprise to learn that founding a personal fashion brand was the final piece in the puzzle for Tkay’s far-reaching Last Year Was Weird campaign. Inspired by the entrepreneurship of musicians like Rihanna and Tyler, The Creator, and a love for vibrant start-up brands and independent designers like Mowalola, Tkay knew from the start that the standard artist merchandising route wasn’t for her.

“When I was in high school, I remember making these big collages and printing them onto shirts. But it was so expensive, and I did not know much about promoting clothing back then,” Tkay reflects of her early forays into the world of design. “But it became more important to me again around Last Year Was Weird because I wanted the project to exist in so many different ways — not just pigeonholed as one thing. And I’ve been doing music for so long — I need other avenues to be creative, to express myself.”

The Last Year Was Weird clothing range, then, has its sights set on much greater things. “I want to do pop-ups in London, New York, LA — and I would love to open a flagship, to bring it to festivals and creative hubs, and to have musicians plan so we can promote each other’s brands.”

“I really believe in the concept of a brand being by the people, for the people — That’s what excites me more than anything.”

With the third and final EP of the Last Year Was Weird series due for completion in 2021 after Tkay jets back to LA this winter (“Adelaide’s a bit too relaxed for me — anyone with big dreams leaves eventually!”), Tkay’s already thinking about how she can expand her world even further. “It’s all about just doing anything I can do maximize the project,” she says.

And be it “strapping a tripod to a bike” or flying a drone around the Australian outback, you can be sure that Tkay will go the extra mile to deliver her craft with an element of swagger. Because in her world, if you want to prove your substance, you need to have some style.

Bryan Cranston’s new Showtime limited series, Your Honor, will definitely remind you of several other shows. There are the inevitable comparisons to Breaking Bad, of course, and to be sure, Cranston’s character executes his most Walter White-like maneuvers since Heisenberg left the building with AMC’s 2013 “Felina” finale. Some The Wire vibes echo throughout, and the presence of Isaiah Whitlock Jr. only encourages that feeling, along with Michael Stuhlbarg doing mob-affiliated things like he did in Boardwalk Empire. Margo Martindale is also around to remind everyone of her wealth of prestige-drama work. I could go on naming other titles, but it’s probably best to cut that conversation short, other than to mention Your Honor‘s commonalities with Apple TV+’s recent Defending Jacob, starring Chris Evans.

Like Defending Jacob, Your Honor features an A-list actor portraying a father who works in the justice system and goes to unorthodox lengths to shelter his son. In both cases, the kid’s potentially on the hook for homicide, so there are some ethical shenanigans happening, to an extreme degree with the latter show. Both shows stuff themselves full of fine performances, and both let their casts down with bloated, drawn-out pacing. Both shows are good, though not great, and that might be enough if you want a Panic-Cranston fix while we all wait to see whether Walter White will appear in Better Call Saul‘s final season. Again here, he’s playing a sort-of everyman (albeit one with more power than Walt), who tangos with the criminal underworld after making an incredibly bad decision that quickly sets off a series of even worse decisions, eventually leading to a sh*tload of collateral damage. And a lot of Panic Faces.

Yes, that component cannot be ignored: Bryan Cranston excels at Panic Faces, and it is damn enjoyable to watch his skills in a crime-drama again. To be fair as well, Showtime only screened 4 out of 10 episodes for critics, so it’s obviously not possible to judge the season as a whole. The first episode, also, is quite gripping in places, albeit agonizing to watch at times. That’d include the aforementioned homicide, which is viscerally rendered when the aforementioned son, Adam (Hunter Doohan), inadvertently kills a motorcyclist and lingers on a street with the dying victim before deciding to hit-and-run.

My god, this scene’s a tough several minutes to stomach, but there’s an audience payoff soon after when Cranston’s character, New Orleans-based judge Michael Desiato, makes his initial very bad choice. What later transpires would add up to a decent show under normal standards — meaning a series that does not star Cranston as a character who won’t let you forget his greatest role. It’s frustrating, really, to not only witness Cranston in an intense debut episode, but then to watch the show slide into dilemma-land. By that, I mean the dilemma often faced by prestige dramas, which often draw out what could be a two-part movie into a ten-hour season. Even after only four episodes, where Cranston’s character transforms from an upstanding citizen to someone whose actions really hurt people, there’s a lot of padding.

Let’s talk about the setup here. Judge Desiato recently became a widower. The story kicks off on the one-year anniversary of that tragedy with Adam visiting the Lower Ninth Ward venue of his mother’s untimely death. There’s an instance of extreme panic that causes Adam to lose sight of the road while driving, and he ends up killing the son of a ruthless crime boss, Jimmy Baxter (Stuhlbarg). And Desiato decides that the best move is to help his son stay out of prison, where he surely could not stay alive due to the whole mob thing. Well, Desiato’s decision and his privilege lead to a despicable situation fraught with social inequity. This situation ultimately grows even uglier than the crash scene, but the story’s momentum falters, so that by the time Margo Martindale shows up, it’s more of an event than what’s actually happening onscreen. That’s the case for the entire (stellar) supporting cast, all Hope Davis, Lorraine Toussaint, and Amy Landecker. Like Martindale and the male co-stars, all onboard do their best to bring multiple dimensions to their characters, filling them out in a way that doesn’t receive justice from a story that contains far too much filler to properly showcase their performances.

