Category: Viral

Rapper/singer Bryson Tiller hasn’t released a solo project since 2017’s True To Self, but the wait for new material from the Kentucky crooner may soon be on the way. A day after teasing fans with a meme about his wealth of unreleased songs — which set his name trending on Twitter and exasperated listeners to no end — he shared one of those songs in the form of “Inhale,” a downtempo, sultry ballad based on samples from the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack.

Opening up with an interpolation of Mary J. Blige’s “Not Gon’ Cry” and closing with “All Night Long” from SWV, Bryson expertly threads the needle between satiating fans’ hunger for new music and leaving them wanting more with a single verse in the middle of the song. He followed up almost immediately with a video for the song, which finds a contemplative looking Tiller interacting with a gorgeous leading lady and referencing Salvador Dalí’s famous melting clocks.

Tiller hasn’t had to force himself to be too productive in the years since True To Self thanks largely to a few high-profile feature placements that helped make him one of the lowest-key big stars in music. First there was 2017’s “Wild Thoughts” with Rihanna and DJ Khaled, then “Playing Games” with Summer Walker, Wale’s “Love… (Her Fault),” and finally, Kyle’s “The Sun” with Raphael Saadiq — the most recent release. It looks like he’s ready to step back into the solo spotlight and this time, he’s given fans ample time to miss him.

Watch Bryson Tiller’s “Inhale” video above.

There have been rumors in recent days that Travis Scott and McDonald’s were working on something. Now, both parties have come together today to confirm that the rumors are true.

This morning, the food chain tweeted two emojis: a cactus and a cheeseburger. Given the Cactus Jack reference, that was basically confirmation of the link-up, although Scott made it official a few minutes later by sharing an image of the Cactus Jack logo made with McDonald’s fries, which also featured the logos from both entities and the date of September 8.

McDonald’s US chief marketing officer Morgan Flatley wrote in a internal memo that leaked recently, “From his impossible-to-get Nike sneaker line, to a cereal collab with General Mills that sold out in 30 seconds, to a record-setting virtual concert series inside Fortnite, Travis Scott is the definition of big in culture. Beyond this, he is a true fan of McDonald’s and our craveable, iconic food. He will resonate and spark excitement with our youthful multicultural customers, and has a few surprises to delight our crew and ensure they are part of the excitement.”

Neither party has confirmed what the collaboration will entail. However, previous rumors said there will be merch, and it looks like Scott could be getting his own menu item, The Travis Scott Meal, as well.

Eternals, as of last week, is officially the new title of the Marvel Studios/Disney film previously known as The Eternals. The “the” might not mean much to everyone, but it sure means a lot to The Suicide Squad director James Gunn, who was thrilled to see that “[m]y friends at @MarvelStudios did me the favor and gave me the ‘The.’” Now that this issue is settled, we can go back to talking about the Eternals story, which is being teased by director Chloé Zhao and Marvel chief Kevin Feige at Hollywood Reporter.

Of chief interest is how (while Thor: Ragnarok‘s Valkryie is still waiting to have a queen in Thor: Love and Thunder) Eternals will sprint ahead to include Marvel’s first openly gay superhero. Haaz Sleiman previously revealed this his character will be married to gay superhero Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), and the film will include a same-sex kiss. Zhao’s Eternals will present the relationship as integral to the story, rather than making it feel tacked-on, and Feige is on board with that approach. He also wants to get to a point where inclusion happens so much in Marvel movies that it’s not necessarily big news:

An LGBTQ relationship in the film “was always sort of inherent in the story and the makeup of the different types of Eternals,” says Feige. “I think it is extremely well done, and I look forward to that level of inclusion in our future movies being less of a topic.”

He makes a fair point, and Zhao (Songs My Brothers Taught Me and the upcoming Nomadland, which is already hearing Oscar chatter) seems very confident in how the subject slides right into her movie. She also added that Marvel Studios gave her complete creative freedom with this project. “I shot exactly the way I wanted to shoot,” she says. “On location. A lot of magic hour. Three-hundred-sixty degrees on the same camera as I did on Nomadland” She calls the level of deference to her judgment “surreal” and adds, “I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop. It hasn’t. I think I got lucky in that Marvel wants to take risks and do something different.”

