Issue 51

The Irresistible Wholesomeness of Brandon Flowers | 08

Influential Drum Beats in Modern Music | 31

northeastern students on music

BROCKHAMPTON | 43

No 51

Get Involved Want to become a Tastemaker?

Click get involved on tastemakersmag.com Snapped some awesome photos at a concert?

Email them to tastemakersphoto@gmail.com Heard an album that really got you thinking?

Send a review to tmreviews@gmail.com

Get More Can’t get enough? Check out more original content on tastemakersmag.com Become a fan on facebook at facebook.com/tastemakersmag Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/tastemakersmag Follow us on Instagram and add us on Snapchat: @tastemakersmag

Tastemakers Music Magazine 232 Curry Student Center 360 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115 tastemakersmag@gmail.com © 2018 tastemakers music magazine all rights reserved

E-Board President Rami McCarthy Editor-in-Chief Jason Levy Art Directors Colleen Curtis McKenna Shuster Promotions Director Hannah Crotty

Staff Features Editor Christopher Miller Reviews Editors Tim DiFazio Nikolas Greenwald Interviews Editor Jonathan Vayness Photo Director Lauren Scornavacca Social Media Directors Emily Harris Kristie Wong

The Team Staff Writers Akosa Amenichi Stacy Andryshak Allison Bako Spencer Bateman Joseph Bondi Terence Cawley Ryan Clark Justine Cowan Maya Dengel Rachel Ellis Isaac Feldberg Adrian Forrest Grant Foskett

Quinton Hubbell Zac Kerwin Vishal Makhijani Raquel Massoud Erin Merkel Joanna Moore Emmett Neidhart Taylor Piepenbrink Jonas Polin Seth Queeney Elena Sandell Matt Schüler Amanda Sturm Christian Triunfo Alex Trzaskowski Emma Turney Alexander Wetzel Sabrina Zhang Art & Design Alex Agahnia Jacqueline Arce Allison Bako Claudia Bracy Jamie D’Amato Natalie Duerr Brooke Dunahugh Ryan Fleischer Sarah Gomez Cammy Kuo Dan Mondschein Srilekha Nuli Bianca Rabbie Anna Smith Sara Trosky Christina Wysocki Promotions Ingrid Angulo Alexa Balint Sofia Benitez Julia Boll Roman Distefano Chyenne Dobine Emily English Fiona Gridley Spencer Haber Joey Handel Annina Hare Elisabeth Holliday Maura Intemann Katherine Isbell Cara Jones

Jenny Kang Sarah Keneipp Yun-Jae Lee Tiffany Li-Ah-Kim Morgan Mapstone Laura Masnato Isabelle Miele Patrick Milne Naqiya Motiwalla Maggie Navacruz Addy Pedro Taylor Poehlman Kylie Ponce Jane Slaughter Noah Sugden Photography Alex Agahnia Julia Aguam Catherine Argyrople Brian Bae Amanda Barr Deema Binmahi Nola Chen Jason Crouse Colleen Curtis Emily English Leila Habib Sebastian Herforth Katie Kettenring Abigail Manos Casey Martin Natalie McGowan Nupur Neogi Phi Dieu Hang Nguyen Hannah Osofsky Camden Phalen Rio Asch Phoenix Shannon Pires Nik Pousette Harger Alexandra Ramen Anushka Sagar Derek Schuster McKenna Shuster Rayven Tate Lydia Tavera Tyler Welsh Brandon Yap

Meet the Staff

About Jason Levy Position Editor-in-Chief Major Marketing Graduating 2019 Favorite Venue House of Blues Tastemaker Since Fall 2014

Emma Turney Position Staff Writer Major Communication Studies Graduating 2020 Favorite Venue The Fillmore (Philadelphia) Tastemaker Since Fall 2017

Grant Foskett Position Staff Writer Major Computer Science Graduating 2022 Favorite Venue Paradise Rock Club Tastemaker Since Fall 2017

Jonathan Vayness Position Interviews Editor Major Psychology Graduating 2019 Favorite Venue Brooklyn Steel, NYC Tastemaker Since Spring 2015

Listening to

AWOLNATION Here Come the Runts Billie Eilish “Copycat” Jinkx Monsoon “Cartoons and Vodka”

Charli XCX Pop 2 AWOLNATION “Table for One” Sufjan Stevens “Mystery of Love”

Charly Bliss Guppy Crying Beyond the Fleeting Gales

Quote

“I’ve never been in Meet the Staff, so I’m using my newfound power to do that”

“In 2007 Pitchfork called Tegan and Sara ‘tampon rock’ and I’m still not over it”

“Just walk away from the screen like you close your eyes haha”

BROCKHAMPTON Saturation II

Yo La Tengo “I’ll Be Around” The Fugees The Score St. Vincent MASSEDUCTION

“Young president Taft was on my mind that day”

Lauv, Brighton Music Hall

Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Industrial Engineering)

Table of Contents Cover Story

Editorials

Features

26

08

23

Peaceful Protest Through Music Ever realize how some protest songs can apply to different causes decades apart? Emma Turney takes a deeper dive into the world of protest music.

Reviews

14 41

Show Reviews

20 06 35

10

12

17 28

Jukebox the Ghost Colleen Curtis talks to Tommy Siegel about inprovised setlists, Queen, and what’s next.

Calendar Local Photos

Where’s My Snare?

You’re so vain you probably think this article is about you.

Swing in Hip-Hop A hard feeling to pin down, “swing” has been omnipresent in hip-hop as long as we can remember, and we certainly aren’t complaining.

Local Talent

30

31 43

For the Love of Art: The Controversial Use of Terminology in Hip-Hop Some call it immature, others offensive, but what is the impact of certain words and lyrics hip-hop artists use today?

Trinidad Cardona Elena Sandell sits down with new artist Trinidad Cardona on the excitement of a first tour, going viral, and “love and acceptance.”

The 25th Anniversary of Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We In memory of the late Dolores O’Riordan, a look at an album that both influenced and inspired.

Tiny Moving Parts, Mom Jeans., Oso Oso, Mykki Ekko, & Trinidad Cardona.

Interviews

18

His boyish charm is more than meets the eye. Just why are we so fascinated with The Killers’ frontman?

Album Reviews Eminem, cupcakKe, AWOLNATION & No Age.

The Irresistible Wholesomeness of Brandon Flowers

Mini Dresses Join Justine Cowan as she chats with new, unique local Mass band Mini Dresses

Bootleg to Peg-legged From low-res live concert filming to Napster to today, just what is streaming’s role in the bootlegged music scene?

A Musical Backbone Everything you wanted to know and more about the history and theory of drumbeats and drum samples. Strap in.

BROCKHAMPTON “The best boy band since One Direction” is the newest craze since… well One Direction. We take a closer look at just what each of these 14 boys has to offer.

Etcetera

34

In Defense Of

46

Discography

50

Just A Taste of

Jaden Smith’s Syre.

Fall Out Boy has come a long way since cork trees and arms races.

Thnks Fr Th Mmrs guys.

Lowell’s The Shirts and Shoes.

Calendar March Su

Sa

1

2

3 Lights Paradise Rock Club

4

5

6

Weird Al Yankovic Wilbur Theater

11

7

Alice Cooper Wang Theater

12

13

8

9

Titus Andronicus The Sinclair

10 Judah and the Lion House of Blues

14

15

16

17

Moose Blood Royale

Dropkick Murphys House of Blues

Dropkick Murphys House of Blues

Dropkick Murphys House of Blues

MGMT Orpheum Theater

18

19

20

Dropkick Murphys House of Blues

Miguel House of Blues

21

22

23

k.d. Lang Orpheum Theater

24 Billie Eilish Paradise Rock Club

G-Eazy Agganis Arena

25

26

27

28

Dan Auerbach House of Blues

Rockommends

29

30

Wild Child The Sinclair

Dashboard Confessional House of Blues

31

Lights March 3 @ Paradise Rock Club

Titus Andronicus March 8 @ Sinclair

Hot off her latest concept album Skin&Earth, Lights is hitting Paradise Rock big and boldly. Expect anthemic kiss-offs like “Savage” and “Up We Go” to get the crowd going, and some slow burning acoustic numbers like “Cactus in the Valley” to mellow out the gang vocals from the crowd.

What happens when Jersey’s rabble-rousing sons, a mere week after the release of their new album A Productive Cough, unplug their guitars for an “acoustic”(quotation marks theirs) tour? Only one way to find out, I suppose. Plus, Rick Maguire from Pile is opening, so it’s your duty as a supporter of local music to attend.

Jason Levy (Marketing) Terence Cawley (Biology)

April

you can view the calendar online at: http://tastemakersmag.com/calendar

Su

Sa

1

8

15

2

3

4

5

Bon Jovi TD Garden

Lorde TD Garden

Justin Timberlake TD Garden

Justin Timberlake TD Garden

9

10

11

12

Franz Ferdinand House of Blues

Dead Horses Café 939

Buckethead Wilbur Theater

17

18

19

16

Rodriguez Wilbur Theater

22

Ministry Royale

23

24

Andrew McMahon Paradise Rock Club

29

30

Turnover The Sinclair

Unknown Mortal Orchestra Royale

6

7

13

14

20

21

Buffalo Tom Paradise Rock Club

25

26

27

28

Echosmith Royale

They Might Be Giants House of Blues

Turnover The Sinclair

Lorde April 3 @ TD Garden

Turnover April 28-29 @ Sinclair

Lorde is all grown up from her days of teenage iconoclasm, and she’s ready to show it to the world.