However, no one can accuse Your Honor of not giving the audience plenty to look at (Cranston spends a lot of time in a New Orleans cemetery, as the header picture indicates) while meandering. The show’s written by Peter Moffat (who’s also showrunning), who clearly meant to explore the same issues of race and social injustice that he did with HBO’s The Night Of. With Your Honor, he’s remaking an Israeli series as seen through a NOLA-based lens, contrasting the more well-to-do areas with that of the Lower Ninth Ward, where the more violent crimes of the series take place and where Desiato’s collateral damage ends up wreaking the most havoc. There’s also an intriguing blend of exploring all of these different neighborhoods but still taking a small-town view of NOLA, as a place where everyone’s connected and knows-a-guy who can make things happen. That aspect lends a lot of storytelling promise, but the delivery lacks adequate depth, perhaps because shallow waters of story-filler bog down the whole.

That’s the thing here. Your Honor did arrive with a lot of promise, not only with a fantastic cast but a lot of effort poured into making this at least look like an exploration of inequity as contrasted with white males who can easily manipulate the system with a little effort. And who knows, the back half of the season might make use of more powerful metaphors than Judge Desiato literally running while attempting to escape secrets and lies in a story where no one wins, although some characters lose a lot harder than others. It’s a grim show, one that has bursts of intensity without enough structure to prop them up for more. There’s also not a lot to root for here when it comes to Judge Desiato, unlike with Walter White, who managed to keep viewers on his side for long enough (and even at the end) long enough that some of us felt kinda guilty about it.

Again, the comparisons between leading characters, and even between Your Honor and Breaking Bad feel unfair. I do feel terrible for continuing to mention the AMC show because it set such an impossibly high bar to meet, but one doesn’t cast Bryan Cranston in a role like this without inviting those comparisons. So, Cranston ends up not only being the biggest asset in this show, but also something of a weakness, since presence encourages the use of an unfair measuring stick. When you watch him in a crime drama, you unavoidably expect top-notch storytelling. However, Your Honor regularly doles out reminders that it doesn’t come close to approaching Breaking Bad levels of excellence. It’s not fair, but them’s the breaks.

Granted, Cranston plays this type of lost-his-moral-compass guy so deftly that it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Desiato. He swings so admirably down into the gutters of corruption while (at least at first) maintaining a wholesome exterior that it’s a pleasure to watch his performance, and to wonder to what lengths this badly-behaving character will devolve and, eventually, fundamentally change. I wouldn’t call this show a swing-and-miss, more of a matter of keeping one’s expectations in check. The meandering pace might be offset enough for you by the fine performances, including — and I want to type this one more time in closing — Panic-Cranston.

Showtime’s ‘Your Honor debuts on Sunday, December 6.

As basically the biggest name in hip-hop for almost three decades, Jay-Z’s annual year-end playlist on Tidal is one of music fans’ most-anticipated traditions. He even dropped a mid-year list this summer, driven by the energy of nationwide uprising. Due to his status as one of the rare rap elder statesmen who never lost touch with the youth movement in the genre, Jay’s list often includes additions that highlight his awareness and ear for stars, giving light to both the biggest hits and some of the rising newcomers in the game.

This year’s list does it again. While there are plenty of obvious selections — Beyonce’s “Black Parade” is here, lest the man never gets a moment of peace at home again (it is a good song, though), and Jay Electronica naturally makes a couple of appearances (giving Jay-Z a chance to put himself on his list, as well) — there are also some surprises. Jay digs deep to surface underground gems from Boldy James, Mach-Hommy, Morray, and Roc Marciano and shows off his global taste by including Burna Boy and Master KG. R&B singer KeiyaA gets multiple placements, making her someone to watch for in 2021.

That said, much of the list is given over to the year’s brightest stars. Drake appears multiple times, as does Jay’s former nemesis Nas, while younger rappers like Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Megan Thee Stallion, Pop Smoke, and Saint JHN round out the list. 2 Chainz’s “Southside Hov” is also something of a cheeky add on the part of the Roc Nation CEO, reciprocating the appreciation Chainz shows on the track.

You can check out the list on Tidal and preview songs below.

It’s been a long road, but the Hawkeye series for Disney+ is finally filming. Despite rumors of a troubled production, actors initially denying that they’re in the show, and a very messy custody battle, Jeremy Renner posted a photo from the set on Wednesday, and there’s no denying the streaming series is real now. While the pic simply shows a chair that with the name “Clint Barton” on it, Renner wrote in the caption “Ms. Bishop… we need you,” which fuels more speculation that the show will focus on Renner’s Barton passing the Hawkeye mantle to Kate Bishop.

You can see Renner’s set photo below:

Speaking of Kate Bishop, Hailee Steinfeld was also photographed on the set this week, causing both Steinfeld and Kate Bishop to trend on social media. Steinfeld had downplayed reports that she was taking on the Bishop role all the way back in November 2019, and the production took so long to get going that it seemed like a denial was the real deal. In fact, as of this writing, neither Marvel or Steinfeld have officially announced that she’s in the show. But she was definitely filming yesterday with Renner in Manhattan. Via E! News:

The images from the set show Steinfeld’s character in a purple outfit and long black jacket while holding a large bow. She and Renner’s character—Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye—are seen running down the stairs of a subway station, with poor Clint looking worse for wear on account of that bloody forehead.