Eternals, which also stars Gemma Chan, Kumail Nanjiani, Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, and Kit Harington, is currently scheduled for February 12, 2021.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Fans have been craving a new album from Rihanna since 2016’s Anti, so much so that their obsession has become a running joke. Rihanna has been mostly tight-lipped about her upcoming ninth record, but now an honest-to-goodness snippet of it may have been revealed via a collaborator.

Skyler Grey took to Instagram to preview a reggae-influenced song that she and Diplo wrote for Rihanna. Grey, who co-wrote Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie,” said, “I was working with Diplo on a song for Rihanna. Wrote this with a guy named Hymn. […] This was when Rihanna was supposedly doing some kind of reggae album. I don’t know if she’s still making a reggae album or what, but this is a song we did for it. I don’t have the whole song, I’m just going to play you a piece of it, and it probably won’t sound great because it’s an iPhone recording of the speakers.” She then played over a minute of the song, which indeed sounds like a combination of reggae and Rihanna’s brand of pop.

Rihanna has had fun joking about her fans’ desire for new music in recent years, like when she trolled an uncanny lookalike last month.

Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn are contemplating a potentially huge step in their long, full relationship, which already includes eight years as Sylvan Esso, four years as a married couple, and just a few months as owners of a new recording studio and upcoming third album, Free Love. They might, later today, purchase a golf cart together. Its chief purpose will be hauling trash, but the way they discuss it — joyfully, whimsically, determinedly — speaks to their partnership. Life and work are fully intertwined for Sylvan Esso — make breakfast, make a song, make the bed, make a video, make out, make some calls — which suits them just fine. “It’s all one thing,” says Meath. “We’re Dr. Bronner-ing over here.”

“And every conversation we have,” agrees Sanborn, “is about all of the things.”

It’s all sorts of idyllic and adorable, though apparently the secret to finding happiness involves constant low-level conflict. But Sylvan Esso even manage to fight cute, referring to their electro-indie-folk-pop songs over the years as “small arguments.” It’s a feature of their creative partnership, they claim, not a bug. Without it, they’d never find the balance between strange and straight, simple and surprisingly complex, that defines their best songs, and that affords them adoring hordes from the mainstream fields of Coachella to the heady woods of the Eaux Claires Festival.

“Arguing is so underrated,” says Sanborn. “As a Midwesterner, I think I avoided confrontation. I really appreciate Amelia bringing it into my life. We have to say when we don’t like stuff, because it forces you to defend your idea. And on top of that, our original band goal was exclusively to make music that both of us liked. And that inherently means we’re going to argue about stupid shit.”

“I’m so thankful that we get to argue all the time and there’s no fear,” agrees Meath. “You almost have to prove it to yourself, instead of it being an intuition. You have to put into words what you’re reaching for. Everything that we’ve made when we weren’t arguing felt frictionless.”

“There was a point at the beginning of this new record where I had a little crisis of confidence, and the way I figured out what I was doing is that I had stopped arguing with her,” Sanborn says. “I had stopped saying if I didn’t like something. And it was just making everything bad.”

They sound like a couple who’ve graduated from therapy with such incredible results that I suggest they might find work during the pandemic as part-time counselors, to which Sanborn replies, “We would ruin so many lives.” Meath laughs and adds, “I’d just say, ‘You know what you should do? Start a fight. It sounds like your husband’s being a little bitch.’”

With their checks and balances fully in place after two albums, Sylvan Esso found themselves with a newly abundant sense of confidence heading into Free Love. The world had fully validated their colorful, layered 2017 album What Now with bigger, wilder audiences and even a Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album. But it was actually a smaller, six-date tour they dubbed WITH that fully pushed Meath and Sanborn into the comfort of their own skins. They recruited eight other players to flesh out their sound — heretofore Sanborn on electronics, Meath on vocals, and nothing else — into something familiar but boldly different.