After being denied a Grammy’s performance, she tweeted “IF YOU’RE DEBATING WHETHER OR NOT I CAN MURDER A STAGE... COME SEE IT FOR URSELF”. Here’s the chance to see her make good on that promise.

Given the likelihood that Boston will remain an unforgiving frozen tundra for the next few months, pile into the Sinclair and pretend it’s summer with the warm, breezy hooks of Good Nature, Turnover’s latest effort, at one of their upcoming headlining shows.

For those who may need to let off some post-finals steam first, Philly punk openers Mannequin Pussy have you covered.

Justine Cowan (Marketing)

Nikolas Greenwald (Engineering)

the irresistible wholesomeness of Editorial

brandon flowers Designer: Claudia Bracy (Graphic Design)

In the summer of 2013, Nevada altrock band The Killers played their largest crowd at Wembely Stadium in England.

In a clever amalgamation of some of their greatest hits, the band’s commanding front man Brandon Flowers sang, “The devil’s water and the good old days / Ain’t we all just runaways?” In this seemingly effortless display of blending lyrics, Flowers was able to showcase various points of the band’s career to his audience. For over a decade now, The Killers have produced a ubiquitous collection of hits from every one of their albums, ranging from international breakout pop-sensations like “Mr. Brightside” and “When You Were Young” to more recent, stadium-sized rock anthems like “Runaways” and “The Man.” Through these tracks, The Killers, guided by the earnest disposition of Brandon Flowers, have secured their fame without any overt publicity stunts.

In an interview with VEVO last October following the band’s most recent album release, Flowers himself admitted that while many of the band’s earlier role models had “more of an arc to their careers,” their debut release Hot Fuss immediately brought the band fame and success. The rise to fame Flowers refers to, considered to be so bizarre yet so exceptional, was the result of an inaugural record that brought the band instant platinum status, three Grammy nominations and numerous awards and accolades before even recording their sophomore work. With the launch of their fifth studio record Wonderful Wonderful 14 years later, they’ve begun yet another year of sold out stadium shows and headlining slots at festivals across the globe. The success of The Killers has become ostensibly impenetrable, and it seems as though the alluring charisma of Flowers himself is what helped bring The Killers to where they are.

Killers, guided by “The the earnest disposition of

Spring 2018

8

Brandon Flowers, have secured their fame without any underhanded stunts.

”

Brandon Flowers never expected the success of his band to take off in the way it has today, if at all. As a Las Vegas native, Flowers frequently draws on the backdrop of his hometown of Henderson, Nevada, as well as his longstanding relationship with his wife and the intersection of all these facets with his Mormon faith as settings for his music. Allusions to this upbringing and environment are found across The Killers’ discography: from the deeply personal, high-concept album Sam’s Town to the desert rock scenery from 2008 single “A Dustland Fairytale,” Brandon Flowers work is never seen without the selfexamination of returning to a place of devotion. Ultimately, with every record both with The Killers and his solo work, Flowers is able to forge a sense of nostalgia for his listeners to a location they may’ve never even visited.

Further adding to Flowers’ pure image is his outward commitment to his Mormon faith. Flowers has admitted his faith is the reason for his abstinence from alcohol, drugs and even swearing.

Flowers shared with GQ last year the difficulty of the “pressure to be a ‘rock star,’” alluding to the genre’s relationship to drugs and booze-fueled afterparties.

That said, without passing judgment on his contemporaries who’d spent larger parts of their careers experimenting with

various substances, Brandon Flowers justified his stance by simply adding that “he was never fully drawn to [the lifestyle].” Resisting the temptations of the rock culture The Killers quickly became a significant part of, Flowers still managed to maintain his commitments and religious values.

As the lead author of every single song released by The Killers, Flowers carries an impressive ability to construct a consistent landscape of roadside horizons and bleak starry nights all set in the same paradoxically glamorous yet desolate twostar town. Though each record from The Killers manages to display its own distinct character, recurrent themes of remorse, desertion and an embrace of perseverance crystallize the group’s discography.

These subjects, combined with frequent references to faith, lust and Flowers’ background, once again evince Flowers’ candor in his songwriting. Even more notably, no show by The Killers is without the western-rock showman-meets-greaser attire Brandon Flowers routinely dons.

These revelations expose an almost conservative bent to Flowers and his songwriting; his ability to conjure up a dust land scenery swept in the American West, while deeply recognizable with the experiences of much of his audience and followers, encompasses only a portion of the American experience (something Flowers even accepts in his reference to a “white trash county kiss” in “A Dustland Fairytale”). In this respect, Brandon Flowers excels at his own form of storytelling.

The music Brandon Flowers puts out is by no means perfect. Occasionally themes do run dry, an admission Flowers himself makes on their recent record’s closing track “Have All The Songs Been Written?” on which he acknowledges the seemingly stale nature of their repetitive topics. That said, following their sold out show at Wembley in 2013, The Killers were deservedly able to announce they’ve shared a stage with the likes of Madonna, George Michael, U2 and Coldplay. As far as an American rock band so brazen in its songwriting, The Killers, and Brandon Flowers, have earned their places as stars of their genre.

• Vishal Makhijani (Politics, Philosophy, & Economics)

9

The 25th Anniversary of Editorial

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

by The Cranberries

First, we must take a moment to mourn the passing of Dolores O’Riordan. There is simply no other way this article can start.

As lead singer of The Cranberries, O’Riordan was responsible for some of the most beautiful music of the ‘90s alt-rock era. The Emerald Isle has produced plenty of rock stars, but none have sounded as unapologetically Irish, or achieved such astonishing levels of international success, as O’Riordan. That shiver-inducing lilt suffused every word she sang with an enchanting, melodic sweetness, even when she was screaming with rage or wailing in pain.

For such an extraordinary voice to have fallen silent so prematurely is truly unfortunate.

Of course, it’s easy to get so caught up in praising O’Riordan’s vocal talents that one shortchanges her abilities as a songwriter. Even the warmest obituaries have tended to focus on a handful of The Cranberries’ signature songs, while treating the albums that housed Spring 2018

10

those songs as mere afterthoughts. Sure, The Cranberries were a killer singles band; few of their peers have a greatest-hits album as consistently enjoyable and full of actual hits as Stars: The Best of 1992-2002. But listeners who go no deeper than “Linger,” “Dreams,” and “Zombie” are missing a debut album which, despite selling over five million copies and launching The Cranberries to superstardom 25 years ago, still feels like an unsung masterpiece: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

What stands out most about Everybody is its impeccable sense of atmosphere. The Cranberries made no effort to hide their love of The Smiths, even inviting the comparison by hiring Smiths producer Stephen Street, and on Everybody they evoke that band’s gift for shimmering, nocturnal introspection. Imagine a version of The Queen is Dead where every song is in the style of “I Know It’s Over” or “Never Had No One Ever” and you’re on the right track. Though lead guitarist

production is crisp and clean, the songs are conventionally structured three to four-minute pop confections and the shoegaze-y guitars and surrealist lyrics of dream-pop’s druggier wing are conveniently absent.

Not that any of that makes Everybody any less of a charmingly ethereal experience, and even if The Cranberries failed to inspire a Nirvanascale radio takeover from their fellow dream-poppers, I’d wager that more than a few of the countless indie bands currently weaving gossamer tapestries of sound heard this record at an impressionable age and still carry its lessons in their bones.

The mark of a truly great album, as far as I’m concerned, is its ability to impact the lives of those who hear it, and by that metric Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? is an absolute classic. I’ve loved The Cranberries for as long I’ve loved music, if not longer. My parents had one of those 5 million CD copies of Everybody, and songs like “I Still Do” and “Linger” gave me my first taste of an emotional world far deeper, sadder and lovelier than I could have possibly fathomed at the time. I don’t remember exactly when I decided that Everybody was the perfect sleep aid, but I have countless fond memories of using it for that purpose on long bus rides and insomniac nights in strange dorm rooms - hell, I fell asleep to this album once at a high school cross country meet, curled up in the corner of a tent, a backpack for my pillow. No matter where I find myself, Everybody can make me feel at home. I can’t possibly thank Dolores O’Riordan enough for that.

Designer: Ryan Fleischer (Business Administration & Interaction Design)

Noel Hogan’s gleaming arpeggios and jangly strumming reflect a deep study of Johnny Marr, O’Riordan’s distinct vocal presence and the band’s commitment to mood keep the record from devolving into mere hero worship.

Where Morrissey waggishly pokes fun at his own sad-sack tendencies, O’Riordan played the adolescent emotions at the core of Everybody completely straight, honoring the confusion, malaise and occasional joys of youth as worthy of serious attention. When the album came out, O’Riordan was only 22, young enough to have not completely outgrown her teenage feelings yet old enough to look back on those years with some degree of wistfulness and regret. Her lyrics string together simple, vague phrases which offer various perspectives on a single theme: the exquisite frustration of realizing that, no matter how much the object of your affection confounds you, your feelings for said object of affection are bound to confound you even more.

Luckily for O’Riordan, her bandmates are there to provide the perfect soundtrack for every stage of the emotional rollercoaster, whether it’s the giddy head-rush of falling in love (“Dreams”), the bitter indignation of betrayal (“How”), or the total dejection of heartbreak (“Put Me Down”).

