Buoyed by their first No. 1 U.K. album in 26 years, veteran rock outfit James will perform their beloved 1993 album Laid in its entirety for the first time on a fall North American tour, kicking off Sept. 3 in Atlanta. The trek will wind its way west before wrapping Oct. 5 in Vancouver. Sprinkled…
Suzanne Vega is solely responsible for why so many of my Gen X contemporaries named their firstborn “Luka,” after her 1987 song of the same name. When Vega joins me via video call, I share this anecdote with her, but she doesn’t seem impressed. “It’s a little early in the morning for me,” she says,…
Masked Swedish rock band Ghost became the first hard rock act in four-plus years to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with SKELETÁ (Loma Vista), which shifted 86,000 copies last week to far surpass albums by SZA, Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter. It’s the biggest opening-week haul for a rock, hard rock or…
For the man who once sang, “That was my ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris,” Oh Smokey may come across as a more mature affair. For almost two decades, Eef Barzelay (who often records under the moniker Clem Snide) has written mordantly funny songs that thread the needle between the heartbreaking and the profane….
The first time the members of Goose realized that some of their heroes noticed what they were doing happened one night on the road in 2019. They were in the van, driving overnight back home to Connecticut, as keyboardist Peter Anspach plugged his headphones into the Apple Music show Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig. More…
Lady Gaga drew an estimated 2.5 million fans last night (May 3) to a free show on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach, breaking Madonna’s record for the most-attended concert by a female artist in history set on at the same venue last year. The set list hued closely to what Gaga performed last month at…
Sabrina Teitelbaum, a.k.a. indie rock musician Blondshell, is a big Replacements fan. From her home in Los Angeles, she tells me that the song “Androgynous”—from the band’s seminal 1984 album Let It Be—was a really important song for her growing up. “I remember hearing it for the first time…especially as a queer kid…it was such…
Name Andy Bell More from Spin: R.E.M. Revisit ‘Radio Free Europe’ For New Benefit EP Pet Symmetry Goes ‘Big’ The Evolution of Blondshell Best known for Being the frontman for Erasure, for wearing stilettos and dresses, for forgetting the words. Current city London. Really want to be in I would be in Mallorca, it’s my fun palace, my…
Jazz guitar has always been a dynamic art form, adapting to new styles while staying rooted in tradition. From the early swing and bebop pioneers to today’s fusion innovators, guitarists have expanded the instrument’s role with complex harmonies, unconventional rhythms, and modern technology. Today, jazz guitarists face the challenge of honoring tradition while embracing new…
When Ed Sheeran unearthed dozens of 2015 gems from his old phone earlier this week — ahead of his aptly named new single, “Old Phone” — he included a handful of never-before-seen photos of Taylor Swift, whom he has been close friends with for more than a decade. Among the uploads of Swift — which include a…