“We actually got to the place that you always say about yourself: I just want to make something that I think is good. I feel like we actually got there this time,” says Sanborn. “The WITH tour was the final nail in the coffin. I was able to see our band from the outside, almost, for the first time. It gave me this huge sense of confidence in what we’re doing. If the two of us make something, it will be the band. The band is just this byproduct of how much we like hanging out.”

“I think I had an impostor syndrome thing, where I thought I had to maintain this vigilance around the band so that it didn’t lose its integrity,” Meath adds. “And of course that leads to the assumption that I’m faking it. The amazing thing that WITH gave us is like, oh, it’s not fragile. You can toss it to somebody and they understand what it is. You can’t break it.”

That confidence manifested fully in Free Love, which is weirder at times than anything they’ve done before — distorted vocals on “Train,” a noticeable reduction in drums overall — and decidedly more intimate. Slinky dancefloor bangers like “Ferris Wheel” butt up against catchy personal remembrances like “Ring,” which explicitly addresses Sylvan Esso’s real-life love story. It’s no coincidence that a song like that goes hand in hand with other personal revelations from this year: Meath and Sanborn’s marriage was an open secret until now, easily sussed out but never publicly acknowledged. Same goes for Meath’s bisexuality, which she announced via Twitter in typically enthusiastic fashion in June: “Happy pride everyone! I’m bisexual! … I’m queer as hell! I like everyone! Being bi is a joy!”

The tweet, while spur of the moment, was a long time coming, and what pushed her over the edge was a confidence-boosting picture: “You know you have a photo that’s taken of you every six months where you’re like, ‘I look like a monster!’ This was the opposite. I looked like an amazing goddess with the ass of a beautiful pony,” she laughs. “The photo with the beautiful rainbow background… It was Pride, and I’d been talking about it with Nick and my friends. Any hesitation, honestly, was being like, if I come out, will I be claiming space where other people’s voices are more necessary to be heard? And I might be wrong, but I made the decision to do it because I hadn’t heard about somebody who was in an outwardly heteronormative situation talking about how they’re queer. Bisexuality disappears the minute you’re with any partner. What I’m trying not to do is just relax into vagary and silence, which is where I feel safest. Vagary and silence is what led us into the terrifying situation we’re in right now, so I’m trying to be articulate all the time.”

On her reticence to publicize their relationship, Meath and Sanborn worried that “married band Sylvan Esso” would dominate the narrative, and they were probably right. The cliché of a genius producer and his talented singer-muse is nearly as well worn as the idea of a “girl band,” and usually just as wrong. It would have been an easy hook, but Sylvan Esso has never been about easy hooks, personally or musically.

“The minute you see women who write songs and work with their partners talk about it, all of a sudden every time they do an interview it’s only about what it’s like to be in love with the person that you work with,” Meath says. “It was a fight against my own misogyny in that I was so fearful of having to deal with it that I just wanted to skip right over it. In interviews, it would make me so upset because it made me feel like something had been stolen from me, which is strange, because Nick and I are together, and that’s the truth. I didn’t want to interact with the grey area of the fact that I’m a queer person in a heteronormative situation, and I sing and write the lyrics to the songs and Nick started predominantly as the producer and arranger, which is so fucking storybook that it’s annoying.”

Hand in hand with that admission, Meath has asserted her position in Sylvan Esso as not just co-songwriter with Sanborn, but also co-producer. Sanborn has been telling her all along that she’s a producer, but it took a conversation with Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards to convince Meath that her contributions — “sitting and thinking and listening,” as she puts it, more than the direct twiddling of knobs — was, in fact, producing. Now, instead of bringing each other finished halves of songs — him the beats, her the vocals and melody — everything is done together. “Alone time has pretty much disappeared,” says Sanborn.