However, Kate Bishop and Hawkeye weren’t the only Marvel characters filming on Wednesday. Lucky the Pizza Dog was also on set, and it wasn’t long until he was trending, too. The very good boy’s presence was yet another confirmation that the Hawkeye series will draw heavily from writer Matt Fraction’s fan-favorite run in the comics.

(Via Jeremy Renner on Twitter)

Even as a massive Pogues fan, there’s so much about them I never knew and so much about their appeal that I never understood. For instance, I knew I liked punk music, and I knew I liked The Pogues, which was also true of just about every Pogues fan I’ve ever met. Which seemed somewhat odd considering that The Pogues brand of often slow and sentimental Irish folk is, at least musically speaking, decidedly not punk.

Crock Of Gold – A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan helpfully fills in many of those gaps. In a documentary out everywhere this Friday, filmmaker Julien Temple, using a mix of interviews, period footage, and stylized animation, chronicles how Pogues founder Shane MacGowan went from being the most famous punk fan in London — a sort of jug-eared, Ostrich-eyed, clearly addled mascot for the whole dissolute yet oddly intense movement — to founding a legendary group of his own, The Pogues, who would go onto produce far more iconic albums than the Sex Pistols ever did (and I write this as someone who wholeheartedly loves The Sex Pistols).

Temple is something of a punk legend in his own right, having directed two Sex Pistols films — The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) and The Filth And The Fury (2000) — as well as 2007’s Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, about the frontman of The Clash. In Shane MacGowan, Temple has found arguably the ultimate documentary subject. A pathetic, goblin-faced drunkard everyone assumed would die years ago (truly, there are articles about Shane MacGowan from 20 years ago that note with wonder the fact that he’s still alive), Shane MacGowan has the soul of a poet and the mind of a professor. The Simpsons episode in which barfly Barney is revealed as a sensitive auteur actually undersells the real Shane MacGowan, an archetypal drunken bard who has become an Irish National hero in spite of an accent that sounds for all the world like pure London, and a band name that’s short for “kiss my ass” in Irish.

Just who the hell is Shane MacGowan and how the hell did that happen?

That’s the story Temple sets out to tell in Crock Of Gold. Along with a nostalgic road trip through the Pogues catalog (what is it about The Pogues brand of barely intelligible Irish history that consistently brings me, an American with zero Irish ancestry, to tears?) Crock of Gold corrects the record, fills in the gaps, and even offers a few revelations along the way. Temple manages to find MacGowan’s moments of clarity without soft-pedaling his destructive lifestyle (and occasional surliness). He shoots MacGowan alongside luminaries such as IRA mouthpiece-turned-politician Gerry Adams (who charmingly seems to be a huge Pogues fan), and Johnny Depp, a producer on Crock Of Gold who shows up briefly as just another of Shane’s surprising friends. Not to mention Shane’s father, who is not only still alive but apparently lucid.

For us punk rockers and Pogues fanatics, Crock Of Gold is both an essential watch and a shoot-it-in-my-veins feast of comfort food. It’s also a filmmaking achievement, considering Shane MacGowan is as hard to interview as he is to fully understand — both spiritually and verbally. I spoke this week to Julien Temple, about both the joys and challenges of attempting to explore Shane MacGowan’s glorious legacy.

I enjoy that Johnny Depp is in the film, but that you don’t make a big deal about it. He’s just like one of the people that Shane is friends with. What was his involvement?

He produced it. I was asked to do the movie originally by Shane and his manager, friend, Gerry O’Boyle, but I couldn’t really do it because I was finishing another thing at that time. They wanted me to film Shane’s 60th birthday concert, but someone else filmed that. And then Johnny got in touch, and said, “Would you reconsider doing this?” He was big friends with Shane, and I’d known Johnny in LA when I lived there in the eighties. He actually used to babysit my daughter. I thought, Shane’s got a reputation, I do want to finish this film if I start it, and I had thought Johnny would have my back on that, which he did. It was great having him part of the film, because he kept the boat from capsizing at points where it easily could have done.

You got your start shooting the Sex Pistols. And in this movie, we see the version of Shane as a young punk fan. Did you guys know each other at all at that point?

I did the first interview with Shane, which is in the film, where he’s got the blonde peroxide hair, that was back in ’76, when the punk thing was just beginning, really. I’ve known him since then, though not intimately. I knew him then for a moment, and I was fascinated by him then, because when Sid Vicious left that London punk crowd, [Shane became] this kind of focal point in a very theatrical group of people. The crowd was important to this band, really, it was a kind of theater of madness. It wasn’t rock n’ roll, really. And Sid was just so the king of the crowd, and when he joined the band, Shane was next in line. The energy seemed to come from him. I was filming it and my camera would naturally go to him and see how he was just so intensely receiving the energy off the stage, you can see in his face. There’s stuff that I shot of him, actually one of them is a Clash gig. You just feel him feeding off the music and the time. You would never guess he would go on to be such an important Irish, cultural, musical figure. You wouldn’t have known he was Irish, particularly. He was very London.

Right, so the concept that he was famous for being a punk fan was a little hard to wrap my mind around in 2020. Can you explain how that could happen around that time?