Here’s a theory: Everybody is the dream-pop Nevermind. Just as Nirvana’s breakthrough album brought a thriving underground scene to the attention of a larger audience, The Cranberries took an aesthetic that had previously flourished on indie labels like 4AD and proved it could withstand the harsh light of the mainstream. Sure, there had been the occasional fluke hit from college-rock darlings like The Cure and The Sundays, but this was something else entirely. To an extent, Everybody sounds engineered for just such a breakthrough; Street’s

“The Emerald Isle has produced plenty of rock stars, but none have sounded as unapologetically Irish”

• Terence Cawley (Biology)

11

Editorial

* &$# *&$#@ #!*@*$ #!*@*$ * &$# $#@!* ! cont r ov ersial * &$#@ $#@ #!*@*$ USE OF TERMINOLOGY IN THE *&$#@ *&$#@ #!*@ *&$# #!*@*$ hiphop indu st ry $#@!* !

W $#@ * &$#@ #!*@*$ $#@!*! #com *&$#@ #!*@*$ *&$# #!*@*$ $#@!*! *&$# * &$#@ #!*@*$ $#@ *&$#@ #!*@ #!*@*$ $#@!*! * &$# * &$#@ #!*@*$ $#@!

Designers: Jamie D’Amato (Communications Studies & Graphic Design) and McKenna Shuster (Interaction Design)

Spring 2018

12

e see the continuous trend of using controversial terminology in the music industry. This use has been criticized and called “inappropriate” by many. However, we have to ask ourselves why these artists choose to include these words in their music. Music is a form of art. Does this mean that artistic expression should justify the use of controversial terminology? We often see this trend in hip-hop, a genre revered for its revolutionary power. Some hip-hop artists are famous for expressing their opinions and sharing their world views within their music. Many sing or rap about poverty, race, and sexuality, using their lyrics to spread powerful messages. Honesty is a necessity for artists to truly express themselves with their music, but the debate over discriminatory terms is still ongoing.

SZA released her first album, Ctrl, earlier this year, and it has since been certified gold. The album received extensive critical acclaim and was praised for spotlighting discussions of female sexuality in an increasingly technological world. In the past year, SZA and her music have been launched into the spotlight, through songs like “What Lovers Do” by Maroon 5. In addition, she was nominated for five Grammy Awards, including “Best New Artist.” Two of her songs, “The Weekend” and “Love Galore,” have been certified platinum. However,

one song’s prolific use of the word “pussy” could potentially be seen as problematic. Though SZA is not the first artist to use this word, the song could be criticized for its vulgar content. In “Doves in the Wind,” this word was used 28 times, eight by SZA herself and 20 by featured artist Kendrick Lamar. Although there are different connotations that are drawn from a man using the word compared to a woman, it is important to note that since it is SZA’s song, there must be a reason behind the prolific use of the word.

To the displeasure of many American feminists, the use of the word “pussy” is still very common. In a milder context, it refers to genitalia or sex. It can be used to describe someone who is weak or cowardly, implying that female genitalia somehow cause a lack of physical and emotional strength. Some use it as a synonym for “woman,” literally defining women as what’s between their legs.

Because of these connotations, it’s not surprising that many take offense at the term.

In “Doves in the Wind,” SZA uses this word to describe the role sex has in relationships, even proclaiming that the song was dedicated to vaginas. Drawing a connection to “Forrest Gump,” she sings that “you deserve the whole box of chocolates,” describing how

#!*@*$ #@ $#@!*! * &$#@ #@ #!*@*$ #!*@*$ $#@!* ! @!*! * #!*@*$ * &$#@ @*$ #@ *&$#@ $# #!*@*$ @!*! $#@!*! * &$#@ * me!*@*$ #!*@*$ #@ *&$#@ * &$#@ #@ #!*@*$ # $#@!* ! @!*! * & * &$#@ #!*@*$ @*$ #!*@*$ #@ *&$#@ #!*@*$ # $#@!*! !*! there’s more to relationships than the physical aspect. Women are more than just a part; “You can never trivialize pussy.” She stated in a radio interview for The Breakfast Club that “there’s a lot more that I can give you besides pussy that can build you.” Because of the use of technology in dating, the concept of relationships has shifted from long-term relationships to instant gratification and casual hookups.

SZA uses lyricism and repetition to describe how many modern relationships lack emotional meaning and how we deserve love.

Many women view this song as a reminder that they are worth more than a one-night stand. Women throughout the country rally behind her and the meanings behind her songs, which focus on lust, love, self-worth, and many other issues that plague young women. Here, SZA turns a previously derogatory term into an expression of female empowerment. However, other artists, such as Tyler, the Creator, have also been reprimanded for their discourse.

Although the Odd Future founder’s first album, Goblin, received acclaim, it also received criticism for its 213 uses of the word “faggot” and other anti-gay lyrics. These kinds of lyrics have existed in hip-hop culture for years because of rampant homophobia. However, this practice has changed in recent years as artists shifted their messages to target social problems and away from derogatory lyrics. We see this trend country-wide, yet the problem hasn’t been eradicated; many LGBTQ+ youth still face discrimination and deal with prevalent heteronormativity. This is precisely why Tyler, the Creator’s rhetoric could be seen as hurtful.

We must wonder why Tyler decided to use this word so frequently and brazenly. His conceivably hurtful lyrics have gotten him banned from the UK and Australia; however, he is adamant about supporting gay rights. He called Australians “dicks” for not legalizing gay marriage, and was one of the first to openly support Frank Ocean when he revealed that he had been romantically involved with a man.

When asked if he wanted an openly gay hip-hop artist, he responded “yes, but why does that shit matter?” His rhetoric outside of music contrasts with his anti-gay lyrics, begging the question of how he justifies those lyrics.

He has been questioned about this in many interviews, each time providing a different answer. When asked why he uses so much gay humor, Tyler said it was “because I’m gay as fuck.” He said in another interview that “[Frank Ocean]’s gay and he doesn’t care, because he knows me and he knows that when I say that word I am not thinking of someone’s sexual orientation or anything, it’s just another word that has no meaning.” Many feel that these justifications aren’t enough, because that word still carries a very specific, hurtful meaning. Tyler agrees. He thinks that “faggot hits and hurts people. It hits.” However, his choice to use this term was likely not malicious, but a form of

artistic expression. The use of this word could potentially show his growth as an artist. Some believe that he used this word because he was struggling with his identity, and throughout his music and over time, he started to move past using it. The fact that he doesn’t use it on Flower Boy supports this idea, that his previous uses of the word were made out of provocation. Others believe that his use of this word was meant to subtly establish a message about himself and sexuality in society.

This created a dialogue about Tyler, the Creator and his lyrics.

There is no denying the rumors circulating over Tyler’s sexuality.

Tyler’s use of derogatory language caused many to wonder how he could justify these terms, and concluded that there was a message he wanted to relay through his music. People have interpreted the words to his song “Garden Shed” as a coming out. He describes a “garden shed for the garcons” (meaning “boys” in French) that hold “them feelings that I was guardin’.” His lyrics reflect struggles that LGBTQ+ youth deal with daily. He sings that “truth is, since a young kid, thought it was a phase … But, it’s still going on.” His references to experimentation and personal discovery make it possible that Tyler was trying to come out to his fans. He has continually tweeted pictures of attractive men, and even stated in one interview that “[his] friends are so used to [him] being gay they don’t even care.” Yet, when asked, he has continuously denied or ignored the question.

Truthfully, it doesn’t matter whether Tyler, the Creator is gay. With his lyrics and celebrity, he takes important steps to discuss queerness and homosexuality. His open celebration of male attractiveness is unheard of for male hip-hop artists, who typically try to protect their masculine image. He has sung about dating men and struggles about sexuality, which bring a lot of these problems into the spotlight. He highlights the fluidity of modern America and inadvertently calls out media categorization of artists by refusing to discuss his sexuality.

Instead of sticking to static binaries, he focuses on creating a third, undefined road.

It’s true that these words are hurtful in many contexts. Yet for SZA and Tyler, the Creator, the messages they want to proliferate justify their use of derogatory terms. Using their platform to discuss social issues and their perspectives, these artists want their lyrics to hold the power of poetry, to resonate with a population. But, can artists create the same effect without these controversial terms? For these two specific artists, these terms were necessary to strengthen their message and strike a chord in their listeners.

• Sabrina Zhang (International Affairs & Political Science)

13

Album Reviews Eminem

10

Revival 9 Released December 15 Label Aftermath/Shady/Interscope Genre Hip-hop Tasty Tracks “Framed,” “Castle,” “Arose” Reviews Spring 2018

14

Before 8:05 P.M. on October 10th, 2017, Eminem had gone nearly unheard of since his 2013 release of the sentimentally driven Marshall Mathers LP2. Then, in characteristically unpredictable fashion, Eminem unleashed a scathing cypher directed at Donald Trump and his supporters during the annual BET Hip-Hop Awards. Later dubbed as “The Storm,” the cypher soon became one of the most viral moments from 2017, as Eminem famously exclaimed that you can’t be a fan of his and support Donald Trump. Eminem capitalized on his revitalized buzz to announce his new album, Revival, the climax to his three-part album series, including the critic-abhorred yet radio-adored Relapse and Recovery.

The anticipation for Revival began to slow with the release of the single, “Untouchable.” Despite lyrics full of razorsharp social commentary on America’s racial disparities, it fell on deaf ears. This is likely because most sane listeners would have turned off the track once hearing Eminem’s shrill voice scream over a choppy and repetitive sample from Cheech and Chong’s “Earache My Eye.” Hopeful anticipation of the first classic Eminem record since The Eminem Show quickly transitioned into nervous curiosity.