It shows in the songs of Free Love, which are more intimate and cohesive than ever before. It’s only a half-hour, but lends itself to repeated listens — and not just because it starts with the words “What if end was begin?” and ends with the admonition to “Play it again.” It’s paced perfectly, pulling back into its quieter shell before bounding out again. At the center is “Free,” which Meath describes as “the best song I’ve ever written, lyrically.” In it, she wrestles with the illusion of self accompanied by almost no instrumentation, whisper-singing in your ear like some sort of ASMR confession. If that weren’t naked enough, it starts with an off-the-cuff “I love you,” the kind of studio chatter usually excised from the finished product. But here, it makes sense.

“It’s part of the song,” she says. “It’s exactly what the song is about. You can kind of hear me say it to Nick and know that what I’m actually saying is, ‘Shut up.’ It’s about being a public personality in some ways, but it applies to anyone who has ever let themselves love or be loved. There’s a part of you that, even in the depths of true intimacy, can never be touched. And that’s so sad, that you’re still alone, but also amazing that no matter what you can keep smooshing and smooshing your face against someone else’s face, and you’re just you.”

Meath and Sanborn can’t wait to bring their lonely songs to huge groups of sweaty dancers, but like everyone else, they’re stuck inside. In their case, it’s a town — Durham, North Carolina — filled with like-minded bands (Wye Oak, Landlady, Young Bull, Hiss Golden Messenger, the list goes on), some of whom have been stopping over for socially distanced “wine time” on the acreage that houses Sylvan Esso’s new studio. They’ve got distant gigs booked but don’t feel right announcing them with the world still in flux.

“Believe me, there is nothing I want more than to be in a room full of thousands of people playing our music on a gigantic sound system,” says Sanborn.

“Dude, playing ‘Make it Easy’?” answers Meath, referring to the cyborg anthem that closes Free Love. “We’re going to be able to get the audience to sing ‘It’s playing now’ with me? At which point I’m going to fucking cry so hard. I’m gonna cry so hard I’m gonna turn into a water mutant. I’m gonna Alex Mack.”

Free Love is out on September 25 via Loma Vista. Get it here.

The Brooklyn Nets have a new head coach, and it’s hard to imagine the team making a more surprising hire. Marc Stein of the New York Times reported that the Nets would make Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash a head coach for the first time, which was soon confirmed by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

Wojnarowski included the details that Jacque Vaughn, who coached the team admirably during the NBA’s Orlando Bubble, would stay on as an assistant at a hefty price tag, while the Nets’ brain trust did what it could to convince Nash to make the leap to coaching over the last few weeks.

And shortly after reports began circulating, Brooklyn made the news official.

While Nash has some experience in basketball operations, having served as a consultant for the Golden State Warriors team when, as Tom Haberstroh of NBC Sports pointed out, Durant was in town, this is quite the leap. He’s going from that, along with a handful of off-court duties like serving as a basketball/soccer analyst for Turner, to the head coach of a team that has legitimate NBA title aspirations once Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are 100 percent healthy. Keeping Vaughn around should help ease that transition, as he knows this team, but the former two-time MVP will be at the helm in what might be the most out of left field head coaching hire we’ve seen in some time.

Harley Quinn recently made its way from DC Universe, the streaming service used exclusively by Twitter users with #SnyderCut in their bios, to HBO Max, where it’s hopefully a huge hit. It’s a really good show! One of the best of 2020. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s weird, it’s violent and lewd, there’s a talking shark, and in one episode, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy plot to escape Bane’s Peña Duro North Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility, a.k.a. “The Pit,” on George Lopez’s helicopter while the comedian is doing a stand-up set for Killer Croc and other ne’er-do-wells. It’s a whole thing. You should watch, because if you don’t, Harley Quinn might not return for a third season.

On Wednesday night, The Suicide Squad director James Gunn tweeted, “Our dog barks at any animal that comes on TV. Including this animated hyena on @dcharleyquinn. The hyena is a still image. (Show is great btw),” along with a video of his dog barking at said hyena. Harley Quinn showrunner Patrick Schumacker responded to Gunn, thanking him for the shoutout. “Thanks for amplifying the show!” he wrote. “Will the much sought after James Gunn Bump help get us a season 3? (Seriously, have you heard anything? I have no idea.).” Gunn has no idea, but he did throw his support behind a renewal.

