Patrick Lyons

We asked Geoff Rickly, Mike Shinoda, Frank Turner, and 11 other musicians to find out.

Yesterday, May 8th, marks the 40th anniversary of The Cure’s debut album, Three Imaginary Boys. Last Thursday, May 2nd, marked the 30th anniversary of their eighth, Disintegration. Nowadays, any band releasing eight albums over a 10-year period is an impressive enough feat, but The Cure aren’t just any run-of-the-mill band, and their first eight LPs aren’t just any run-of-the-mill albums. The fact that the Cure’s prolific early run neatly coincided with the start and finish of the 1980s illus...

Stephen Malkmus Finds Inspiration in Imitators, Not Innovators, on His Out-of-Character New Album
“[It comes from] this place of naiveté and lo-fi synth music that I guess is cheesy, but also adorable."
"I think a lot of us who are music fans, we eventually get exhausted of what we like," he tells WW by phone. The former Pavement frontman and longtime Portland resident cites late-'60s blues-rock supergroup Cream as an example. "Cream signifiers are worn out," he says, "and I just can't hear a...

In his 1991 novel, Mao II, the author Don DeLillo proposes that the end goal of modern terrorists’ is not merely overt violence, but the creation of unforgettable, traumatizing images: or as he calls them, “raids on the human consciousness.” On their new EP وين كنيت بي ١١​/​٩؟? (which translates to Where Were You on 9​/​11​?), NYC hardcore punk band Haram boldly repurpose an outline of the World Trade Center, which has become an infamous image of modern terrorism, on their cover.
“The cover o...

There’s a point in many young rappers’ lives when they become infatuated with MF DOOM. Joey Badass mined volumes of Special Herbs compilations for beats on his debut album. Milo scoured filesharing service Kazaa to find DOOM loosies in his pre-highschool years. Odd Future compatriots Tyler, The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt looked like toddlers meeting a mall Santa when they came face-to-mask with the rapper in 2013. DOOM’s left his metal fingerprints all over alternative-minded hip hop, and ha...

When Modest Mouse released their second album — on November 18, 1997; 20 years ago this Saturday — the Seattle area was in a state of flux. Described as “a region that still held remnants of the frontier and was known for little more than building airplanes and logging” by Michael Azerrad when setting the scene for Mudhoney’s late-’80s rise in his seminal book Our Band Could Be Your Life, the once-rugged Pacific Northwest was soon rendered unrecognizable not only by the grunge explosion, but ...

Interview with Dan Bejar about Destroyer's "Ken"

The culture icon breaks down his new Netflix doc, cannabis criminalization's relationship to music, and how Snoop Dogg "woke Dre up" when it came to embracing the sweet leaf.

Since adopting the Mount Eerie moniker almost 15 years ago, Phil Elverum’s mostly remained in the same place. In the early 2000s, he returned to his island hometown of Anacortes, Washington after spending five years in Olympia making music as the Microphones, and borrowed the name of the island’s tallest peak. Outside of tours and one winter spent in Norway, the small port town has been his near-constant home base.
Elverum’s music, on the other hand, never ceased to churn, distort, and evolve...

Step anywhere in contemporary hip-hop, and you’re bound to trip over some more Three 6 Mafia history...

Calling Bad Brains influential to late-20th century rock music is like calling Abraham influential to Western religion.

Noisem covered a lot of ground in their first three years of existence. Between 2013 and 2016, the Baltimore five-piece released their first two albums to widespread acclaim, opened for Carcass on Decibel Magazine’s annual tour, and in June 2016, announced that they had signed to metal mega-label Relapse Records. When the dust settled, only one member of the band was older than 21. With a new album set to be recorded later that summer, Noisem seemed unstoppable.
But although the band appeared...

There’s a lyric on Thou’s new album that sums up their 11-plus year existence pretty succinctly: “We are vast unknowable beings without the confines of your perception.”
That song, “Transcending Dualities,” is obviously not intended as meta-commentary about Thou. Vocalist Bryan Funck is specifically referring to the mercurial spectrums of gender and sexuality (“Our gender is disorder/ Our sexuality is transgression and transience,” are the ensuing lines). The ever-humble Funck might dispute t...

In working with seemingly every rapper that’s emerged from South Florida’s fertile SoundCloud rap scene, Miami-based producer Ronny J has built up a formidable resumé in the past two years—but isn’t yet a household name.
He’s a disrupter, someone who’s fundamentally changed the way popular, youthful rap sounds, but is still in the process of formally being inducted into “the industry.” Right now, Ronny seems to be on the brink of his red-hot local scene and the rap game at large, currently ma...

Oh my god, we found Kelly, and we interviewed her....