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The animated Scooby-Doo reboot Scoob! is out now, and it has a star-studded cast led by Will Forte, Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, and Gina Rodriguez. Similarly, Scoob! The Album was also released today, and it too features some big names. That includes Rico Nasty, who contributes “My Little Alien” to the record. The catchy tune appeals to Rico’s pop sensibilities, and features a catchy hook, on which Rico sings, “You’re my little alien / You came down from out of the sky / People don’t know what you are / And I couldn’t explain it if I tried.”

Beyond Rico, the album also features contributions from Charli Puth, Lennon Stella, Thomas Rhett, Kane Brown, Ava Max, Jack Harlow, Sage The Gemini, Bygtwo3, Galantis, Faouzia, Pink Sweats, Rare Americans, R3hab, Arizona, Plested, Token, and Best Coast.

Meanwhile, Rico recently updated Uproxx about her upcoming album, Nightmare Vacation, saying in a recent interview, “Coronavirus, it might have inspired me to actually do what I always wanted to do with the album, which was make it very virtual. I’m not going to say too much about that, but just I will leave you with that. I always wanted my album to be similar to a simulation, VR. If you get my drift, like as far as the visuals go and sh*t like that. [Right now] you can’t touch me, you can’t come to the show. So that’s what we’re developing right now is giving them that opportunity to really damn near be in the same room as me. No holograms, weird sh*t like that. But some high tech sh*t.”

Listen to “My Little Alien” above.

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

Last week, the Pitchfork Music Festival was officially canceled, an inevitable development in the midst of a rapidly deteriorating summer tour schedule. Right now, it seems trivial to mourn such relatively minor things. And yet, I must admit I’m sad to miss The Fiery Furnaces.

The Chicago-based brother-sister duo — who put out their debut album, Gallowbird’s Bark, in 2003 and went on hiatus in 2011 — announced in February that Pitchfork Fest would be their grand return to the indie-rock world. Other shows, while not announced, were assumed (at least by me) to be in the works. Perhaps those shows will still happen at that unforeseen date when gathering with a few hundred strangers inside a dark, tightly packed nightclub no longer is fodder for nightmares. But for now, their comeback seems like it has, at best, been put on hold, if not derailed completely. And that bums me out, because 2020 could really use a band this brilliantly bizarre and bizarrely brilliant.

I realize I’m probably throwing newbies in the deep end here, but if you don’t know this band, I highly recommend heading to blogs like NYC Taper and checking out their live recordings. To call The Fiery Furnaces an adventurous concert act doesn’t nearly do them the justice they deserve. In the late aughts, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger radically rearranged their twisty-turny, overstuffed songs seemingly every other week with supercharged synth splashes, wonky guitar solos, and hyperactive drum fills. There’s no guarantee that bootleg recordings from the same album cycle will sound alike, even if they’re only separated by a matter of weeks.

If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find recordings from the mid-aughts, when they were touring behind their most famous album, the near-impenetrable “Grimm’s Fairy Tales meets Selling England By The Pound” pop-prog masterwork Blueberry Boat. At that time, they would stuff nearly 40 songs into a single 50-minute set, somehow melding the swiftness of the Minutemen’s Double Nickels On The Dime with the grandiosity of The Beatles’ Abbey Road.

I know that’s a lot of rock-geek influences piled on top of each other, but it’s otherwise difficult to explain this band. The songs were always catchy and, in their own way, pop. The Fridebergers’ impeccable taste in delectable vintage instrumental tones makes their music particularly luscious for vinyl hounds. (Here’s another rock-geek reference: They’re like The Carpenters if they attempted Tales From Topographic Oceans.) But their music and especially their lyrics were also incredibly, even stupidly, convoluted, and often tied to concepts that are easier to admire for their extreme perversity than as, you know, songs. At the height of their indie fame in 2005, for instance, they released a rock opera called Rehearsing My Choir voiced in large part by the Friedbergers’ elderly grandmother. It’s about listenable as that sounds. But, again, what an interesting idea!

Back in the aughts, The Fiery Furnaces seemed a little ahead of their time, though in retrospect, they surprisingly make a lot of more sense in the context of what was happening in indie rock. Their debut Gallowsbird’s Bark was released the same year as The White Stripes’ Elephant, and Matt and Eleanor’s superficial resemblance to Jack and Meg — they were two quirky brunettes from the midwest who were actual brother and sister, as opposed to Jack and Meg’s playacted version — got them pegged as garage-rock B-listers.