“Let’s hope. Everyone watch Harley Quinn on @hbomax and help get them a well-deserved season three! @dcharleyquinn,” Gunn tweeted.

Most fan campaigns are bad, but this is a good one. You + watching Harley Quinn on HBO Max = another season of Bane yelling about “splosions” and Andy Daly as Two-Face and Harley and Poison Ivy’s blooming romance. It’s that simple.

Forbes, the preeminent rankers of famous people’s wealth, have come out with their annual Celebrity 100 list, which lists the highest-earning celebrities of 2020. Much has been made of Kanye West’s wealth in recent times, and it turns out he has done pretty well lately, as he is No. 2 on the list and the highest-ranking male, with $170 million. He’s second only to somebody he knows well: Kylie Jenner, whose $590 million is more than the next five people on the list combines.

Kanye was happy with the news, but not completely satisfied. He shared a screenshot of a headline about his achievement and wrote, “This a good start.”

Kanye is the only musician in the top 10. The next closest is Elton John, who ranks at No. 14 with $81 million. Other musicians on the list include Ariana Grande (No. 17, $72 million), the Jonas Brothers (No. 20, $68.5 million), The Chainsmokers (No. 21, $68 million), Ed Sheeran (No. 23, $64 million), Taylor Swift (No. 25, $63.5 million), Post Malone (No. 28, $60 million), the Rolling Stones (No. 32, $59 million), Marshmello (No. 35, $56 million), Diddy (No. 37, $55 million), Shawn Mendes (No. 39, $54.5 million), Jay-Z (No. 42, $53.5 million), Billie Eilish (No. 43, $53 million), BTS (No. 47, $50 million), Drake (No. 49, $49 million), Jennifer Lopez (No. 56, $47.5 million), Pink (No. 57, $47 million), Rihanna (No. 60, $46 million), Luke Bryan (No. 62, $45.5 million), Lin-Manuel Miranda (No. 62, $45.5 million), Backstreet Boys (No. 64, $45 million), Phil Collins (No. 64, $45 million), Will Smith (No. 69, $44.5 million), Blake Shelton (No. 70, $43.5 million), Celine Dion (No. 73, $42 million), The Eagles (No. 75, $41 million), Metallica (No. 78, $40.5 million), Travis Scott (No. 82, $39.5 million), Katy Perry (No. 86, $38.5 million), Lady Gaga (No. 87, $38 million), Bon Jovi (No. 87, $38 million), U2 (No. 87, $38 million), Paul McCartney (No. 91, $37 million), DJ Khaled (No. 95, $36.5 million), and Kiss (No. 95, $36.5 million).

Check out the full list here.

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

A running joke in 2020 is that time has lost all meaning. Because many of us are still suck in Covid-related holding patterns, days tend to run into seemingly similar months, and months into seemingly similar seasons.

And yet, fall still feels different.

As the weather turns colder around this time of the year, our listening habits change. The party-hearty jams of summer give way to the more melancholy headphone music of autumn. That’s certainly where my head is at as I look ahead to the next few months. The albums I’m most excited about hearing — or writing about, since I’ve already heard many of these records — tend to draw me inward, either via insightful lyrics or exploratory soundscapes. Listening to this music just makes me want to huddle under a warm blanket and brace against the coming chill.

Bill Callahan – Gold Record (September 4)

One of the great living American singer-songwriters has been on a prolific streak lately. His affecting 2019 effort, his first in five years, Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest, clocked in at a robust 20 tracks spread out over 63 minutes, his longest album to date. And he had a lot left in the tank after that, judging by the forthcoming Gold Record. Callahan has been previewing the LP with a new single released each week, and every song has been a master class in Callahan’s unique artistic sensibility — laconic, hushed, sly, meditative, and uncommonly still and centered. Also, Bill seems really happy these days! As he sings on the impossibly lovely “Another Song,” “We will finish our songs another day / And watch the light as it fades away / Lonesome in a pleasant way / I guess the light that is gone belongs to yesterday.”

