We’ve arrived at our ninth installment of this wonderful little series, which happens to land on a group that has recently (and amicably) disbanded. mewithoutYou developed a cult following early in their career with A to B: Life and Catch For Us The Foxes before 2006’s Brother, Sister turned them into key players in the indie-rock/post-hardcore scenes. As the band pushed into the latter years of their career, they delivered some of their strongest material with the apocalyptic Pale Horses and the emotionally unhinged [Untitled] LP. Throughout their existence, they always delivered music that meant something. Frontman Aaron Weiss wielded his pen masterfully for two decades, in the process curating a world that often felt like it blurred the line between the playfully imaginary and sobering reality. In a way celebrating the life of this poetic and emotive vessel, the staff here at Sputnikmusic have created a list of the ten best mewithoutYou songs. We hope you enjoy.
Welcome to our third installment for our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Tracklist:
The 1975 – “I’m in Love with You” Being Funny in a Foreign Language
I’m historically mixed on the results whenever The 1975 go straight at their default, somewhat-played ’80s pop throwback sound. For every instant classic like “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” there are a handful of overbaked, cloying cuts which end up with titles like “She’s American” and “She Way Out”. Thankfully, the genuinely adorable “I’m In Love With You” leans towards the quality of the former; an irresistible groove underpins a hook that I’d describe as repetitive if it wasn’t so lovable. “I’m In Love With You” is so cutesy you may feel your strings being yanked, especially watching the too-twee video with Matty Healy doing silent slapstick and a Phoebe Bridgers cameo — but if I’m gonna have good vibes force-fed to me, it may as well be via a…
Welcome back to the SputStaff Top 10, where we answer the music-related questions that keep you up at night. On today’s menu is Bon Iver, everyone’s favorite snowed-in log cabin dwelling acoustic guitar wielding vocoder falsetto warbler. You might remember the name from any number of mainstream pop artists who have featured him in their songs in a vain attempt to forcibly acquire indie cred (often stylized as “ft. Justin Vernon of BON IVER”). Vernon’s name has become virtually synonymous with the indie/folk genre, and he’s arguably one of the most popular and influential artists ever to grace that scene. Our staff decided to review his entire discography and enshrine his ten best songs to-date; no simple task but also one that we were excited to undertake. Scroll down to see the complete list (including five tracks that narrowly missed the cut) as well as a Spotify playlist where you can jam all of Bon Iver’s greatest songs in one place. Enjoy!
I’ve always been a huge fan of two things: playlists and nostalgia. Lo and behold, I present to you that point of intersection! Since I first became an avid consumer of music back in 2010, I’ve been secretly compiling “greatest hits” versions of each year I’ve been on Sputnikmusic (I’m not counting 2008 or 2009 because I was barely present). It’s a hobby, sure, but it’s also a superhighway to connect me to any given point in time within the last decade or so. It goes without saying that these installments will be subjective in every conceivable way, but I also think that listeners – particularly on this website – might get something out these posts because my taste in music is essentially a product of what I’ve discovered on Sputnikmusic. I invite you to click ‘play’ on my selective 25-song 2010 playlist and get whisked away to some twelve year old memories. Because it obviously will not be the same as your 2010 experience, I invite you to share your own favorite songs in the comments below. Thanks for listening!
The vast majority of the time, I don’t actually know if an album is going to leave a lasting impression when I first hear it (despite the many insta-5’s). There are LPs that seem immediate and others that feel like they’ll end up growing, but no matter how I feel about them initially, time is the only real measuring stick when it comes to determining a classic. With that said, there have been very, very few records (in fact, only two come to mind) that were so toweringand so unique that the second I laid ears upon them, I just knew. Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell was the first, and Swans’ The Seer was the second.In The Seer‘s case, it had such an impact on me because I’d literally never heard anything even remotely close to it in style or breadth. It demolished me upon first listen, leaving goosebumps on my skin and my jaw upon the floor. The second, third, and fourth listens yielded the same results. Now, ten years and countless listens later, my reaction to The Seer hasn’t changed one bit.