But Gallowsbird’s Bark — which was made in just three days, supposedly during Eleanor’s first visit to a recording studio — was actually much stranger and idiosyncratic than that classification suggests, taking the primitivism of The White Stripes in a less literal and more novel direction. Whereas The White Stripes would vamp on Son House for six minutes, The Fiery Furnaces would start with a jump blues riff, tie it to a nursery-rhyme narrative, and then segue to a twisted pastoral folk melody that might devolve into pure noise, with little logical rationale for the progression beyond primal familial intuition.

In interviews, the Friedbergers played off each other like a brother-sister comedy duo, with Matthew — a reformed punk rocker who once said that trying to get attention for your music was “kind of gross” — playing the Jack White-like Svengali and Eleanor deflating his pomposity with a well-placed quip or withering stare. Together, they described their music as an amalgam of “Bo Diddley, bad-sounding psychedelia, sentimental, weeping-in-your-beer ballads of the ’70s like Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Alone Again Naturally,’ and the bad imitations of dub reggae on Sandinista by The Clash.” (They, like me, resorted to rock-geek-speak to describe The Fiery Furnaces.)

“We’d like to play for little kids and in old folks’ homes,” Matthew says in a 2003 Guardian interview, “and play in nasty bars as well. The music we want to play is more catholic — it’s a big enough mess that whether it’s the old folk or the kids, they could find something amusing. Hopefully, it is really silly, shiny music. I want it to have a broken toy sound. And also a piano singalong thing. I always like the idea of families entertaining themselves by singing, like every member of a family has a special song they sing when they get drunk enough, a Cole Porter song or whatever. That’s fun pop music to me.”

“Having a song to sing at family events when you get drunk,” Eleanor repeats, with a sarcasm that’s impossible not to discern, even on the page. “Yeah. My song is “Tomorrow.” From Annie.”

Matthew fully stepped forward as the band’s dominant creative force on their next album, Blueberry Boat. If Gallowsbird’s Bark is their Safe As Milk — a relatively conventional rock record — then Blueberry Boat is their Trout Mask Replica, a 76-minute left-field tour-de-force that demands that you either love or hate it. Heard now, it sounds like a key album in aughts-era indie’s transition from the garage-rock revivalism of the decade’s first half, and the proggy, childhood-obsessed art rock of the second half. Though Blueberry Boat also should be put in its own category.

The highest compliment I can give Blueberry Boat is that it seems even more ahead of its time 16 years after it came out. Revisiting it this week made a lot of conversations about contemporary indie rock seem quaint. You think Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters might be a little too abrasive or theatrical? Give a listen to “Chief Inspector Blancheflower.” You’re amazed at the eclecticism of The 1975’s recent singles? This runs through half-a-dozen different genres in one song. You found that Lana Del Rey’s last album had a lot of long, epic tracks? It’s not as big or dense as this.

That’s not a criticism of those recent indie hits. It just underscores how uniquely confrontational The Fiery Furnaces were. This was a band that deliberately drew a line in the sand between those who would get it and those who wouldn’t, and they made sure that the people in the former group was much smaller. It helped that at the time a band could actually be rewarded for such behavior with glowing press. Pitchfork gave Blueberry Boat a 9.6 in the summer of 2004, just 0.1 lower than the famous review of Funeral that helped to break Arcade Fire a few months later. “The exuberant overload of Blueberry Boat will thrill and transport you with the ineluctable force of a great children’s story, one whose execution matches its imagination,” the review promised.

Whenever I put on Blueberry Boat‘s wondrously batshit 10-minute opener, “Quay Cur,” I like to imagine the thousands of Pitchfork readers who gave this album a chance based on that review, and then guess at which point they angrily bailed. This never fails to make me chuckle. For more than two minutes, you hear a sluggish drum machine and jarring synth bleeps accented with occasional clanking piano chords. Then Eleanor’s arch, carefully enunciated vocal finally enters the picture. But just when you think you understand what this song is, it suddenly transitions to a sinister art-rock stomp. Then it turns into greasy off-kilter blues, and then psychedelic folk, and then back to sinister art-rock and then back to a wigged-out folkie meander.