A.G. Cook – Apple (September 18)

If this English musician, songwriter, producer, and founder of PC Music had merely worked on other people’s records in 2020, he would have had a very momentous year. But Cook — who co-executive produced Charli XCX’s How I’m Feeling Now and Jonsi’s upcoming Shiver — has also put out a career’s worth of music under his own name with the staggering seven-disc 7G, a 49-track summation statement that touches on a variety of pop, rock, and electronic music tentpoles. As if that wasn’t enough to digest — I’m still working my way through it, in part because I keep discovering new favorite songs — this wunderkind is putting out yet another album in 2020, a relatively succinct collection called Apple. If you can get past how much more productive this person has been than you during the pandemic, you won’t find an artist working right now who either takes more shots or has a higher completion percentage.

Sufjan Stevens – The Ascension (September 25)

In one way, Stevens has been as prolific as ever in the past few years, whether he’s writing an Oscar-nominated song for Call Me By Your Name or putting together one-of-a-kind experiments like Aporia, a New Age curveball that came out earlier this year that was made in collaboration with his stepfather, Lowell Brams. However, in terms of “proper” Sufjan records, The Ascension feels like the first since 2015’s landmark gut punch, Carrie & Lowell. Though judging by the sprawling 12-minute single “America,” I wonder if this album’s true predecessor is 2010’s truly bonkers (and in my view very underrated) The Age Of Adz. While Stevens has been sure to show off other sides of his persona lately — the sensitive folkie, the orchestral pop mastermind — I’m hoping the time is ripe for him to display the “the mad scientist” side of his personality.

Bartees Strange – Live Forever (October 2)

In the punk/emo corner of the indie world, the full-length debut by this Washington D.C. based singer-songwriter is possibly the most anticipated album of the fall. Striking out earlier this year with the EP Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy, a five-track collection of reimagined covers of songs by The National, Bartees Strange achieves the full flower of his artistic personality with Live Forever, veering between rousing synth-rock anthems like “Mustang” and blurry indie-soul slow burners like “Kelly Rowland” (named after Beyonce’s sidekick in Destiny Child) that sounds like a cross between Frank Ocean and Death Cab For Cutie. The album’s fluid yet cohesive mix of influences — which reflects the Oklahoma native’s upbringing as a church-going At The Drive-In fan equally well versed in gospel, R&B and hardcore — add up to one of the year’s most promising indie-rock debuts.

Rilo Kiley – Rilo Kiley (October 2)

In 1999, the venerable and oft-brilliant L.A. indie band Rilo Kiley recorded a self-titled album that they sold at shows. While technically their first LP, this album soon fell into obscurity after the initial pressing. Then came the subsequent release of 2001’s Take Offs And Landings, Rilo Kiley’s first release on the indie label Barsuk and the band’s officially recognized debut. However, this self-titled record — which derives partly from a demo funded by none other than Dave Foley of Newsradio and The Kids In The Hall fame — is finally getting a reissue. While technically an old record, it hasn’t been heard by many people, which essentially makes it a “new” old record.

Mary Lattimore – Silver Ladders (October 9)

For years, the most famous California-based harpist in indie rock was Joanna Newsom. But, now, incredibly there is another harpist on the scene — Mary Lattimore, a classically trained musician who has lent her ear-bending, out-there sounds to records by Kurt Vile and Thurston Moore, among others. Lattimore’s own albums — which can mix stately, almost classical-sounding melodies with disquieting, avant-garde art-pop passages — have also achieved a higher profile in recent years. The forthcoming Silver Ladders is poised to make the biggest splash yet. The stunning early single “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams” unspools an eerie soundscape that perfectly evokes the uncertainly and loneliness of the 2020 quarantine lifestyle.