Two weeks before the release, the nervous curiosity transitioned into anxious apprehension once the track list for Revival was released. Over the last decade, critics and the hip-hop community alike have passionately detested Eminem’s infamous pop-rap radio hits, including the Diamondcertified Rihanna collaborations, “Love the Way You Lie” and “The Monster.” For some unknown reason the public believed Eminem had moved past these perceived lapses. Unfortunately, Revival’s track list revealed Eminem had only doubled down on his pop rap formula. The album features an overwhelming supply of pop singers to take hold of the choruses. It includes: P!nk, Kehlani, Alicia Keys, Skylar Grey, Beyonce, X Ambassadors, and even Ed Sheeran. Only the

8 7 6 5 4

Rotten

3 2 1

most faithful Eminem fans were still holding out hope Eminem would have something hidden up his sleeves on Revival.

Unfortunately, these hopes were short lived as there were no surprises once Revival released. The pop choruses were even more buttery and unlistenable than could’ve ever been predicted, from Alicia Keys’ eye-poppingly overdramatic hook on “Like Home,” to the two-minute long extended chorus sung by P!nk in the beginning of the unfinished-sounding, “Needed Me.” The Ed Sheeran featured track, “River,” is made to be the “Love the Way You Lie” radio hit on Revival, and it has a high likelihood of achieving its destiny given Ed Sheeran’s current trendiness.

Beyond the pop-rap songs on the album, there are also a number of painfully unfunny “goofy” tracks scattered throughout the album. This includes the “I Love Rock and Roll” sampling, “Remind Me,” which Eminem exclaims, “Your booty is heavy-duty like diarrhea.” The song “Offended” is also surprisingly inoffensive in its lyrical content, but more offensive in the nursery rhymelike chorus repeated Eminem four times throughout the track.

On a positive note, the last two tracks on the album couldn’t be any more satisfying. “Castle” is made up of a collection of letters Eminem wrote to his daughter, Hailie, throughout different stages of his career. The raw emotion and masterful storytelling by Eminem evoke flashbacks to one of the greatest songs of his career, “Stan.” Then, in “Arose,” Eminem plays ‘What If?’ with a letter he wrote when he was battling drug addiction. It’s a truly heart-wrenching rap ballad, sung from the perspective of his deathbed had he not overcome his prescription drug addictions.

In the final seconds of the track and album Eminem reflects on the events that actually took place. He takes his pill bottles out of his bathroom cupboard and dumps them into the toilet. He then flushes the toilet.

Despite these two strong final tracks, you can’t help but think there couldn’t be a more fitting end for Revival than listening to a flushing toilet.

Sean Stewart (Entrepreneurship)

9 8 7

Fresh

6 5 4 3 2 1

cupcakKe Ephorize Released January 5 Label Self-released Genre Hip-hop Tasty Tracks “Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” “Cartoons,” “Duck Duck Goose” It’s taken just over two years for Elizabeth Harris, known by her stage name cupcakKe, to go from orchestrating hypersexualized viral videos to selling out multiple nationwide tours, playing festivals like Lollapalooza, and raking in her first million dollars.

Ephorize marks Harris’ first endeavor since migrating from thriving online stardom to a more mainstream audience, thanks to collaborations with pop’s greatest outsourcer, CharliXCX. With this transition comes the promise of a certain artistic development, and it’s clear that cupcakKe does her best to cope with this. If there’s one thing that is representative of a cupcakKe album, it’s ambitiousness, for better and for worse.

There is nothing that’s truly revolutionary about Ephorize. The hallmarks of Harris’ career are all present. Goofy one-liners like “This that ‘bout to f*ck you longer than a limousine p*ssy,” show up on the hilariously fun track “Duck Duck Goose” that resembles the ones that originally put her in the public eye. On “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” she shows a glimpse of her more confrontational side, coupled with her choice of aggressive trap beats. Songs like

“2 Minutes” and “Total” give us the melodic, introspective cupcakKe that hardcore fans have fallen in love with over the course of her last 4 albums.

Where Ephorize shows real growth is less in structure or lyricism, but in production and musicality. Harris has clearly harnessed her craft and demonstrates new, refreshing flows that are uncharacteristic of her previously stiffer deliveries. The second verse of “Cartoons” is so ferociously delivered with such a seamless cadence that it’s hard to believe that this is the same artist who seemingly tripped over her verses two years ago. The quality of samples and vocal processing on the album shows a marked change since even cupcakKe’s last LP released just over a year ago. Tracks sound fuller and the vocals sit better in the mix than ever, making Ephorize easily the most listenable cupcakKe album.

Ephorize also struggles with some of the problems cupcakKe has wrestled with on previous albums. It’s clear that Elizabeth Harris wants to tackle everything, from wild sex to social justice (“Crayons”) to emotional vulnerability (“Exit”) and identity (“Self Interview”.) In trying to do so, Ephorize’s message becomes diluted, and it’s difficult to follow the narrative Harris wants to pursue, besides being unapologetically herself.

It’s clear that cupcakKe raised her selfexpectations on Ephorize. The 20-year-old gone internet celebrity is clearly still coping with her newfound fame, abandoning her Twitter account twice in the past year after receiving negative messages. Ephorize is the manifestation of both her self-expectations and those of her widened audience, and it’s clear she’s striving to appease everyone while keeping true to her own audacious brand.

While it shows some growth, where Ephorize really succeeds is showing that cupcakKe is still learning and growing, and that her next releases will likely continue to top each other.

Nikolas Greenwald (Chemical Engineering)

10 9 8 7

Fresh

6 5 4 3 2 1

Designer: Dan Mondshein (Interaction Design)

10

AWOLNATION Here Come the Runts Released February 2 Label Red Bull Records Genre Alternative rock Tasty Tracks “Handyman,” “Table for One,” “Seven Sticks of Dynamite” When I was 15 years old, I saw AWOLNATION for my first time at the Philadelphia music festival, Made in America.

I fell in love with their eccentric, almost random style of music. The brain behind the band, Aaron Bruno is a mystifying person.

It seems as if his music is a stream of his constant thoughts. Their new 2018 album, Here Come the Runts, is no exception. With a variety of lyrical themes and genre choices, Here Come the Runts, is by far the most bewildering album from the band to date.

What this third album from the band shows is that Bruno is truly an artist in every sense of the word: a creative risk taker.

When Bruno takes off on weird tangents of his personality, he reaches a place his music hasn’t gone before: however polarizing as it may be. The hip hop song “Sound System Witness” begins with a strange rap from Bruno to the tune of the bazooka bubble gum song with the witty lyrics, “she wants to add a friend and I’m a gifted mathematician.”

I don’t think this song establishes Bruno with

15

Reviews

a new successful career in rap, but it is interesting enough for a listen. These abnormalities are a common theme throughout the album as Bruno plays with all sorts of unconventional sounds and lyrics. The opening track “Here Come the Runts” is a driving force of guitar that sounds like a galloping horse with repeating lyrics introducing the overall theme of the album: being the underdog. Bruno gets even more bizarre with the lyrics on “Cannonball.” Most of the song is him repeating the line, “shoot like a cannonball/f*ck like an animal.” The peculiar choices of sound and lyrics these few songs on the album are almost laughable but for some reason that quality isn’t the worst thing ever.

The moments in which Bruno recognizes both the mainstream and the unconventionality of his music is when he reaches his fullest potential. Bruno brings back his self-deprecating mood on “Jealous Buffoon,” which tells the story of him second guessing love. The contrast of his harder voice on the verses with his lighter falsetto on the chorus sounds beautifully sad. The melody over the line “I never think I’ll ever get used to your body” is as catchy as AWOLNATION gets on this album. One of the promotional singles for the album, “Handyman” has the potential to have wide success with the most toned down sound on the entire album. It’s written honestly, with Bruno admitting to his own weaknesses. The nostalgia of the song sounds like it could be on a movie soundtrack. However, everything comes full circle on “Table for One.” It’s by far the most emotionally vulnerable Bruno gets. His emotions are shown through how he uses his voice in different ways throughout the song, contrasting belting on the chorus with softly pleading for his summer fling not to end on the verses.

Here Come the Runts seems as if it is Aaron Bruno’s unaltered stream of consciousness. Although, AWOLNATION’s past two albums were similar in that effect, this one feels different because it the most adventurous Bruno has gotten with genre and lyrical choices. Although not every song on the album was a complete success, Bruno’s artistic choices should be respected for their ability to create something refreshingly new.

Emma Turney (Communication Studies)

Spring 2018

16

No Age

10

Snakes Like a Haircut

9 8

Released January 26 Label Drag City Genre Punk/indie rock Tasty Tracks “Stuck in the Charger,” “Tidal,” “Squashed” No Age’s rise to indie acclaim has had at least as much to do with what the L.A. twopiece represents as it does with their actual music. With their commitment to upholding DIY ethics, fostering local music scenes, and demanding total artistic freedom, No Age have become a sort of Platonic ideal for post-“Our Band Could Be Your Life” punk rock, steadfast in their devotion to a set of principles which in the new millennium are frequently romanticized but rarely practiced.

Of course, none of this would matter if they didn’t bring the goods musically, and Snares Like a Haircut, their first new album in five years, absolutely delivers on that front.

At first glance, No Age’s setup looks so simple it borders on puritanical: Randy Randall plays guitar, Dean Spunt drums and sings, and together they bash out adrenalinefueled punk jams. Yet No Age distinguish themselves from the pack with their love of noise- not for its aggravating or repelling properties, but for the near-infinite range of textures and atmospheres it can conjure.

The term “dream-punk” has been used to describe the band’s fusion of three-chord urgency and shoegaze-style feedback blankets, and the most anthemic tracks on Snares Like a Haircut find No Age continuing to reap the rewards of that potent blend.

“Cruise Control” and “Stuck in the Changer” start the record with a bracing one-two punch, while “Tidal” barrels along with gleeful, mosh-inciting abandon.

