My Bloody Valentine had already been a band for five years by the time guitarist Kevin Shields found his secret weapon. After years of hopping between knockoffs of popular Fenders and Gibsons, a friend loaned him a 1964 Fender Jazzmaster – a melty, hotrod-shaped instrument with a bevy of switches …
Read More »Review: Deafheaven's 'Ordinary Corrupt Human Love' Is a Wide-Ranging Post-Metal Fusion
Deafheaven fancy themselves as a modern-day Bad Brains, but instead of blending hardcore punk and reggae, they combine vicious black metal with expansive space rock. They alternated between the two on their 2013 breakthrough record, Sunbather, and indulged Pink Floyd proclivities like secretly recording a drug deal, before abandoning a …
Read More »Trump Caps NATO Trip With Wild, Impromptu Press Conference
Until Thursday morning, President Trump’s meetings with NATO leaders went about as expected, meaning that he spent most of his time in Belgium attacking allies – particularly Germany – for not paying their “fair share” of defense spending.“I expected bad, and I kept telling people to expect bad, but it …
Read More »Hear Twenty One Pilots' New Songs 'Jumpsuit,' 'Nico and the Niners'
Twenty One Pilots veer in two polar opposite directions – proggy alt-rock and psychedelic reggae-rap – on their two new singles, “Jumpsuit” and “Nico and the Niners.” The tracks appear on the band’s upcoming fifth LP, Trench, out October 5th via Fueled By Ramen. The duo anchor “Jumpsuit” with distorted …
Read More »HBO Wants to Become Netflix – Here's Why It Shouldn't
For most of the last 20 years, HBO has been the player the rest of the TV business was chasing and imitating. But a recent meeting between the current head of HBO and one of his new corporate bosses from AT&T suggests the cable giant may soon be following someone …
Read More »John and Lorena Bobbitt, 25 Years Post-Castration
To mark the 25 year anniversary of the castration heard around the nation, Vanity Fair recently caught up with John Wayne Bobbitt and his knife-wielding ex Lorena for a bizarre look back at one of the most salacious cases of the last century. The piece, written by Lili Anolik, is …
Read More »'Whitney' Review: Portrait of Late Singer Puts Tragedy Front and Center
Watching this electrifying and empathetic look at the life of Whitney Houston, you keep wanting to reach into the screen and nudge Whitney toward a different path – one that ends a lot differently. That’s wishful thinking, of course, not to mention hopelessly naïve. You can’t trace the downward trajectory …
Read More »Revolution at 3.5": Inside Vaporwave's Floppy Disk Micro-Boom
Sterling Campbell had co-founded a cassette label and a VHS tape label in Ottawa, but needed a new creative outlet after moving back to Cornwall, Ontario, to be closer to his daughter. “I was like, ‘I need to start something up for myself here,’” he says. “‘What’s the most ridiculous …
Read More »Review: Florence and the Machine's Powerfully Intimate 'High As Hope'
Florence Welch is the big sister you wish you had: wild enough to be a co-conspirator, together enough to be an inspiration, even a role model. On High As Hope, the fourth and most intimate Florence + the Machine LP, she recalls hijinks on MDMA, confesses to an eating disorder, …
Read More »Eddie Van Halen Preps Three Signature 'Eruption' Model Guitars
Eddie Van Halen is marking the 40th anniversary of Van Halen‘s self-titled debut LP with a trio of tribute guitars – the Super ’78, ’78 Eruption Relic and ’78 Eruption – modeled after the signature black-and-white-striped instrument he used to record that iconic album. “Of all the guitars I’ve ever …
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