This is an unsettling experience that makes you feel like you’re living in an eerie post-apocalyptic realm: there’s witch incantations (‘Lunacy’), weird quiet laments (‘The Wolf’), sprawling 32-minute drone tracks (‘The Seer’), creepy-as-all-fuck borderline-industrial rockers (‘The Seer Returns’), the aching, creaking, churning wheels of hell (’93 Ave. B Blues’)…and that’s all before…
The best music appeals to us emotionally, which leads to future feelings of nostalgia. I’m not going to pretend that every album I’ve enjoyed has had this effect; Kid A, while indisputably and objectively better than any Yellowcard album, provides me no rose-tinted glimpses of the past even though I consider it to be one of the most groundbreaking records to come out in my lifetime. Perhaps that’s because it’s an inherently cold record, or maybe it’s because I was barely in middle school when it dropped. Musical nostalgia at its very best requires a precise blend of intangibles; where you are in your life, what kind of music you’re listening to, what happens to get released at that exact moment, and whether or not you encounter it. The stars must align perfectly. For me, only a few albums have struck such a chord – and among those, Yellowcard’s Southern Air tops them all.
As Southern Air turns ten years old today, I’m amazed by its ability to instantly transport me back to the most turbulent, yet amazing, year of my life. 2012 began as no picnic: my heart was left in shambles by a girlfriend who moved out of state with a fiance she never told me she had; my “career” had stalled at a dangerous and low-paying entry level position; my roommate and I were gradually drifting apart; my…
Greetings, and welcome back to Sputnik’s semi-famous “SputStaff Top 10” series, in which – and get this – our site’s staff members pick their favorite 10 somethings! In this case, we had Mastodon in our crosshairs, a natural progression from June’s feature on Taylor Swift. If you are brave enough for infallible truths, then dare to proceed below to witness the top 10 Mastodon songs of all time — but be sure to also stop by the honorable mentions section to see what barely missed the cut! If you’re new to Mastodon and are just looking to get your feet wet, you might scroll all the way to the bottom of this feature to locate our Spotify playlist, where you can find the ten best Mastodon tracks all in one place for your convenient consumption. Hold onto your hats, here we go!
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of July 29th, 2022. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
All discussion prompts submitted by the user nightbringer.
So far this year, we have implemented a handful of new, different ideas of our website’s staff blog — while some have predictably flamed out, others have endured and seem primed for a bright future. About four months ago, I surveyed our collective userbase for additional concepts, and this latest one came to us from nightbringer, who suggested all seven of the below discussion topics. We organized a small committee of writers (granitenotebook, JesperL, JohnnyoftheWell, and myself) to answer as we saw fit. In this first installment of what will hopefully be many, we observe the nature of music critique: from “what makes a classic” to how album art influences our perception of the music we hear. If you have questions you’d like to submit for future Sputnik Roundtable installments, please submit them here. Thanks, and we hope you enjoy the article!
(1) What are music reviews for?
Sowing: A music review is really just a persuasive argument. Yes, we critique the art based upon its objective merits as well as its subjective implications, but there’s a reason we don’t merely assign it a number and move on. The objective is to sell that opinion to the consumer and convince them that your take is the correct one. Why else would someone be reading – or thanks to YouTube – watching a music review? Outside…
Welcome to the second installment of our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here — or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Unsurprisingly, the eponymous third chapter from Long Island’s singular dissonant machine stands as one of the finest death metal albums to come out in the first half of 2022. The first single, “Celestial Cyst”, with its dense psychedelic(ish) slow-paced section, is not only Artificial Brain‘s most iconic moment, but also epitomizes its unforeseen emotional weight. –TheNotrap
Asian Glow – “Look Close, Nose the Reflection” Stalled Flutes, means
The biggest and bestest track on Asian Glow’s tangled knockout of a new album might just be the most impressive thing to come out of the whole of 5th wave emo. It is momentous; it is ambitious, perhaps a little too much so; it is maudlin yet you can almost dance to it; it has best bits and they don’t last forever. It’s
After four long years of inactivity, the SputStaff Top 10 is back! The staff at Sputnikmusic put their heads together and tried to come up with the most badass way to reboot the series, and, uh, the best we could muster was T-Swizzle. She knits sweaters, yo! Anyway she might be the biggest pop star in the entire world, and at just 32 years old, she already has quite the extensive catalog. If you’re anything like us, you’ve spent many sleepless nights tossing and turning in bed wondering what the top 10 Taylor Swift songs are. Thanks to our dedicated staff, you can finally put your mind at ease. We’ve done all the legwork, turned over every stone, and split every hair — so without further ado, I present to you the esteemed and irrefutably correct top 10 Taylor Swift tracks of all time.