It was such a “new shocking youth culture” that the media inevitably went bananas over it. It existed for about six months without anyone knowing anything, but then the Sex Pistols, you probably know the story, they went on TV and swore at the drunken old interviewer, and the whole thing went ballistic. Every newspaper in England, it was headlines everywhere. This band no one had heard of suddenly became the most famous band in England without having had a single out. Suddenly, all the eyes of the media are on this little punk scene, which ruined it pretty quickly. But amongst them, they found such characters as Shane MacGowan. You see him when he was the face of ’77 with a very… He wasn’t Peter Frampton, let’s put it that way. Frampton was the face of ’68, I think. Yeah, he was great punk.

That idea that, saying the F word on television could be so shocking that it transfixed a nation… what was happening at the time that that was such a huge deal?

You have to remember how boring and how innocent and how there were three TV channels, and they all stopped at 11:00 and everything closed at 11:00 pm. Anywhere to drink after that was gone. It was also kind of depression recession in the seventies after the oil crisis that really hit England bad, and there was a lot of unemployment. Kids were very angry about being thrown on the dust heap kind of thing. In that environment, the color and the vivid kind of shocking reality of punk, just… It couldn’t really happen now because it’s so diffuse, but then, you had so few newspapers, media outlets, and everyone got it in one go. The whole nation was blitzed by it. Now where it would happen, it would be all these different little tribes on the internet, so you wouldn’t get a whole nation getting it in the same way anymore. It’s all in little pockets and it’s all online. It’s not for real. These days you always ask is it fake or is it real? You knew this was real.

What are the challenges of interviewing Shane MacGowan now? There are one or two shots where he yells at you or gets crusty.

Obviously, he has a real reputation for aggression towards interviews, but that’s part of the charm, isn’t it? You got to take the abuse, you got to somehow convince yourself it’s a term of endearment, and then move on and not walk off the film. That’s the challenge, to hang in there. But the fact that he is difficult and didn’t want to do interviews made us approach the film in different ways that we wouldn’t have done if he just sat down in an armchair and gave you everything you got in one talking head kind of interview. We have to go out and find all these bits of fragments of microcassette recording, where you could actually hear something that was being said in a bar in Zurich in 1989 at 4:00 in the morning, and he’s suddenly making blinding sense for a moment. And that’s more immediate, more feral, more exciting, more like stolen secret recordings or something than just a boring talking head interview.

And then, because he wouldn’t do the conventional interviews, we had the conversations with people that he wanted to do them with, which was interesting as well, because you saw different versions of Shane. With Johnny Depp, he’s one person, just mates, guys in a bar. With [IRA leader turned politician] Gerry Adams, he’s looking up to the guy, it’s a different version. And with Bobby Gillespie, he is that dangerous interviewee, can snap pretty viciously at things out there, going on all over and the people around. I didn’t want to make a film that demonized the guy or canonized him. I wanted to try and show the very multifaceted personality that Shane is. That’s where the energy comes from, and I didn’t want people telling you what to think. You know, “I think Shane MacGowan’s this, I think he’s that.” I wanted him to lay it out in different ways at different times, different versions of himself, and have people make their own mind up of what they feel. On one level it’s a tragedy, but on another level, it’s a triumph, his life. To me, he’s hilariously funny, but then you’re very saddened at times, I think, shocked at times. He’s a very combustible personality, but a fascinating one and an impressive one, his mind is still firing.

Coming to the Pogues, a little later, I knew I liked punk and I knew I liked the Pogues, and everybody I knew who liked punk generally also liked the Pogues, but I didn’t really understand what the connection was.

Shane MacGowan is the connection, but I think actually the two musics are connected. I think Shane makes the point that in a way, the Irish music tradition had been put in a folk museum, it wasn’t relevant to what was going on at the time. He gave it a good kicking, but I think the point he made is that the sessions in the pubs in Ireland, where people get together and play and drink, had a rowdy, punky feel. On the concert stages or on record, this music had become fossilized and in a way too precious, but the real beating heart of the music still existed, in London Irish pubs, as well as in Ireland. He wanted to focus in on that raw energy of the music and the humanity that he talks about and fuse that with the raucousness and full-on attack of punk rock, the thing he’d emerged through. He put those together. I think there was a sense that it was staring him in the face, everyone was playing around, “let’s do Latin American music, let’s do African music, let’s do all these fusions.” And then, as he says in the film, had his own ethnic music that he’d grown up with and decided to go with that. So that’s how it came about, I think.

As an American, it stupidly never occurred to me that his accent was an English accent and not an Irish accent. Did Irish people have a hard time accepting him because of that at first? Is that ever a sticking point?

I think it was, definitely. I think they also took a bit of offense at how he dragged their music by the scruff of the neck and kicked it around a bit. There is the funny interview, which was the first time they performed on TV in Ireland where the guy’s going, “What are ye, Shane MacGowan? Are ye the punk rocker or are ye the Irish?” They didn’t really know what to make of him. But the thing is, there was a huge Irish population in London and other cities, like Manchester, in England at the time. They had to leave Ireland to come and work in England in the fifties and sixties. I’m sure there were connections, but I think there was a sense in Ireland that the people who left were a bit rowdy and crazy and a good riddance kind of thing. The London Irish coming back and showing them how to really be Irish probably was a bit weird for them. Probably true if an American Irish band had done the same thing.

[Sex Pistols singer] Johnny Rotten is Irish too, right?

