FATHER JOHN MISTY

I LOVE YOU, HONEYBEAR

( Biographical Copy #12 )

Just over a minute into Yeezus, Kayne West is riding the malfunctioning-star-destroyer glitch-screams of “On Sight” when he poses a rhetorical question: “How much do I not give a fuck? Let me show you right now, ’fore you give it up.” He repeats the question, as the screaming robots underneath him disappear into empty black space. Then, welling up ( Read more... )

The title of Modern Vampires Of The City, the third album from Vampire Weekend, seems like it riffs on the band’s name and on its members’ status as sharp and witty New York men-about-town, guys who play punny word-games on their Twitter accounts and make cameo appearances on Girls and maintain none-too-serious Soundcloud side projects. If that ( Read more... )

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I’ve been working for Stereogum for something like two and a half years now, writing literally thousands of blog posts, and I’ll stand by nearly every one of them. But there’s one towering exception. When Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace came out as transgender, I was so totally shocked and taken aback - the leader of one of my favorite bands is not ( Read more... )

Thus far in 2014, we’ve seen the release of two albums that I love enough to get enormously, unreasonably pissed off when people don’t like them: Against Me!’s Transgender Dysphoria Blues and YG’s My Krazy Life. (You can imagine how much I’m enjoying the comments section on my My Krazy Life Album Of The Week post.) The Target edition of YG’s album ( Read more... )

11. The Hold Steady, "Almost Everything ( Read more... )

3. Japandroids, "Continuous Thunder ( Read more... )

As little as five days ago, I was worried about this album, and I had plenty of cause to be. Rappers, for the most part, don’t make great major-label debuts anymore, and nobody much expects them to. They might make great mixtapes, but the actual album-release is where label expectations start to come into play, where bald crossover attempts are ( Read more... )

One great thing about great rap albums: They can lead to more great rap albums. When he made Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City in 2012, Kendrick Lamar changed things, showing it was possible to make a rap album with great sweep and ambition that still did all the satisfyingly grandiose things rap albums are supposed to do, and he sold a fuckload of records ( Read more... )