I haven’t even mentioned the lyrics yet. The lyrics make even less sense than the music. “A looby, a lordant, a lagerhead, lozel / a lungio lathback made me a proposal” has to be my favorite line from “Quay Cur,” even though it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. (This one is a close second: “Dawding on the drizzy deck of my majesty’s sloop / If only the helmsman would turn from his whip staff / With my azimuth compass I’d go by the hectograph / Up to the whaling fleet in Gilbert sound.”)

What does any of this mean? I have no idea. Trying to “understand” The Fiery Furnaces will get you nowhere. Their songs are not meant to be deciphered. This music is meant to overwhelm the senses and replicate the childlike feeling of being simultaneously dazzled, confused, and terrified by the outside world, taking you back to a time when even a pop song could seem unfamiliar and unknowable. And it’s refreshing! Put on Blueberry Boat and any ingrained cynicism about having heard it all before rapidly burns away. Being overwhelmed and even confounded is sort of the point.

It seems strange to yearn for this sort of music when everyday life is already overwhelming and confounding. But listening to The Fiery Furnaces while cooped up inside is a reminder that the world really is a vast, mysterious place that contains endless shocks and surprises. Adventure awaits us all if we’re open to it. One day, hopefully, we’ll get to experience it again.

Charli XCX has been transparent with the making of her new quarantine album, How I’m Feeling Now, keeping her fans deeply involved on the journey. The album is out now, and just before its release, Charli shared a quick video recapping the final week of making the record.

The 90-second video begins with Charli addressing the camera, “I just finished an all-nighter session. […] It’s eight days until the album comes out, and I’m really pushing myself to the limit. I think it will be worth it.” From there, it’s a mix of clips of her working on the record and otherwise living her life. The video ends with a look at the impromptu in-bed photoshoot that yielded the final album art.

Also ahead of the album, Charli shared a lengthy post on Instagram in which she reflected on the process of making the album and gave her thanks to those who helped bring it to life, writing:

“I can’t believe #howimfeelingnow is out this Friday!! this whole process has been so incredible & i’m so happy you’ve all been such a crucial part of the creative process! co writing verse 2 of ‘anthems’ on insta live, making the ‘forever’ video together from all your amazing clips, your green screen versions of ‘claws’, the remixes & edits you made using the stems I dropped (& playing them on my Apple Music show!), deciding which photos to use as a basis for the artworks, collecting your own amazing artworks you’ve been making, helping me with production decisions & so much more… i couldn’t have made this album without you! [email protected] has been bombarded with wild beats, artwork & ideas & it’s been so inspiring going through it all.”

In that post, she also revealed she plans to make a book that will “document the art all of us have been making alongside this project,” and that all profits from it will benefit LA Alliance For Human Rights.

Watch the video above.

How I’m Feeling Now is out now via Asylum. Get it here.

Charli XCX is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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If you ask Nicholas Hoult, he’ll blame the wigs. They’re one of the reasons why he’s gotten into the habit of playing scene-stealing baroque dandies in wildly funny period dramas. They’ve given him a new avenue to explore in his decades-long career and introduced him to eccentric, extremely GIF-able villains you can’t help but laugh at. They’re what allowed him to shove Emma Stone in a ditch in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-nominated The Favourite, and they’ve helped him get into character again for Hulu’s upcoming 18th-century punk Russian soap opera, The Great.

Of course, Tony McNamara is the bigger reason why Hoult seems to gravitate towards this time period and these completely-obtuse, too-powerful historical figures. He penned The Favourite before helming Hulu’s stylishly modern retelling of Catherine The Great’s early years. Elle Fanning may play the show’s leading heroine — a young woman thrust into the freakish, almost campy court of Peter III — but it’s Hoult who seems to be having the most fun with McNamara’s quick-witted, satirical script (of course, he’s also the one who gets to toss a Pomeranian off a balcony so…). We chatted with Hoult about his career evolution, not getting bored, and why 18th-century life feels oddly relevant right now.

You’re unnaturally talented when it comes to playing these aristocratic, asshole types. Does putting on a wig just do that to you?

Yeah, there’s just something in my DNA, where I put on a wig and I just turn into these bizarre humans. I do weirdly find it quite fun, playing these offbeat, very disconnected people, who have no sense of the world around them. That, with Tony’s writing, I think it’s just so singular and unique and fun. They’re characters that, you can feel like you can do anything, at any moment with them. That’s something that’s really liberating and freeing. They’re wild and untamable, but you’ve also got a construct of a great script that you can stick to.