Swirling ambient drones provide Snares Like a Haircut with its overarching sonic motif, appearing most prominently in the instrumental title track but also providing intros for several of the album’s rockers. The lyrics reinforce this feeling of foggy-headed meditation, as Spunt expresses feelings of

Fresh

7 6 5 4 3 2 1

restlessness or dissatisfaction in the most abstract possible terms, his voice often mixed so low it threatens to recede into the murk. Even when the influence of alt-rock godfathers like Ramones, Dinosaur Jr. and Nirvana becomes more prominent over the record’s second half (“Soft Collar Fad,” for instance, shares an opening riff with “Been a Son”), these canonical touchstones are fully absorbed into No Age’s hazy worldview.

Near the end of Snares Like a Haircut, there’s a relaxed, mid-tempo track called “Squashed.” It’s by far the album’s most lyrically direct song, as Spunt alternates brief character sketches by declaring: “I’ve got some reasons/I feel lucky to believe.” It’s a fittingly humble mantra for a band that, having outlived their blog-buzz moment, just sounds happy to be making records on their own terms for a small but loyal audience.

Snares Like a Haircut is an expert distillation of everything No Age does well, combining head-in-the-clouds soundscapes with indiepunk uplift to create a sound as comfortingly familiar as it is intriguingly alien.

Terence Cawley (Biology)

Where’s my Snare?

When I think of breaking the fourth wall, the first thing that comes to mind is Ferris Bueller slyly explaining to me how to fool my parents into letting me stay home from school. Deliberately acknowledging the audience, breaking the façade that the characters we’re watching don’t know they’re being watched, is a technique that’s long been employed in film, TV and theater. It creates a relationship between the audience and the characters – Ferris Bueller’s my friend, he’s talking to me. Interestingly, musicians use this technique as well, if slightly less intuitively. By writing lyrics that pull the listener out of the song and into the real world, or giving us a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the process, artists break the barrier between themselves and the listener in a way that creates a more direct channel between them and us –forming an intimacy that adds to the listening experience.

It’s a not hard to see how a play or movie can break the fourth wall. For songs however (an invisible entity without so much as one

– Frankie Cosmos

measly wall), examples help. In the song “Outside with the Cuties” by Frankie Cosmos, a song already cloaked in vulnerability, Cosmos sings “I haven’t finished this song yet, will you help me fix it?” When Cosmos sings that line, she’s broken a threshold.

Unlike a movie, where we all buy in to the suspension of disbelief that we’re supposed to act like we’re not watching a movie, we don’t pretend we’re not listening to songs.

And yet, we have this ingrained assumption that songs are fully completed vignettes.

When I listen to a song like “Piano Man” by Billy Joel, sure I hear a guy using the first person, but really I feel like I’m listening to a character. I don’t think of real life Billy Joel sitting at a piano working out the chords. This perception of songs as final pieces of art is so

and waving and “ Smiling looking so fine, don’t think you knew you were in this song.

– David Bowie

Rap music has some especially interesting instances of fourth wall breaking.

On Eminem’s “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” the first line of the verse is, “Have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have.”

Now, even though this first real lyric is a rhetorical question to the listener, it still feels like part of an end product, one that we’re listening to but in which we’re not really involved. Rap verses themselves are delivered directly to us and often come from the emcee in more concrete terms than, say, a folk song, but they don’t break the fourth wall. This is similar to seeing a stand up comedian: you know they’re actually performing an act, not having a one-way conversation about what happens to be on their mind that also happens to be funny.

On “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” however, there’s a line before the verse that does break that barrier. The track actually opens with Eminem asking, “Where’s my snare? I have no snare in my headphones” to some anonymous sound person. By letting us in on the process, Eminem gives us a glimpse of the fact that before launching into his anger-filled tirade against his mom, dad, and self he’s just a man in a studio. You may have

have no snare in my “ Iheadphones.”

– Eminem

heard other rappers do this kind of thing, saying something like “turn the beat up in my headphones” before actually starting their verses (like Biggie Smalls on “Who Shot Ya” – “turn the mic up, yeah the beat is knockin’”).

It serves the same purpose, to humanize the artist and create a connection with the listener that feels more personal. So when Eminem goes on to rap about his mom, it’s easier to empathize, or when a rapper’s verse is a bombastic show of wealth, it cues us in to the fact that they know when they’re just flexing, and we don’t need to take everything so seriously.

The time is come, the song is “ over, thought I’d something more to say.

– Pink Floyd

When a song breaks the 4th wall, there’s a sort of crystallizing second when, as the listener, you get pulled out of the medium, out of your own head and into the exact place where the artist wants you. This moment of heightened connection with the artist changes our perception of what we’re listening to in a unique way. The next time you hear an artist break the fourth wall, step back and think about how it’s changed the way you listen to their music.

• Jonathan Vayness (Psychology & Economics)

Designer: Brooke Dunahugh (Studio Art)

I haven’t finished this song “ yet.

Will you help me fix it?”

deeply embedded that we don’t even know it’s there until an artist is clever enough to prove it to us by breaking the fourth wall – like Cosmos does. And much like film, not only does this lyric force us to reconcile with the medium, it creates a closeness – Ferris Bueller is my friend, Frankie Cosmos is opening up to me.

the mic up, yeah the beat “ Turn is knockin’” – Biggie Smalls

17

Interview Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): So, this your first tour? Congratulations!

That must be so exciting. How are you feeling about it so far?

Designer: Jackie Arce (Experience Design)

Spring 2018

18

Trinidad Cardona (TC): Yeah it is! This is the sixth or seventh show on the tour tonight actually. Honestly, it’s starting to get like clockwork.

But I’m loving it (laughs).

TC: Everything’s been so fun. I love getting to travel and see all these different places because I’ve never been anywhere over here [on the East Coast]. All these places I’m going to is pretty much my first time, except for New York and Atlanta. Besides that I hate road trips dude, so it’s been interesting.

TMM: Oh no, well you get to warm up to it right? It’s a great experience.

TMM: What has been the highlight right now as you’re getting into the grind of touring?

TC: That’s kinda hard to pinpoint because it’s a really repetitive thing.

A lot of the fun is behind the scenes getting to know these guys (points to crew) the DJ, assistant manager, manager, two dancers... everybody’s working on stuff the whole time.

TMM: Do you like being on the road so far? Has it been a positive experience getting to showcase your songs live?

TC: Well, it is my career now so…

TMM: You actually went viral off of Facebook with a video of you singing part of your single ‘Jennifer.’ How did you get in contact with Island and why did you choose to work with them?

TC: My old business partner actually ended up connecting the dots.

As soon as I met Island it was instantaneous I was gonna go with them, everything got done really quickly.

TMM: What differentiated them from the other companies that reached out to you?

TC: The fact that they had a smaller team was really cool and they were in the pop world, so they didn’t have anything too urban. When I went over there I kinda got them to pay a little more attention to me.

That setup also helps me become a better songwriter because pop songwriters got the top songs in the world and that’s what I’m aiming for.

TMM: So you’re definitely looking to go more mainstream urban, rather than say, the alternative urban realm?

TC: I mean, yeah that’s mostly the goal, but man, I wanna do everything! I got songs in Spanish, slow songs, fast songs, songs about mamas...

TMM: In terms of songwriting, have you gone into different sessions with a lot of songwriters recently? Are there specific people you’re writing with that you’re vibing with yet or just exploring your sound?

TC: All the above. I usually write all my own songs but I’m never mad at collaborating with other people. When it comes to my raps, no one can write my raps. But with the singing portions I’m always open. I’ve been working with some top hitters and they’ve been teaching me little tips and tricks along the way.

TMM: Gotta get those pop hooks...

TC: (laughs) Exactly, very necessary.

TMM: So since you graduated from high school, you launched straight into a music career and that’s pretty epic but I’m sure also a bit overwhelming. Have you looked towards people like Khalid who had a similar path where so much attention was on the music almost overnight? Have you been able to kinda watch what they’ve been doing with their career?

TC: Yeah of course, my songwriting has improved a lot and with time it’s going to become easier to say what I need to say. It’s all gonna be spoken through the music, but actions speak louder than words, so along with the music comes action.

TMM: I think that’s almost more important than the songs themselves too...

TC: The music just gives me a voice for the platform. I was actually at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. yesterday hanging out in the crowd, playing around with the drummers and stuff — it was super fun.

I’ve never seen that many people in my life.

TMM: It’s definitely important because artists have such influence over young audiences, especially their female fans, so I love to hear it.

TC: There’s just too much ratchetness out there…

TMM: In terms of what’s coming next, are there label mates or peopleyou have your eye on to collaborate with or are you primarily focusing on yourself?

TC: As of now, really just focusing on me but there’s always people I want to work with. Even when it comes down to people on the label, like Shawn Mendes ... imagine me and Shawn Mendes on a track.

Or Fall Out Boy ... I wanna work with anybody, like I said I wanna do everything! Anybody who wants to work with me, lets do it.

TMM: I feel like it would be cool for you to write with Shawn and see what would come out of that...

TC: What if I make Shawn rap, I wanna make him rap!

TMM: You should! That should be the plan. You guys can switch spots and you can take over his guitar...

TC: (laughs) I can’t play instruments so I think they might notice.

TC: Yes and no, because I can sit there and try to pinpoint what they’ve been doing and see if I can get that blue print, but at the end of the day I don’t move by myself anymore. I move with an entire team and they honestly know better than I do. I’m just some kid who had a viral Facebook video so I put my trust in the label and let them do what they have to do. I’m just taking notes and trying to see what’s going on with the label.