Garcia Peoples – Nightcap At Wits’ End (October 9)

This NYC band has been among my favorite practitioners of “indie jam,” that amorphous sorta-genre comprised of guitar-rock bands that draw equally from ’90s indie and improvisational music derived from jazz, prog. and jamband scenes. Their most recent studio album, One Step Behind, found them stretching out more than ever on the mammoth 32-minute title track. The forthcoming Nightcap At Wits’ End is a return to more succinct songs, though the band’s penchant for exploring unexpected song structures, luminous instrumental tones, and unpredictable jammy interludes continues to run rampant even in the confines of otherwise tight and tuneful rock songs.

Gunn-Truscinski Duo – Soundkeeper (October 9)

On his own, the excellent guitarist Steve Gunn has gradually moved in a more conventional singer-songwriter direction, developing into a fine vocalist on richly layered acoustic albums like 2019’s The Unseen In Between. However, as one half of Gunn-Truscinski Duo, his fruitful collaboration with drummer John Truscinski, he continues to push his music in noisier, more abstract and thoroughly mind-blowing directions. The group’s upcoming album, the 72-minute Soundkeeper, is among their most sprawling releases, with the title track alone clocking in at more than 16 minutes, moving through waves of feedback and drone toward explosions of beauty and transcendence.

Matt Berninger – Serpentine Prison (October 16)

While the lead singer of The National has branched out on his own before — shout-out to 2015’s underrated Return To The Moon, by his lecherous synth-pop duo El Vy — Serpentine Prison marks his official solo debut. Pairing him with soul great Booker T. Jones, the leader of the incredible Stax house band Booker T. And The MG’s, might seem on paper like a bit of a stretch. But any possible confusion instantly melts away once this slinky, late-night reverie of a record kicks in, as Berninger’s wizened purr slides perfectly into a series of low-key roadhouse soundscapes. Anyone who got into The National because an algorithm pointed them there from Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen will welcome Berninger’s full-on embrace of his middle-aged romantic crooner status.

Kevin Morby – Sundowner (October 16)

The previous albums by this prolific indie star have felt like a cock-eyed tour of classic-rock history, with Morby working within aesthetic frameworks reminiscent of Bob Dylan (Harlem River), Lou Reed (City Music), and (my personal favorite) messianic quasi-religious ’70s rock (Singing Saw). His latest record, Sundowner, is a culmination of those albums, marking a homecoming to his native Kansas City and a return to his DIY roots. Working in collaboration with producer Brad Cook — who also memorably oversaw one of the 2020’s best albums, Saint Cloud, by Morby’s partner, Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee — Morby played most of the instruments himself for Sundowner, recreating the intimacy of his demos. The result is one of Morby’s best and most intense records.

BONUS

Sky Ferreira – Masochism (TBD)

Call me an optimist, but I’m holding out hope that the long, looooong awaited followup to 2013’s Night Time, My Time will finally drop in the fall of 2020. After all, this has been a pretty extraordinary year for music already. Fiona Apple came back. Bright Eyes came back. Why not Sky Ferreira? A Pitchfork profile heralded her “return” way back in March of 2019. Later that year, she promised that the album would drop before the end of the ’10s. Presumably, Ferreira is giving this eternally gestating masterwork the perfectionist treatment. Hopefully, being stuck in quarantine like the rest of us has expedited this process. P.S. This also goes for The Wrens and their long, looooong, loooooooooong delayed followup to The Meadowlands.

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

No Time to Die, which was originally scheduled to come out in April, will now be released on November 20, making it a Thanksgiving movie. And for that, we’re thankful.

We’re thankful that Daniel Craig is back for one more adventure as 007. We’re thankful for Rami Malek as Safin, who producer Barbara Broccoli describes as, “He is really the super-villain. He’s the one that really gets under Bond’s skin. He’s a nasty piece of work.” We’re thankful for ridiculous set pieces, like cars being flipped in a forest and people jumping off bridges, as seen in the trailer above. We’re thankful for Lashana Lynch as the rumored next 007. We’re thankful for Ben Whishaw as Q, because it reminds us of Paddington. And we’re thankful for seeing Ana de Armas in anything.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In No Time to Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.

No Time to Die, which also stars Léa Seydoux, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Rory Kinnear, Ralph Fiennes, and Billy Magnussen, opens on November 20.