It’s funny, Irish is so much part of English pop music and English rock ‘n’ roll. So many Irish — Morrissey, it’s endless, Billy Fury, right from the beginning. John Lennon, what about that? These are all Irish background people from Irish families.

Because of all the Irish in London at the time, there was some anti-Irish sentiment at the time, right?

Yes. I think it’s quite moving when Shane says he had his first nervous breakdown at age six. He cried himself to sleep thinking of Ireland. That was a kid coming into a world where there was real racism against Irish people. They couldn’t get rooms to live in, there were so many jokes based on Irish people. There was a real sense that they were second-class citizens. Yeah, hard, and then kids beat them up for being Irish at school. It was bad. I wasn’t Irish, so I wasn’t on the receiving end, but I was very aware that it was all around me, when there was an Irish kid, they gave him a hard time, which was bad to see, really. That must’ve affected him deeply. I think it did. It comes out in the film that it did. And then it got really weird in the seventies and eighties when the war started in the North of Ireland, with bombs going off in England. It’s a very complex history between England and Ireland. The English people don’t necessarily know so much about it, but Shane certainly does. He’s very much an Irishman, as well this contradiction that he’s got a London upbringing, London accent. It’s a great dynamic in his work.

You interviewed Shane’s father. Is he still doing well, is he still alive?

Yeah, I think so. We shot that last year, and the guy is very witty, very funny. You see where Shane gets his wit from. Also a very, very well-read, educated guy. I was surprised how really much Shane read and knew about Irish literature. I guess it makes sense when you hear the lyrics of the songs, but you don’t necessarily think that, but when you meet his dad, it makes sense. Because his dad was a poet himself and was reading and encouraging Shane to read all the great works of Irish literature at home.

I appreciate you talking to me. I really, really enjoyed the movie.

Thanks a lot. I hope you get it in America, and listen to his songs as a result. That would be great.

‘Crock Of Gold – A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan‘ is available everywhere December 4th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

There’s always some backlash when the Grammy Award nominations are announced, but it was particularly harsh this year. The biggest headline to emerge from the Recording Academy’s 2021 list was the total snubbing of The Weeknd, who earned no nominations despite undoubtedly having some of the most successful and beloved music of the year. Artists have spoken out about the issues surrounding the Grammys, and it looks like Ellie Goulding has as well.

Goulding self-published an essay titled “The start of a conversation…” on Medium yesterday, and while she doesn’t explicitly address the Grammys or the Recording Academy, the timing and subject of the piece certainly seem to suggest that those entities are, at the very least, what prompted her to write.

She starts with a reflection on her experience in the music industry and declares that “‘the industry,’ and its current state, saddens me.” Goulding goes on to question the criteria for award nominations, writing:

“In most artistic fields, awards seem to come off the back of great critical acclaim, but in today’s music industry such ‘acclaim’ can have varied sources. People are being awarded — in the form of both nominations and category wins — for reasons that are hard to decipher. If both the most globally popular artists and most critically revered artists are not being recognised, how do we, as artists, go on? Would a runner start a race if they knew crossing the finish line first wouldn’t necessarily win them a gold medal?

When peers and friends get nominated for a major award, I am so, so happy to see them rewarded for their hard work and especially for their brilliant writing. From my perspective, there is nothing greater than listening to a song or an album that has saved you, inspired you, evoked deep emotion in some new sort of way… and then see it get the attention and award it deserves. At the same time, there is always a crushing, horrible feeling for my peers and friends who don’t get acknowledged, by the very same system, for their work year-after-year despite making music I and many others believe is ground-breaking.”

She later concludes the piece:

“To all those artists and creatives, who push on without a nod, wink or pat on the back, I respect you. And in this time — stage designs still being drawn up, lighting still being experimented with, instruments still being played, and beautiful, moving, powerful lyrics and melodies still being written every day — I say this to you, and to myself: keep going, keep doing what you love, keep the faith, keep knowing what you do is more important than you will ever know.

And at the same time, music industry, I say to you: it is time to have a bigger discussion about where we are going and how we acknowledge and reward those who are, frankly, the reason this industry exists in the first place.”

Read the full essay here.

2020 turned out to be a real doozy. That’s the understatement of the year, but over the past few months, we’ve at least been able to find entertainment in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm star Rudy Giuliani. He’s the guy who held a Trump campaign shoutfest at a landscaping company (sandwiched in between a morgue and a sex shop). He’s the guy who did a terrible Joe Pesci imitation during a press conference while hair dye dripped down his face. And he’s the guy who might have farted (while sitting to fellow Trump attorney Jenna Ellis) during a public hearing, in which the Trump Campaign “Strike Force” attempted to convince Michigan lawmakers of (nonexistent) voter fraud.

Did Rudy rip one whole ripping lies as well? Witness Exhibit A.

Actually, that’s the only piece of evidence up for grabs. It’s not airtight (pun intended), obviously, and there’s always room for manipulation. Still, Rudy seems like a guy who’d get so wound up during an argument that he’d unintentionally pass gas, and this has become a subject of intense debate on Twitter. “Odor in the court!” is a thing.

Of course, this is the Internet, so we have to ask, “Is this real?”

Huffington Post’s Ryan J. Reilly is vouching for this unedited proof that, yep, Rudy did it. Jenna definitely noticed something, right? And she wasn’t wearing a mask.