TMM: I stumbled across an article where you said you were working to promote ‘love and acceptance’ through your music, is there a specific way you want to target it? Do you feel more inclined to incorporate that into music in the future?

TMM: For Trinidad, what does the future look like right now? Should we expect an EP, singles, a full album?

TC: On February 2nd we have my next single, “Dinero,” coming out. The crowd reaction to that has been amazing. Crazy to the point where we have money guns that have fake money with my face we shoot at the crowd. We definitely want something to happen this year.

• Elena Sandell (English & Communications)

19

Interview

An interview with

JUKEBOX THE GHOST In the three years since their self-titled album was released, Jukebox the Ghost say they’ve had time to “chill.” But their chill standards must be different than ours, since all three members have somehow managed to juggle solo projects alongside writing and producing another Jukebox the Ghost album. Tastemakers Magazine sat down with guitarist Tommy Siegel and talked about Queen, an unnamed upcoming album, and how best to troll fans.

Spring 2018

20

Photo by Colleen Curtis (Graphic Design) See more photos at tastemakersmag.com

Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): You live here, in Brooklyn, right?

What’s it like to play a show here?

Tommy Siegel (TS): Yes, all three of us live here. It’s so wonderfully convenient. I mean, Jesse and I both live like a ten minute walk from here, and our practice space is a three minute walk from here, so it’s just glorious. Like today, when we loaded in, I realized I forgot my bass, and it was like, ‘oh whatever, I’ll just go walk over and get it.’ I mean, at any other show it would be a disaster moment. We love playing hometown shows. It’s so nice to play a show and then sleep in your own bed, and not have to drive six hours the next morning, you know?

So it’s great.

TMM: Cool, cool. I’ve actually seen your show — last March, in Boston at the Paradise. You have a great stage presence, it was so fun.

going into it, we probably had 75 demos that were fleshed out — they weren’t half-assed demos or anything. So we had a lot of material to work with. So if some power that be was like, ‘hey, you have to release another record next year’, it would be very easy. And we’ve had time for other side stuff. Jesse’s made a couple of his own solo records, I think he’s only released a couple of EPs, but he has some other stuff waiting. I’ve been working on Narc Twain off and on, and also have a solo record waiting in the wings. Ben’s been doing some piano improv stuff — we’ve all been keeping busy.

TMM: Yeah, I was actually going to ask you about that too. How do you guys do all of that? Was it just in the last three years that you’ve had more time for all of it?

TMM: I was hoping you would say that — I was trying to figure it out.

TS: Yeah, really the last three years. I mean, I’ve had a couple side projects that have been going for like a decade now, but yeah, the last three years have been more us as individuals becoming producers on our own. So now we’re all pretty good engineers and mixers. A lot of this record, for the first time, has a lot of our own production on it, and a lot of stuff that we recorded, which we’ve never done before.

TS: Yeah! Half of it’s from the Philly show a week later, I think. But the first half especially is from that Boston show.

TMM: Is that something you’d always wanted to do, or have talked continuing about moving forward?

TMM: I remember you had a wheel that you used to figure out which song you were going to play next. Is that something you still incorporate?

TS: I feel like I got shoehorned into it, but I’m so glad I did. I always kind of viewed myself as like, I write the songs, and then I know other people who are good at recording, and I’d just pay them. And then all of a sudden I just realized, no, I know what I want, and it’s not as hard as I think it is. I think we all had that realization at the same time, so we’ve all just kind of become little home studio junkies.

TS: That was actually when we came out with a live record, and the bulk of it is from that one particular show.

TS: Well, not tonight, but on our fall tour we did a Wheel of Queen. So we put a bunch of Queen songs on the wheel, and then for the encore we’d just spin it and play whatever it landed on.

TMM: How much do you plan out each show, versus what you improvise with things like the wheel?

TS: I think we’re divided in the band as far as control freaks and wanting to play loose. Jesse would be happy playing the exact same setlist every night, and I really like playing different stuff each night so I don’t feel like a robot. But the great thing about the wheel is that it gives us a neutral external arbiter of what we play, that Jesse and I can both agree on. It introduces that sort of random chance that makes playing shows fun. I used to write out every setlist on a tour and make them a little different, especially if they were a couple of hours away from each other and we thought there might be people coming to both. But nowadays we let the wheel do the talking.

TMM: That’s awesome. So, I read that you play over 150 concerts a year?

TS: That was historically true. For the last three years that’s not been true, but hoping that next year’s one of those years again.

TMM: How does that impact your ability to work on new songs, or new projects?

TMM: You’ve said that the self-titled Jukebox the Ghost record is the most like who you are as a band. Can you talk about what that meant to you, and how you got there?

TS: God, it feels like so long ago now — you know, I don’t know if I can back that up anymore, because every record is like where we are. So the new record that is coming out in the spring I think is the truest to us, as kind of the whole spectrum of our career. It has the sort of brevity and pop tricks of our most recent record, but it’s got some of the wackiness and outlandishness of our first record. So it feels like a culmination - like we now have done both; the pendulum has swung both ways. We’ve hung out on the super pop zone, and we’ve hung out in the weird college band zone, and now it’s like, we’re not afraid to be weird and we’re not afraid to be poppy.

TMM: So how you define yourselves has definitely changed over time?

TS: Well, it’s amazing what a wide spectrum of stuff we write.

Sometimes a record is like where we all meet in the middle. This recent record we were very inspired by Queen. So it ended up that a lot of the songs that we picked for the record are the ones that kind of had that sort of retro flavor to them.

TS: Well, the last three years have been really chill, so we’ve had a lot of time for all sorts of stuff. As far as Jukebox goes, we’ve never spent this long on a record, ever. I mean, we recorded 15 songs, but

21

TMM: How did you guys kind of pick up on your shared love of Queen?

How did you start HalloQueen?

Interview

TS: We actually were asked by a friend of ours to cover a Queen song for his wedding, as his wedding band, and we played it. It was “Somebody to Love”. It was the first Queen cover we ever did, and we were like, ‘hey, we can do this.’ Jesse kind of came up with the idea - he was like, ‘what if we did a Halloween show as HalloQueen?’ And then we just put the show on the books, and didn’t know any Queen songs before we booked it, but then after we booked it, we just started doing our homework, figured it out.

TS: Yeah, it doesn’t feel like we are maxed out on that concept. It feels like we have a few records in us that would be in that vein and I wouldn’t get tired of it.

TMM: So that’s inspired the new album, which we’ll see in the spring?

TS: Yes — we don’t have a release date yet but new music in January, album later in the spring.

TMM: What was the process for the new album like?

TMM: How do you choose what cities get to hear HalloQueen every year?

TS: It’s tricky — I would love to do like a national HalloQueen tour, but it’s very taxing on all of us, particularly Ben. You know, Freddie Mercury did not have an easy job, and that’s a lot of singing — a lot of very aggressive, high singing. So if we do it, we have to have a day off in between every single show. This year was the first time we flew to do it, and I think we’d do that again. Hopefully next year we’ll expand it to a full couple weeks or something. That would be fun.

TMM: Can you speak to any similarities you might find when playing Queen songs? How do you think about your own music after having the experience of playing as a different band?

TS: Yeah, I mean, we’re very different people and songwriters, and we’ve never really agreed on what we should sound like. What’s great about Queen is that we all love Queen. And now that we’ve all really dove deep into learning those songs, they’ve become kind of like our spirit band, if that’s such a thing, which is great. So for the new record, we used that as a reference a lot of the time. That was useful because we’ve never had that sort of band - that one single band that we could all kind of point to and be like, ‘we want to sound like that’. And I don’t know if people will actually say the new record sounds like Queen, but it emboldened us to make weirder choices. What’s great about Queen is that they’re very catchy, and they’re insane. And their songs don’t make any sense, but they’re still super catchy, so I think what we took from that is you don’t have to be cookie cutter in order to make pop songs. You can still be weird, and be who you are.

Designer: Colleen Curtis (Graphic Design) Spring 2018

22

TMM: That’s a really cool theme to have, moving forward.

TS: It’s just so long — I mean, this is the first record we’ve done since we were in college without a label, which meant that we self-funded it, which is an interesting thing, because then you end up just being really cheap about it. We did some of it with some producers who were sort of working in more unusual ways than just handing somebody money — they get a percentage of writing and that kind of stuff. There’s a few different producers on the record, which we hadn’t done before. But the bulk of it we did in Brooklyn, at a studio called Studio G. TMM: That’s nearby, too?

TS: Mmm-hmm. And there’s two guys, Gary Atturio, and Chris Cubeta, who were the main producers on the record.

TMM: So you have a huge fanbase, and you’ve had some fun kind of trolling fans sometimes, with things like “Hava Nagila”. Can you tell me a bit about what that’s like?

TS: I’m just thinking it’s amazing how many of our gags as a band have come from doing weddings. That’s the only reason we were playing “Hava Nagila”, is because we had a friend’s wedding coming up, and so we were playing “Hava Nagila” and we thought it’d be funny to livestream. I don’t know, I think we’re always struggling to find a way to make social media work for us, because we know what it was like to be a band without it, and social media kind of sucks, and it’s annoying.

A lot of it can be so cloying and self-promoting and narcissistic, and you’re kind of shoehorned into doing that as a band, because that’s what everyone does. So we just like to find ways — it’s just more who we actually are, and who we actually are is we want to troll people and play “Hava Nagila” for a half hour.

TMM: I know we’ve already touched on this a bit, but what’s next for you guys, after this spring?

TS: New record, tour, all the stuff that comes with a new record. So, 2018’s going to be busier.

TMM: Break a leg! I was wondering if you could draw something tasty for Tastemakers Magazine? Whatever you want to interpret that as.