Playing these really terrible characters, does it ever cause you to self-reflect?

I don’t know. In many ways, you have to always understand the voice, or where this character’s coming from, I suppose. Peter, he’s been put into this position where he never quite knows who he can trust. Also, he’s been put in this position. He doesn’t really want it. He just wants to have fun. Now, he’s stuck with all these things that he has to do that he doesn’t enjoy. It is interesting playing this character, because you don’t want him to be completely unlikeable and so far removed from being an understandable person, that there’s no redemption for him. He’s following in the footsteps of his father. His mother obviously tortured him as a child and scarred him. He does want to better himself at times. He’s trying to improve, but he just lacks certain social skills, and understanding to be able to work on that. It’s a little bit of a balancing act, I suppose, trying to create a character that’s very much in that gray area of, not fully good but not fully bad and so horrible that you just detest him.

I think that comes down to the comedy in the script because this show is so darkly funny. How do you do justice to that humor?

It’s always that thing of not trying to play jokes. I think I got a good education working with Tony’s writing and doing The Favourite — how Yorgos approached that process. It’s very much letting the words do the work for you, which is actually a brilliant thing as an actor, because it takes all pressure off you performing, or trying to make things funny. There’s nothing worse than reading a script that’s clearly meant to be funny, but isn’t, and I have to try and make it funny. Whereas this, you can really just let the words do the business for you, in a way.

There are plenty of absurd moments in the show, normally involving your character. Were any of those challenging to film?

The most difficult thing I found, honestly, was trying to not giggle on set when someone else had a funny line, or I had a funny line. There’s a weird thing where, it can completely take you out of the moment, when it actually becomes funny to you while you’re doing it. My stern voice has to come out and I have to say, “Come on. People want to get home to their families. You don’t want them to go home and complain about how this actor sucks, and he can’t say his lines without giggling.” I have to give myself a talking to.

You could try going full method.

Yeah, but then I’d be acting like I was the emperor of Russia for six months, which I don’t think, for normal life, is too habitable.

It sounds fun though.

It could be really fun, but I think I’d come out the other end a little bit shocked at what happened in life, and how I’d ended up in this position.

There’s such variety in the projects you’ve chosen, throughout your career. How do you approach choosing what you’re going to work on next?

It’s definitely a thought process. I think I’d just get bored as an actor, and as a person, if I was rehashing the same type of character, or genre of show, film, whatever. I always want to be evolving and trying something new. That is a very much conscious decision, whenever I get sent a script. I enjoy trying to make bold characters, I guess. Obviously, it depends on which character you’re playing and what world they’re in, but it is fun when you get to play these slightly more obscene, larger than life characters, that you can fully commit to. That then is just a fun environment to be in, as long as if you’ve got good people around you that you trust. It’s wild. It’s a let loose kind of relief.

This is a show about incompetent leaders and how disconnected they are. It’s set in the 18th century, but it feels oddly relevant.

Yeah, definitely. It’s politics. Because of the year the show’s set, it’s very much on the microscopic level. Peter’s always having his ear bent, whether it be by the church, the aristocrats, Catherine, or all these people trying to get their way, keep their power and manage their interests. I think that’s very much what’s going on in the world. I’m a fan of Veep, and those sorts of shows, that do a similar thing, in a similar tone in some ways, where they take a look at what’s happening. Sometimes, the ridiculous elements of those things are actually, probably closer the truth than we’d like to admit.

I like that you referenced Veep because I feel like maybe this is just a historically based, period Veep with more wigs.

There you go.

Hulu’s ‘The Great’ premieres on May 15.

Kanye West has collaborated with dozens of people over the course of his career, but some have suggested he may not be the easiest person to work with. La Roux recently detailed her less-than-ideal experience, and now one of Kanye’s former bodyguards has spoken about his time protecting the rapper.

Steve Stanulis recently guested on an episode of the Hollywood Raw podcast, and he spoke about an incident he says he had with Kanye during their very first interaction:

“The first day I met him, it was fashion week. I was supposed to meet him at the studio. When he gets there, we get into the elevator and he says, ‘Aren’t you going to push what floor we are going to?’ I was like, ‘I have no idea what floor, it’s my first day.’ So he starts ranting, ‘So you mean you didn’t call ahead to find out where I’m supposed to be going?” I said, ‘No.’