Should we really be surprised? Seems like a logical step for the character formerly known as America’s Mayor.

Looks like Rudy’s got a new nickname now, at least.

Finally, we’ve got an auto-tuned version from the Gregory Brothers. “[T]hey said we wouldn’t auto-tune the Giuliani fart,” they wrote. “[T]hey said we COULDN’T auto-tune the Giuliani fart. but with great power comes great responsibility.” They said it.

Before I post my 20 favorite albums of 2020, I need to share my standard three truisms about year-end lists. Even though I know 95 percent of the people who clicked on this won’t bother reading this pre-amble part — they are instead Ctrl-Fing their favorite albums so they can send me “No love for ____?” tweets — let’s make these things clear for the rest of you kind and patient readers.

1) Ranking albums is dumb …
We all know this. Art isn’t a competition. I can’t really distinguish between my 13th favorite album and my 19th favorite. This is all talk. None of it really matters.

2) … but it’s kind of fun …
Of course it is! Because it’s about sharing music recommendations. And I do mean share — make your own lists and show them to me, especially if you’re the sort inclined to complain about lists. Put yourself out there and let me complain about you, too!

3) … because it’s really about discovering an album or two (or possibly more!) that you might not have known about otherwise.
Exactly!

I should also mention that I didn’t include any reissues or live albums. This is straight 2020-exclusive studiocraft.

Now, let’s start ranking!

20. Hum – Inlet

If you were a beloved indie band that hadn’t put out an album — or simply a good album — in a long while, 2020 likely was a good year for you. Fiona Apple, The Strokes, The Killers, and Bright Eyes all had worthy comebacks. But nobody revived themselves quite like the ’90s era Midwestern sludge-pop institution Hum, who roared back with surprising, startling vitality on Inlet, their first album since 1998’s landmark Downward Is Heavenward. While Inlet sounds like it could have come out during the Clinton administration, Hum made it clear that they are no nostalgia act.

19. Beabadoobee – Fake It Flowers

On the Indiecast podcast, referring to buzzy singer-songwriters who draw upon the less fashionable sounds of ’90s alt-rock for inspiration, I called Beabadoobee’s Fake It Flowers the Stone Temple Pilots to Soccer Mommy’s Nirvana and Clairo’s Pearl Jam. To be clear, as an undying supporter of Purple and Tiny Music … Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop, I meant that as a compliment. While Beabadoobee’s full-length debut Fake It Flowers didn’t receive the kind of acclaim lavished on Soccer Mommy’s very good Color Theory, I found myself ultimately reaching for the punchier and hookier Fake It Flowers more. It’s 2020’s best album of 1998.

18. Tame Impala – The Slow Rush

Kevin Parker spent a long time laboring over the fourth Tame Impala LP, elongating the promotional cycle to an almost full year. It was bad luck that The Slow Rush dropped right before the world stopped; few albums in 2020 were as well poised to dominate the festival season than this luxurious, bottom-heavy, and frequently ecstatic record. But even in quarantine, the pensive introspection of Parker’s lyrics hit home; the “let’s put off worrying about the future” anthem “One More Year” is about as close as 2020 ever got to hopeful.

17. Ezra Feinberg – Recumbent Speech

Let’s face it: This year, “headphone music to which you can get absolutely blazed” was a very attractive genre. One of the go-to albums for me in that regard was this mesmerizing collection of soundscapes by Brooklyn composer and musician Ezra Feinberg. The six numbers on Recumbent Speech evoke Meddle-era Pink Floyd, if the British classic-rockers had somehow hooked up with Brian Eno and invented ambient music a few years earlier. When Earth is no longer tenable, a quick 40 minute trip through outer space is always welcome.

16. Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters

One of the many disproven theories cooked up by music critics in recent years is that it’s impossible for contemporary musicians to have mystique in the social media era. Fiona Apple kicked that one to the curb all by herself. Who else other than Fiona can separate herself entirely from the world for the better part of a decade, and then return with a furious and frequently hilarious album that sounds utterly unlike anything in the pop or rock landscape? So many of her obsessions — the awfulness of dinner parties, the encouraging words of Shameika — could have easily comes across as insular. Instead, this record’s singular wavelength felt universal. After all, aren’t we all insular these days?

15. Ganser – Just Look At That Sky

Most post-punk bands don’t have even one passable singer. Chicago’s Ganser, however, has two very good ones — Nadia Garofalo and Alicia Gaines. On Ganser’s intense second album Just Look At That Sky, Garofalo and Gaines spit out threats, hector unseen enemies, and express weary dismay at a decaying, disappointing world with equal parts deftness and verve. They can rant and croon, elevating this thorny, driving music out of the muck and toward something resembling transcendence.

14. The Strokes – The New Abnormal

When they first came on the scene, The Strokes were celebrated for their youthful beauty and effortless cool. But they might be more endearing in their bruised and battered middle age. The power of The New Abnormal is how it leans away from nostalgia, implicitly acknowledging that leather jackets and proudly insouciant rock anthems might not be enough once life has kicked you around. “Gone now are the old times,” Julian Casablancas wails on “Ode To The Mets,” but he doesn’t come off as defeated. He sounds like a survivor.