Mason Maggio is a man of many talents. Currently he is the sole member of Souveneer, an indie-folk/rock project formed in 2016, but you might also know him as the lead singer from The Republic of Wolves and Tigers on Trains. I caught up with him recently on the progress of his new EP, the future of his other projects, and even his successful stint on Jeopardy.
In addition to the interview, Maggio has also granted Sputnikmusic exclusive early access to his upcoming song, “Evelyn”, which will be on his 2022 EP Sleep Study. “Evelyn” drops officially on Thursday, June 9th.
You can stream “Evelyn” below, as well as Sleep Study‘s two other already released tracks as you navigate through the interview.
Enjoy!
It’s been a while since we’ve caught up for an interview (2016, to be precise). A lot in the world has changed since then…how are you doing?
A very tough question to start things off! Overall I’ve been well. Without getting into major worldwide events, some of the main happenings in my life since 2016 have been moving from New York to LA, getting a dog, becoming obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, winning on Jeopardy, meeting/collaborating with some amazing songwriters, and growing enough as a musician and artist to fully embrace my solo project.
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of May 6th, 2022. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: May 6, 2022 –
!!!: Let It Be Blue
Genre: Indie-Rock/Post-Punk/Funk
Label: Warp
Arcade Fire: WE
Genre: Indie-Rock/Indie-Pop
Label: Columbia
AWOLNATION: My Echo, My Shadow, My Covers, and Me
Genre: Electronic/Indie-Pop
Label: Better Noise Music
Belle and Sebastian: A Bit of Previous
Genre: Indie-Pop/Indie-Folk
Label: Matador
Cosmic Putrefaction: Crepuscular Dirge For The Blessed Ones
Genre: Death Metal
Label: Profound Lore
Halestorm: Back From The Dead
Genre: Hard Rock/Pop Rock
Label: Atlantic
Haunter (USA-TX): Discarnate Ails
Genre: Death/Black Metal
Label: Profound Lore
Ibaraki: Rashomon
Genre: Black Metal/Metalcore/Heavy Metal
Label: Nuclear Blast
Artist Bio: Nick & Jeff Discover Infinity consists of two friends who met in September 2021 and began making music together with the goal of being adventurous and avoiding confinement to one genre or sound. Sometimes catchy and immediate, other times hypnotic and ethereal, there is always something unexpected around the corner. They are currently writing and recording their second full length album and a punk EP.
I caught up with Deathconscious about his musical project Nick & Jeff Discover Infinity: from the meaning of the band’s name and its origins to where they see their pursuit of infinity taking them.
The name of your band seems to perfectly encapsulate what the music entails. There’s a sense of raw exploration in your songs, and while one can’t always be sure of where they’ll arrive, they typically – at the very least – make for an interesting journey. What inspired your no-limits approach to making music? Was there anything specific (a novel, movie, etc) or are you both just dreamers? Also, are there any musical acts that influence/play a role in shaping your art?
Welcome to the first installment of our 2022 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here – or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Tracklist:
40 Watt Sun – Behind My Eyes
Approaching twelve minutes in length, and devoid of most “exciting” musical elements, “Behind My Eyes” isn’t for the faint of heart. For those of the right bent, though, it’s a gold mine. Hazy slowcore (and a touch of folk) reminiscent of golden age Kozelek imbues the listener with just the right blend of melancholy and warmth. Spin at the required moment, and this listening experience can approach the feeling of a religious epiphany. –Sunnyvale
Astral Tomb – Traversing the Wandering Star
I’ve been searching around for the right album to throw a little more attention at all afternoon, but I couldn’t exactly throw the twelve minute track alongside the bite-sized morsels on this list. Astral Tomb have a small, cult-like following and for good reason.…
![Blood Bank [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71Dh2pzab1L._AC_UY218_.jpg)
![22 (Over Soon) [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81V16uzmDML._AC_UY218_.jpg)
![The Hunter [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81C+m0hpvsL._AC_UY218_.jpg)
![Once More 'Round the Sun [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91Sol7lrRiL._AC_UY218_.jpg)
![folklore [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91PYDrG2ejL._AC_UY218_.jpg)
![folklore: the long pond studio sessions (from the Disney+ special) (deluxe edition) [Explicit]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71MnkZETNhL._AC_UY218_.jpg)