TS: Absolutely. Wow, okay. Tasty.

• Colleen Curtis (Graphic Design)

Bootleg to Peg-legged the Battle for Stolen Content A

side from Urban Outfitters’ affinity for vinyl, it’s pretty clear that the way we consume music has changed drastically over the past five decades. Along with the medium, the level of access has changed, and so has the definition of exclusivity. Throughout the history of recorded music, whether records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs or streaming, one issue has prevailed without successful intervention from the industry: stolen music. And while this problem has plagued every player in the music industry for decades, the motive of fans and the goal of the endeavor has changed drastically. From bootleg recordings to pirated streaming, has this problem been tapered at all? And how has the “why” changed?

A factor that should not be ignored is the genres of music most likely to be stolen. There is an apparent pattern in that newer, less established genres are more often traded illicitly, and the prevailing reason is access. The issue of accessibility to upcoming and often controversial genres really came to light in the ‘50s and ‘60s with the popularity of national radio. The beginnings of what we now know as rock ‘n’ roll was known as “black music,” and it was hard to come by.

However, young people across the country demanded this music, and certain disc jockeys, most notably Alan Freed, went against the grain and played it anyway. It was so rare and exciting for young people of all walks of life in America to experience this exclusive content together at only certain times of day. But as things constantly change, the acceptance that this was the only way to hear popular music did too.

23

Designer: Natalie Duerr (Interaction Design)

Feature Spring 2018

24

Records and record players allowed the average person to enjoy their favorite music on demand. But still, consumers had to search stores and find certain distributors for highly-demanded and controversial rock ‘n’ roll. The first major breakthrough in solving this bottleneck was the tape recorder. The ability to record radio and records completely changed the scope of music distribution. And as music technology advanced in the ‘70s, compact recording devices became available to the general public in the form of the cassette tape recorder. Live music was all the rage and sneaking these small recording devices into rock shows was a badge of honor.

This was all lots of fun—but what about record companies? It’s obvious they would not be fans of people ripping off their recordings to share and sell on their own. Recording devices were strictly prohibited at live shows and technically illegal for recorded albums as well. But in reality, was bootlegging so bad? The rarity and exclusivity attached to owning bootlegged content seems more like a crowdsourced marketing campaign for record labels and their artists. One band name is probably burning in your head during this discourse—the Grateful Dead. No other band treated fan-recorded music quite like they did. Instead of banning recording devices from their shows, they encouraged it, roping off areas to the side specifically for it. Live recordings became a crux of the Dead’s fandom. Deadheads traded

shows like baseball cards, with some more valuable than others. It was genius—there’s nothing music fans love more than feeling like an insider.

ability to record radio “ The and records completely changed the scope of music distribution.

”

Another important genre to discuss is rap. As hip-hop culture swept the nation in the late ‘80s, owning recordings of certain DJ sets was like finding gold. Conversely, DJs hunted for and traded rare records amongst themselves to spin. Like fans of the Grateful Dead, fans of DJs and hip-hop built an entire culture around these live bootleg-recorded shows. In fact, this culture even built a subindustry of bootleg labels, including Kiss the Stones, Great Dane and E Street. Kiss the Stones even worked out of Italy to avoid legality issues but was eventually shut down. A huge shortcoming of the bootleg phenomena was the limited reach due to physical copying and shipping, and eventually new music consumption mediums took precedence yet again.

The ’90s were all about the CD. And here’s where we see a huge shift in the motives behind bootlegging and when it started to look much more like piracy. Something extremely important to note is that the CD was the first medium in consumer history where music was stored in a digital, rather than analog, format. Along with an improved quality of sound and changing taste in music, it brought a shift in preference to polished recorded albums. The pop industry was absolutely thriving, and music fans were too, because burning CDs was even easier and faster than recording cassette tapes. But CDs weren’t about exclusivity or being a diehard fan—they were about easy access. They marked the beginning of this mass digital distribution of music, so anyone could get it. No matter how few copies of a recorded album were made, people could simply burn it and distribute it at will with impressive sound quality.

Perhaps the most significant influence of the CD was the bridge it created for MP3 compression and file sharing. Services like Napster that were popularized in the late 90s and early 2000s had almost no work to do—all they did was upload and rip music from CDs. This is where the music industry really lost control—something had to change, or they would continue to lose money and experience massive piracy on all releases. Gone were the days of an exclusive underground community of hardcore fans. This was easy access, all the time no matter what. Still, the most targeted genres were those of up-andcoming popularity: certain pop artists, and especially punk rock and hip hop. Profits stagnated as fans abandoned purchasing albums and opted for free digital versions. The future looked bleak.

Luckily, the development of aboveboard streaming services like iTunes and Spotify absolutely helped to taper the problem of piracy, but it did not stop it by any means. Its first iteration, the pay per song/ album model, was massively successful, but technology was still not good enough to stop file sharing. YouTube-to-MP3 nearly felt legal

because people did it so much. It was rampant and happening among just about everyone with access to a computer. It became difficult for the music industry to even market or promote albums because as soon as one person got their hands on it, everyone had it. Apple’s status and connections helped it to make important partnerships with artists and labels and began to reintroduce the concept of exclusivity into music sharing. However, it still wasn’t built to last.

Fast-forward, and Spotify’s freemium subscription model was a huge game changer. Listen to music for free with ads, or opt for a paid subscription. It was a win-win, keeping music sharing both legal and affordable. We all know what happened next — other players followed

“

YouTube-to-MP3 nearly felt legal because people did it so much.

”

suit, Apple Music and Tidal being the most notable. The content wars that these streaming services created, which targeted specific artists and releases, completely flipped the battle of access v. exclusivity in music distribution. Now, if you’re ripping music online and opting out of paid services, you’re more likely getting less content than you would if you were paying. Technology has gotten a lot better at restricting access, but it is still incredibly easy to steal music with only mild inconvenience.

However, things are starting to come full circle, as diehard fans try much harder to gain access to restricted content than casual listeners.

It seems as if people will do anything to get their hands on an album.

So whether it’s your extra-rare Grateful Dead cassette tape, or your shady Dropbox MP3 of Lemonade, we all find a way. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about the music.

• Joanna Moore (Business Administration & Finance)

25

Cover Story Spring 2018

26

Even if you haven’t paid attention to American politics in the past, it was physically impossible to avoid the seemingly never-ending blunders of our 45th president and his administration in 2017. The issues facing everyday Americans seeped their way into every corner of society. People in the United States have a long history of using music and art to move people, to organize communities and to advocate for those whose voices aren’t heard. As our political landscape shifts, so does the art that defines every generation.

But one thing that will continue to be true is that artists will always use their voices to protest for what they believe is right.

We have seen the rise and fall in protest music for decades in the United States.

The music Americans listened to during the Civil Rights era and the anti-war era shaped society similarly to how the music we now listen to in the wake of Trump’s presidency will shape our society. The common theme among protest music across decades is the artists’ ability to give a voice to the voiceless.

It’s impossible to talk about protest music without mentioning the king of protest music himself: Bob Dylan. One of the most ambiguous but rightfully moving anthems Dylan created was “Blowin in the Wind” in 1963. The song poses many rhetorical questions surrounding freedom, war and peace. He brushes off these questions by saying the answers are “blowin’ in the wind.” The vagueness of that statement has allowed this song to transcend generations: the answers are so clear, they are right in front of you in the wind. Along with being used during the civil rights movement, “Blowin in the Wind” was adopted by those who opposed the Vietnam war and the Iraq war.

Designers: Jamie D’Amato (Communications Studies & Graphic Design) and McKenna Shuster (Interaction Design)

Shortly after the release of “Blowin in the Wind,” Sam Cooke was inspired by Dylan to create one of the biggest anthems of the Civil Rights Movement, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Although many of the song’s lyrics are inspired by real events in Cooke’s life surrounding racism, it continues to have a lasting impact today. Cooke related to so many people of the ‘60s and today because he emphasized the importance of hope and resilience. Lyrics like “there have Now a year into Donald Trump’s The video ... became an been times that I anthem for the modern day presidency, we have seen a rise in thought I couldn’t protest music discussing a range of feminist movement, but it last for long/but social issues from women’s rights now I think I’m able can be interpreted as an to racial inequality. Immediately to carry on” spoke anthem for anyone who feels following the inauguration of Trump, to a generation of MILCK premiered her song “Quiet”

Rap has been a genre with a rich their voice isn’t valued. oppressed people. at the Women’s March in D.C., which history of addressing anger over politics.