13. Gunn-Truscinski Duo – Soundkeeper

Of all the artists that have worked the indie-jam lane in recent years, no group has quite captured the middle ground between the Grateful Dead and Sonic Youth as well as Gunn-Truscinski Duo does on Soundkeeper. The long-running duo of guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski are more locked in than ever, unfurling slow-building jams of drone and distortion that grow to incredible highs over the course of as many as 16 minutes. Truly some of 2020’s most mind-blowing head music.

12. Young Jesus – Welcome To Conceptual Beach

This Los Angeles band also works the no man’s land between the indie and jam scenes, though Welcome To Conceptual Beach ultimately lands more on the side of epic old-school guitar acts like Modest Mouse and Built To Spill. Drawing inspiration from both free jazz and the Dave Matthews Band, Young Jesus craft anthems that go for the emotional jugular and then wander off into the sonic wilderness before roaring back for thrilling climaxes. The result is an album that feels like a multi-course meal offering a satisfying range of flavors and experiences.

11. Sturgill Simpson – Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1

What a strange year country music’s most interesting man had in 2020. He started by savagely knocking his record label and openly wondering whether he could pull of a headlining arena tour. And then … well, you know what happened. While most artists bristled at being put on ice by Covid, Simpson — who actually caught the virus early on — seemed liberated by it. Inspired by his fanbase stepping up to donate to some of his favorite charities, Simpson agreed to re-record his songs in a bluegrass style, and the result proved to be greater than a mere stunt. In fact, Cuttin’ Grass is the freest and most relaxed he’s ever sounded on record. Listening to it is like hearing a man rediscover his love of music.

10. Kahil El’Zabar – Kahil El’Zabar’s Spirit Groove

This Chicago percussionist and composer has been a prolific musician and recording artist since the early 1970s, working with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Pharaoh Sanders along the way. But in 2020, the 67-year-old El’Zabar made in-roads with listeners outside the jazz scene thanks to two stellar releases, America The Beautiful and this meditative collaboration with celebrated saxophonist David Murray. As a bandleader, El’Zabar is demonstrative and excitable, audibly exhorting Murray to play harder and deeper on this album’s set of long and exploratory jams. In a year of so much tumult, this record felt like an oasis of soul.

9. Dehd – Flower Of Devotion

It never occurred to me that the doomy romanticism of Roy Orbison could be linked with the goth-y introspection of The Cure until I heard the Chicago band Dehd. For this dreamy trio, there is no emotional heartache that can’t be cured with soaring vocals, jangly guitars, and extremely generous amounts of reverb. On their third album Flower Of Devotion, their songwriting catches up with their arresting sound, with one gorgeous melody after another complementing their gloriously depressive splendor.

8. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher

Even during a year in which the music industry was mostly grounded, Phoebe Bridgers still managed to feel like a breakout star. That’s partly due to her deftness at generating social-media excitement out of pretty much anything — even a Goo Goo Dolls cover — but her second album Punisher also delivers where it counts, particularly when it comes to lyrics. Few albums this year were more quotable, whether Bridgers is taking the piss out of Eric Clapton and griping about how noisy it can be living next to a hospital. In the context of the pandemic, Punisher‘s mix of sorrow and gallows humor felt especially necessary.

7. Jeff Parker – Suite For Max Brown

For most of his career, this multi-instrumentalist has been best known as a founding member of Tortoise, the pioneering Chicago ensemble that has bridged the gap between the indie, jazz, and experimental scenes since the mid-’90s. But on his own, Parker put out his highest-profile and best-received album yet with Suite For Max Brown, a song cycle that touches on many of the same sonic regions as Tortoise but in a gentler, more soulful kind of way, with Parker’s silky guitar amiably drifting through jazzy soundscapes that resolve at unexpected destinations.

6. Yves Tumor – Heaven To A Tortured Mind

The year’s most hedonistic and thrillingly seedy rock album comes from an unlikely source. On their previous records, Yves Tumor made post-modern noise and experimental music that commented on the conventions of pop at an arms-length distance. Heaven To A Tortured Mind also has a deconstructionist spirit, only this time the inspiration derives from sex and drug-infested early ’70s sleaze classics like Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On and The Rolling Stones’ Goats Head Soup, along with heaping doses of prime-era Prince. But Yves Tumor isn’t as concerned with esoteric sounds this time around — on this album, the vibes are pleasingly blurry and the guitar solos are fantastically skanky.

5. David Nance – Staunch Honey

This Nebraska singer-songwriter has been making noisy and ear-splitting rock music away from the glare of major media attention for the better part of a decade. But with Staunch Honey, he’s finally made an album just polished enough that it ought to garner some mainstream attention. Like so many true blue-collar middle American rockers, Nance worships at the altar of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, though on Staunch Honey he turns down the guitar fuzz a bit so that the rough-hewn melodies and relentless choogle rhythms can come through with greater clarity. (While he claims to be a Springsteen agnostic, his unpretentious yet powerful rasp is positively Boss-like.) If there’s still room in your heart for a young rock ‘n’ roll hero, make it this one.

4. Bartees Strange – Live Forever

2020’s indie-rock rookie of the year. The Washington D.C.-based Bartees Strange struck out with two fascinating albums — the inventive National covers album Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy and his proper debut, the wonderfully eclectic Live Forever. On tracks like “Mustang” and “Boomer,” Strange demonstrates that he can write relatively straightforward emo-punk jams as well as anybody. But Live Forever truly shines when Strange colors far outside the lines, whether he’s delving into vibe-y electro-pop on “Flagey God,” getting seriously crunked on “Mossblerd,” or pouring his heart out on folk dirges like “Fallen For You.” I can’t wait to hear what he does next.

3. Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit – Reunions

One of America’s best active songwriters has written with common insight about the struggle to overcome addiction and self-destructive behavior. But on his stunning seventh album, Jason Isbell addresses the equally difficult prospect of maintaining a good life you’ve fought for and fear might once again lose. The characters in songs like “Only Children,” “Dreamsicle,” and “St. Peter’s Autograph” take their hits from life’s nonstop barrage of setbacks and disappointments, and resolve to keep pushing forward. Isbell as always is the sensitive narrator, setting his stories to some of his finest melodies. (Fully embracing 1980s-style heartland rock, he’s never been this musically robust.) A true master of craft who somehow managed to get even better.

2. Bob Dylan – Rough And Rowdy Ways

The best active American songwriter turned 79 this year, which means he’s part of the population most at risk during a pandemic. And yet on his 39th studio album, Bob Dylan sounded more fearless and stubbornly alive than artists half or even one-third of his age. For all of the many tangents of Dylan’s long and illustrious career, the highest compliment that can be paid Rough And Rowdy Ways is that’s he never made an album quite like it. Freely commingling bracing insights with unmitigated silliness, Dylan plays both the dour oracle and hilarious prankster on Rough And Rowdy Ways, performing an excruciating autopsy for the American dream in one breath and shouting out Don Henley and Glenn Frey on the next. On “I Contain Multitudes,” he drifts for several minutes without any apparent melody; on “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You,” he floats like Fred Astaire amid one of his loveliest musical confections. Throughout the album, he seems in total command of his craft, and also completely off of his rocker. What more could you possibly hope for from Bob Dylan?

1. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud

This one was pretty much locked into my top spot from the moment I heard it. Some albums just announce themselves as instant classics, and Saint Cloud was that LP for me 2020. From the jump, it seemed like the kind of record you would want to bring on road trips and play at barbecues and wallow in when you needed something to make you feel better during some terrible moment in your life. For Katie Crutchfield, Saint Cloud came out of her own cataclysmic moment, when she felt compelled to take a break from touring in order to get sober. The songs she wrote once she was ready to return to Waxahatchee benefit from that meditation period. There’s a clarity and patience to Saint Cloud that’s missing even from her laudatory back catalogue, expressed against open and unfussy country-rock arrangements guided by producer Brad Cook. In a year of so much chaos and tragedy and idiocy and fear, listening to Saint Cloud felt like hanging out with that friend who always manages to put things in perspective. No matter what happens today, the lilacs keep drinking the water, marking in the slow, slow, slow passing of time.

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

Spooky imagery plays a big role in Phoebe Bridgers’ new album Punisher and her promotional efforts surrounding it. Now she has taken that to the next level for her appearance on The Tonight Show yesterday, where she played “Savior Complex” with a piano-playing ghost.

It wasn’t just any musical spirit, though, as it was Invisible Irma of Los Angeles’ Magic Castle, where Bridgers performed the song. Bridgers sang the tender song while donning a suit and surrounded by holiday decorations.

A 1987 Los Angeles Times story describes the legend of Irma, “Irma was one of seven daughters of the original owners of the mansion, and that because of her eternal practicing on the piano, she was banished to the attic. When the place was converted into the Magic Castle in 1963, Irma’s ghost emerged to play requests on the piano in the music chamber. Though she remains invisible, Irma plays almost any song a visitor can request.”

In a recent Vogue interview, Bridgers was asked about the relationship between ghosts and her music, and she responded, “I think I read a lot of magical realism, and I just think that a world with ghosts is more fascinating, but also it’s very poetic. I think that ghosts don’t have to be people and can also just be trauma. I think that’s kind of the way that I write, like I’m in a ghost story.”

Watch Bridgers perform “Savior Complex” on The Tonight Show above.

LeBron James is not the only big-name member of the Los Angeles Lakers to work out an extension with the team this offseason. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Anthony Davis and the franchise hammered out an extension that will keep him in L.A. for the next five years, although it does include an Early Termination Option for the fifth year.

The length of the extension Davis would sign caused much intrigue. It was unclear if he would want a shorter deal that allowed him to sign several more extensions and maintain a level of flexibility about where he played his basketball going forward — a move James frequently made earlier in his career — or plant his roots in Los Angeles on a long-term deal. Ultimately, in a bit of news that will assuredly make the Lakers organization happy, Davis opted for the latter.

Davis joined the Lakers this past offseason in a high-profile trade from the New Orleans Pelicans. There was a ton of pressure on Davis to come up big after the trade, in large part because of his public declarations that he wanted to move to L.A., and he delivered. Davis was a first-team All-NBA selection last season, stuffing the stat sheet with 26.1 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.3 blocks, and 1.5 steals per game. And of course, Davis played a major role in the Lakers becoming NBA champions, marking the first time in his career that he hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy.

The expectations will still be incredibly high for Davis going forward, both because of how his first year went and because this is inherently something that will always exist with the Lakers. But for the next few years, he’ll do what he can to live up to the lofty expectations alongside James in L.A.