So he’s ranting and raving. So I said, ‘Look, bro, we can do this one of three ways. One, you could tell me what button to press, and now I’ll know. Two, you could press the button, and I’ll see which one you press so I’ll know. Or three, you can sit in here all day and tell me how important your time is and we are not going to go anywhere.’ Again, that was our first interaction. He went for the first option.”

He also said Kanye was “one of my least favorite people to work with over the course of time,” and detailed “some ridiculous rules” that Kanye enforced. For example: “He wanted you to stay ten paces behind him on a city street. So obviously, if someone is going to come up and do something, by the time I try to run up and prevent it, it would have already happened.”

It hasn’t all been bad for Stanulis, though, as he did offer praise for former clients like Tobey Maguire, Woody Harrelson, Alanis Morissette, and Stephen Baldwin.

Listen to the full Hollywood Raw episode here.

As global quarantine mode continues, Netflix continues to release content to make sheltering in place a little easier. There’s a sun-soaked murder-mystery series from the creators of The Crown and Money Heist, and the latest goofy movie from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions is on tap. Earlier this week, the streaming giant released a psychedelic documentary, Have A Good Trip, along with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s interactive special. In other words, there’s plenty of TV to keep us all busy.

Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) Netflix this week of May 15.

White Lines: Season 1

This Spanish-British mystery thriller series revolves around the murder of a legendary Manchester DJ who disappears from Ibiza. His body surfaces decades later in Ibiza, which sends his sister deep into the heart of the Spanish island’s club scene. There, she unearths dark truths about the community that lives life on the edge, along with lies and cover-ups involving the fate of her brother. There’s some self-examination going on there as well in this story from the creators of The Crown and Money Heist.

The Wrong Missy

Well, no one ever accused Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions of making high art, but this movie is sure to be at least a little bit funny. This installment stars David Spade as an average white-collar dude who decides to woo his dream girl over text, only he’s texting the wrong lady (portrayed by Lauren Lapkus), who shows up to his island retreat invitation unaware that, well, she’s “The Wrong Missy.” In other words, it’s a blind date from hell, so expect plenty of farty shenanigans and a Rob Schneider appearance.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

5/15
Chichipatos
District 9
I Love You, Stupid
Inhuman Resources
Magic for Humans: Season 3
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Season 5
White Lines

5/16
La reina de Indias y el conquistador
Public Enemies
United 93

5/17
Soul Surfer

5/18
The Big Flower Fight

5/19
Patton Oswalt: I Love Everything
Sweet Magnolias
Trumbo

5/20
Ben Platt Live From Radio City Music Hall
The Flash: Season 6
Rebelión de los Godinez

5/22
Control Z
History 101
Just Go With It
The Lovebirds
Selling Sunset: Season 2
Trailer Park Boys: The Animated Series: Season 2

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

5/15
Limitless
The Place Beyond the Pines

5/17
Royal Pains: Season 1-8

5/18
Scandal: Season 1-7

5/19
Black Snake Moan
Carriers
Evolution
The First Wives Club
It Takes Two
Love, Rosie
She’s Out of My League
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Young Adult
Yours, Mine and Ours

Katy Perry has kept busy over the past few years with a slew of singles, and now we know what it has all been building up to. This week, she revealed that her next album, the title of which has not yet been revealed, will be released on August 14. Now she has shared her first new song since making that announcement, “Daisies.”

The track is an empowering anthem about sticking to your guns when faced with adversity. The song is produced by The Monsters & Strangerz, who produced and co-wrote Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey’s hit “The Middle,” as well as more recent tunes by Dua Lipa, Halsey, and Selena Gomez.

Perry explained the meaning behind the single in an Instagram post, writing, “I wrote this song a couple months ago as a call to remain true to the course you’ve set for yourself, regardless of what others may think. Recently, it has taken a new meaning for me, in light of what the whole world is experiencing. Each of us is one in more than seven billion, with our own story of strength and resilience to tell. DAISIES is out now. I hope it will be the soundtrack to going for your dreams now… especially the ones we left behind.”

Watch the “Daisies” video above.

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

Because your efforts to organize should basically be immortalized.

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