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On Nov. 6, 2019, riot grrrl band Bikini Kill announced a 2020 tour that includes a series of shows across the United States and Canada. Less than a week after the tour was announced, eight shows had sold out and several more dates were added to make room for the demand. This will be the first Bikini Kill tour in over 20 years, and in the time that they were gone, the band became the face and heart of the riot grrrl movement.
After much delay, genre–bending artist FKA twigs released MAGDALENE on Nov. 8, her first album in four years. Between MAGDALENE and her last album, M3LL155X EP, not only did twigs and now ex–fiancé Robert Pattinson break up, but she also had six fibroid tumors removed from her uterus last winter.
Although his name may sound unfamiliar, Joe Thornalley, aka Vegyn, has contributed to two of the most influential albums of the decade: Frank Ocean’s Endless and Blonde (2016). You won’t hear Vegyn’s vocals anywhere, but his electronic beats helped shape these two albums. In addition to his creative collaborations with Frank Ocean, he’s been a co–host on the artist’s blonded RADIO show.
It’s not abnormal these days to rise to stardom with a single video or TikTok. To then maintain that attention, however, is a more daunting task. On Nov. 7, Claire Cotrill, better known as Clairo, proved her successful artistic craftsmanship at her sold–out show at Union Transfer.
Quality over quantity. Jessie Ware has managed to make that the statement of her career. It doesn’t seem like she cares about the actual timeline between releases — rather, Ware wants to create music for herself. And at the end of her process, we're beyond grateful.
When someone asks me how I discover new bands, I inevitably draw a blank for a few moments. Sometimes it’s through the magic of Spotify’s Discover Weekly, or other playlists that are supposed to take the music I already enjoy and recommend similar artists—Daily Mixes, artist radio stations, curated playlists like Pollen and Global X. Other times, I stumble across an act at a festival that captures my attention, like Pkew Pkew Pkew at Chicago’s Riot Fest this year, or an opening act stays in my head long after the headliner, such as the enigma that is Joseph Keckler.
Last month, Frank Ocean released his single “DHL,” marking his first original track since dropping “Provider” in August 2017. This noteworthy release came just days after Frank Ocean announced he would be releasing two new singles, “Cayendo” and “Dear April” on vinyl through his website, Blonded.co. On his Youtube page, short clips were released of the two new singles being previewed at PrEP+, Frank’s new controversial queer nightclub in New York City.
HANA live–streamed the process behind her debut studio album, HANADRIEL, over four weeks on her Twitch channel. "Hanadriel," a portmanteau of HANA (real name Hana Pestle) and Galadriel (a character from the Lord of the Rings), is an apt title for the first full–length entry into the self–proclaimed "night elf songstress'" purple world of electro–pop and video game mysticism.
26–year–old alternative singer Matt Maeson brought his album to life at The Foundry on Nov. 2, 2019. Originating in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, Maeson was a songwriter long before being discovered by Neon Gold Records in 2016. As a kid, he learned both guitar and drums before touring as a part of his dad’s prison ministry, performing at maximum security penitentiaries. Eventually, he started to post his work to Soundcloud where he was discovered for his music and brought into the industry.
When building a discography, it can become tedious to fall into the cycle of producing a single cohesive project and releasing it, then moving onto the next. Such is the case for Cold War Kids, the alternative band hailing from Long Beach, California. Rather than repeating this pattern for their seventh studio album, the group has chosen to prolong the experience—splitting it up into three parts.
In 2008, NPR’s All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen and NPR music editor Stephen Thompson came back from a show frustrated that they couldn’t hear the concert over the noisy crowd. Thompson then joked that the musician should have just performed at Boilen’s desk at the NPR Music office in Washington D.C. Just a month later, Boilen arranged for the singer, Laura Gibson, to perform at his desk. Thus, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts was created.
With 58 subscribers on her Youtube channel and, until recently, two songs released, Grace Cummings is like a modern day cryptid. With limited public social media and no published interviews, she is a mystery to all. The little bit of information that you can find on a Google deep dive is that she's from Melbourne, Australia, and that it was announced that she was signed to Flightless Records at the end of October. Other than that, there's basically radio silence.
When I first saw Lula Wiles perform at World Cafe Live earlier this year, they made a point of the fact that no one in the band is named Lula Wiles. According to a video put together by their label Smithsonian Folkways, they used to go by their full names on stage (Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland, and Mali Obomsawin) but decided that was a mouthful. They went by The Wiles for some time, citing their own "feminine wiles," but when threatened with emails from another band with the same name, they added the Lula. This came from the Carter Family's "Lula Walls," a song about an "aggravating beauty, who, when the narrator asks her to marry him, she simply does not respond," recounts Mali.
Julia Jacklin didn’t always want to be a musician. Her most recent album, Crushing, has earned her six nominations for this year’s Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Music Awards, including Best Female Artist and Best Adult Contemporary Album.Even after years of working in music, though, Jacklin said to me over the phone, “It’s still strange to think of myself as being a musician for a living."
On Oct. 17, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Intersect, a festival that will take place on Dec. 6 and 7 at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. Described as a place where “music, technology, and art converge,” Intersect’s lineup brings together top musicians from across several genres with headliners Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Foo Fighters, and Anderson.Paak & The Free Nationals. In the days following the announcement of this festival, musicians expressed outrage over Amazon’s involvement in the music festival due the company’s contracts with companies such as Palantir that provide the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) with software and other forms of technical support.
On Oct. 20, 2019, Philadelphia local experimental rock band mewithoutYou announced via Facebook that 2020 would be their last year as an active band. As fans waited for more details to emerge, it was difficult not to draw comparisons to the recent breakup of local post–hardcore giants Balance and Composure, who performed their final show in May, and Modern Baseball, whose 2017 breakup was one of the first casualties of the emo revival. With three giants of the Philly scene falling in recent years, who will step up to take their place?
This past Halloween, fans of Angel Olsen filtered in to the Franklin Music Hall for what was promised to be a spooky night. Spider webs and ghosts were hung around the entrance, and the poster for the event featured a walking Jack O'Lantern in bold orange and purple. The night, however, hardly felt like the sort of Halloween bash that was advertised. Even disregarding this disappointment, it also failed to match the grandeur of Olsen's latest release, All Mirrors. The album brought new fans for its electronic elements and cinematic orchestral arrangements, but whatever passion that drove this sound could barely be found at her Halloween night set in Philadelphia.
On Oct. 30, famous pop singer Melanie Martinez came to Philly to perform her latest album K–12.
The latest news of the emo revival arrived not with a bang but with a whimper, in the form of a quiet Twitter and Instagram announcement from My Chemical Romance: tickets for a single show would go on sale on Friday, Nov. 1, 2019 at 12 p.m. PST (3 p.m. EST). The performance will take place on Dec. 20, 2019 at Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles, the band's first since their breakup in 2013. With so little information available, Killjoys and Members of the Black Parade are left wondering whether this is a flash in the pan, or if they have reason to fully unpack their black t–shirts and eyeliner that have been sitting in boxes for the past six years.
17 years ago, the first season finale of American Idol aired and amassed over 22 million viewers. The winner, Kelly Clarkson, not only received a record deal with RCA Records, but saw her name rise in charts months later with singles such as pop–rock anthem “Since U Been Gone.” With six top 10 hits by the end of 2005, she became the first true star to come out of a reality singing competition.
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