Carrie Battan highlights a crop of singers, songwriters, and producers– including Sky Ferreira, Solange, Charli XCX, Dev Hynes, and Ariel Rechtshaid– who are exposing the cracks between indie and mainstream in our new feature, “A Small Pop”.
"I don’t think people talk about mental illness a lot, but they need to know it’s OK to talk about how they are feeling. People are afraid of telling the truth because they think it’s going to hurt everyone around them. I’ve kept so much inside that I’ve literally lost it. I wish more people would get help when they feel like they need it—not just to look to medicine, but to the support of others."
— Passion Pit’s Michael Angelakos opens up about his own mental health struggles in our feature “Rite of Passion”, by Larry Fitzmaurice.
Our new dynamic feature design debuts with “Rite of Passion”, Larry Fitzmaurice’s in-depth portrait of Passion Pit‘s brilliant and troubled braintrust, Michael Angelakos. Illustration by We Buy Your Kids.
After Volkswagen used a Beach House sound-alike in a recent commercial, Eric Harvey examines the modern relationship between pop and commerce in our latest feature: “Worn Copies”. Photoillustration by Michael Renaud.
"Little me’s. Like a small clone you could bring home and interact with and ask all your questions to, and then it would die. And you could bury it. It’s a human-connection item, and the outcome is ultimately up to you. But it’s going to die. The clone is cooler than me."
— El-P talks about his Dream Merch Table Item in the newest Guest List.
"Sometimes it’s good to grow a tough hide, but when I hear people say that they won’t get a dog because they had one when they were a kid and it died, or that they don’t want to fall in love because it hurts too much, I’m like, ‘fuck you.’ It pisses me off to think that we’re conditioned to push away bad feelings and to think that anything that’s uncomfortable is something to be avoided. When things are really bad nowadays, I recognize the value in it because it’s me filling my quota– it’s going to make my joy more intense later."
Fiona Apple talks to Carrie Battan in our latest feature interview. Illustration by Kareena Zerefos.
"There’s a difference between people who are born with that special thing and people who love the people who are born with that special thing so much that they want to try their best to get as close as they can to it. I don’t consider myself to be a very creative person. We have to work really, really hard to write a song we think is good. If you lock Jack White in a room with an acoustic guitar, he’s gonna come up with something great. If you don’t have that gift, you have to grind away– that’s more what our band does. The Replacements seem like a band where no one was born particularly great. They were just along for the ride and kind of accidentally came out with something incredibly powerful."
— Japandroids frontman Brian King in our latest feature interview.
"I would maintain that most of the gospel references in music– aside from gospel music plain and pure– have got little or nothing to do with the church. The church might say that as soon as you turn it into a popular-music thing, you devalue it. But in an odd way, it becomes so much more powerful. How can the church own music anyway?"
— Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce on his use of religious imagery in our latest 5-10-15-20 interview.
"When I started performing, there were certain issues that never came up when you looked at a girl in a band. But, without using any names, I do think that in 2011 there were setbacks to female imagery. We went backwards very briefly to a time period almost like the 80s. It was archaic. Like, ‘Why are we talking about this? This is so sexist.’ I just try to do what I believe in and think is strong. I don’t like wearing dresses on stage, because I’m not a girl. I’m a 30-year-old woman."
— Beach House’s Victoria Legrand
"If I send you my album can you please post a review of it with a 10.0? I’m trying to get this girl to date me and she’ll only go out with Pitchfork artists with a 7.0 or above. I figured if you give me a 10.0 it will seal the deal."
— We answer this reader email and many more in the latest edition of Inbox.
Eric Harvey discusses the posthumous record collections of J Dilla and John Peel– and what those legacies mean in the digital age– in his piece “Collecting History”.
My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields tells us about the twisty story behind his band’s forthcoming reissues in our latest feature interview. Photo by Steve Double.
Ian Cohen breaks down the good, the bad, and the holographic in our annual Coachella roundup. Photo by Chris Tuite.