The song continued was the largest single day protest Similar to the Bush era protest anthem to inspire people when Betty LaVette in U.S. history. Along with a choir of other “Mosh” from Eminem, Joey Bada$$ and Jon Bon Jovi performed it at the first women, MILCK sang what many women released a full album in 2017 that tackles inaugural concert for President Obama. were feeling that day: “I can’t keep quiet/ social issues in America now, appropriately

7 years later, Marvin Gaye released for anyone/anymore.” The video titled /All Amerikkkan the title track from his 11th album, /What’s of the women singing it at the Even as music styles change, Bada$$/. The stand Going On/. The song was inspired by protest gained popularity on out track from the societal issues continue to several social issues Gaye saw happening Twitter and became an anthem album, “LAND OF THE build upon each other making FREE,” doesn’t hide in the world around him including police for the modern day feminist brutality and the opposition to the Vietnam movement, but it can be how Joey Bada$$ Joey Bada$S$ seem like a war. The events of the ‘70s are portrayed interpreted as an anthem for feels about the current 2018 Bob Dylan. through lyrics like, “you see, war is not anyone who feels their voice administration. He the answer/for only love can conquer isn’t valued. sounds hopeful at the beginning of the hate.” Gaye sings of the importance of love

One of the most inspiring anthems song with lyrics like “can’t change the and understanding in a time of political that has emerged in 2017 came from pop world unless we change ourselves/die from upheaval. Unlike many protest songs that star Kesha’s triumphant return to music sicknesses if we don’t seek the health.” side with anger and frustration, “What’s following her legal battle with accused But as the song continues he channels Going On” is truly a love song to those sexual abuser and music producer Dr. Eminem’s rightful anger in “Mosh” with who also feel that things aren’t ok. In Luke. “Praying” strays from the anger that more targeted lyrics: “three K’s, two A’s in modern day America the song has come has been seen in much modern protest AmeriKKKa/I’m just a black spade pawn to be an anthem for the Black Lives Matter music by focusing on Kesha reclaiming her out the nebula.” The moments in which movement. Following the police shootings identity after being sexually abused. The Joey Bada$$$ gets more specific about his of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile song became particularly political when frustrations is where the song feels more R&B artist, Miguel covered the song on it was performed at the 2018 Grammys reminiscent of the distinctiveness of Marvin Instagram. alongside other female musicians in Gaye in the ‘70s. Even as music styles support of the “Time’s Up” movement change, societal issues continue to build against sexual harassment. However, the upon each other making Joey Bada$S$ anthem has the ability to transcend social seem like a 2018 Bob Dylan. movements because of its overall message

Even though it has been almost six about overcoming your oppressor and decades since Cooke, Dylan, Gaye and finding the peace in all the hate. many other protest musicians graced us with inspiration, artists in 2018 are still advocating for similar issues. Artists of the past and present continue to bring to life stories of oppression that many everyday people face, and music gives them the access to express their problems with the establishment in a peaceful way.

• Emma Turney (Communications)

27

Editorial

SWING IN HIP-HOP

YOU COULD FIND THE ABSTRACT LISTENIN’ TO HIP-HOP MY POPS USED TO SAY, IT REMINDED HIM OF BEBOP I SAID WELL, DADDY, DON’T YOU KNOW THAT THINGS GO IN CYCLES. -Q-TIP

Designer: Allison Bako (Animation)

Spring 2018

28

Some concepts are impossible to put right in words. You can try, but never “get them” quite right. Musical concepts like “swing” and groove are sort of like that. They both describe a way that music “feels”, in a way that we can all feel intuitively but western musical notation can’t really get at. However, If you’re listening to music, swing can be best summarized by Duke Ellington’s immortal jazz song “It Don’t Mean a Thing (if it ain’t got that swing).” The way the drums, piano and bass subtly push and pull at the established tempo is swing incarnate, it has a grooviness that feels both deep rooted and otherworldly all at once.

Hip-hop’s relationship with swing was, at first, incredibly overt. Early rap songs, though they borrowed from funk and soul music, foregrounded a sense of swing that had been more sly in the eras before it. Jazz-Rap

forefather Q-Tip put it best when he rapped that hip hop “reminded his pops of bebop.”

New York rap had a sense of swing that was all consuming. It placed the swinging drum patterns of Funk at the front and then refined that sound into the stuttering, booming sound that modern artists like Joey Badas$$ have made into a holy blueprint.

Let’s take a closer look at these swinging drum parts. In any given funk or hip-hip hop drum loop, most of the rhythmic elements fall squarely on the “grid” of eighth notes that makes up 4/4 time, the common time signature of most western popular music.

Although drum parts that adhere to this “grid” can sound funky or groovy, they usually sound more like the backbeats in modern rock or country music. Rock solid, but lacking the slippery funkiness of hip hop. Most 90s

hip-hop subverts this grid by moving many elements off of it all together. Kick drum patterns, for example, are ahead of what the “grid” would dictate is the tempo. The cymbals too, thumb their nose at the strict eighth note grid and play ahead of the tempo too. The result of all this disregard for the grid is the sense of “swing” that animated jazz music as well. It was so prevalent in 90s hip-hop that famous music critic (and eternal grouch) Robert Christgau once quipped that hip hop music in the late 90s was turning into “identikit swing beats.” How does all of this play into the modern age, when the 90s New York rap sound has become old-fashioned?

Modern trap rap seems at first to disregard the very idea of swing. Unlike the New York era, the kick drums of trap rap fall with computerized precision on the rhythmic grid,

and the cymbals spin lines of grid-perfect notes rather than play ahead of the grid.

Where is the characteristic sense of swing?

Rather than dying, the swing in modern trap rap is more selective but also incredibly clever. Although swing is hard to approximate in musical notation, it can be somewhat expressed in the idea of “triplet feel.” A triplet in a musical sense is simply dividing a note (say the eighth note of a 90s hip hop cymbal part) into three equally long parts. This idea of “triplet feel” is how classical musicians understand jazz music for example. It’s in these triplets that modern rap finds it’s tricky sense of swing. A trap-influenced cymbal part, for example, contains numerous fast triplet patterns that appear to “roll” on top of the beat. Because these triplets are dividing up the “grid” discussed previously, they actually end up creating a unique sense of swing. In fact, the emphasis of these triplets over the strict grid of the kick patterns in modern rap ends up creating a unique feeling. Though the triplets lend a sense of swing, the kick drums add a sense of the tempo. The result is a beat that can be felt two ways - as a swinging loose feel that is directly in line with the swing

lineage stretching back to jazz music, or as a bludgeoning punch that recalls the precise power of a military drum corps. The result is a lateral move– swing you can’t feel as fully but is right there if you want it. This two-ideas at once is a clever and powerful innovation.

Swing as a concept is the building block of African American music, and by extension, all modern popular music other than folk and country. It pulses through jazz, blues, early rock and roll, soul, funk, dance music and hip

THE RESULT IS A BEAT THAT CAN BE FELT TWO WAYS - AS A SWINGING LOOSE FEEL THAT IS DIRECTLY IN LINE WITH THE SWING LINEAGE STRETCHING BACK TO JAZZ MUSIC, OR AS A BLUDGEONING PUNCH THAT RECALLS THE PRECISE POWER OF A MILITARY DRUM CORPS. hop. The amazing thing about it is how each generation of Americans puts it in new clothes and creates a new sound with the same idea.

Sometimes it’s hard to detect, wearing a new coat or makeup, but the same thing that Ellington put on the pedestal in the 30s is still alive and kicking. You just need to be able to feel it.

• Seth Queeney (Political Science & Communications)

29

Mini Dresses

Photo by Sam Quinn

Local Talent

mini dresses members Lira Mondal Caufield Schnug Local Talent

Luke Reed

upcoming shows Feb 27 @ Great Scott Designer: Bianca Rabbie (Architecture)

for fans of Cocteau Twins, Cigarettes After Sex, Jay Som, Alvvays

recommended tracks “House All Lit Up” “Emily” “Fantasy Nails”

albums Mini Dresses Collected Singles and EPs

check out minidresses.bandcamp.com also on Spotify

With expensive studio rates and a vast,

Spring 2018

30

established crop of local bands, gaining a presence in the Boston music scene can be a challenge. The three members of Mini Dresses certainly look to challenge themselves: guitarist Caufield Schnug, vocalist/bassist Lira Mondal, and drummer Luke Reed each cite involvement in two or more current musical projects. Mini Dresses, after a series of EPs, released their self-titled debut this past October, a smart, neatly packaged dose of immersive indie-pop two years in the making.

Mondal and Schnug, who sat down to chat with me in an Allston Dunkin (in true Boston DIY fashion), met in Arkansas while attending Hendrix College, and moved to Schnug’s

home turf of Austin, TX as post-grads. They started Silkies, a garage rock project, but found themselves in a songwriting rut and conceived Mini Dresses as a reprieve from other musical frustrations. When Schnug enrolled in a doctoral program at Harvard in 2012, the two moved to Boston, by which time Mini Dresses had entered the foreground. Reed joined shortly thereafter.

At the time, authorities were cracking down on house venues, which meant “it was a good nine months before we could actually play a show,” but the band gradually began building up a fanbase within Boston’s enthusiastic DIY scene.

Mini Dresses was recorded at Love Magnet Studios in Roxbury with producer Ian Doerr, but progress slowed as the financial burden of studio time took a toll, and creative obstacles arose. “We were in the process of figuring out what exactly we wanted to say aesthetically and also thematically,” Mondal tells me, but “…trying to write to a concept turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, so I just scrapped that idea entirely.” Going back to the drawing board can be daunting, but Mondal stepped up to the plate. “[I] focused more on writing individual songs, and seeing if the production could tie them together.” That it did.

Mondal’s vocals soar through softly glowing soundscapes— tracks like “Fantasy Nails” and “Division” meander through dreamlike, slightly eerie guitars— grounded by a purposeful rhythm section.

Some of the obstacles were more technical, like deciding to track the record completely analog: “We had a very limited time span of getting a song right, because maybe the

tape would warp in such a way that it would be irreclaimable.” Their stylistic choice was less about feeling superior toward Pro Tools enthusiasts, though, and more due to a propensity for thinking outside the dialog box: “We’re not nostalgia-philes….we’ll use whatever tools we can have, but we like tools that are sometimes non-functional or [will] make you do things in a different way.” That mindset extends throughout the album process for Schnug. He and Mondal take a “synesthetic” approach, blurring the lines between visual and auditory experiences by watching art-house films while mixing tracks or testing them through headphones on a walk around the city.

When asked about the future, the band seems uncertain. Their second album is almost finished, and they hope to tour more extensively this year, but with financial responsibilities to worry about, “…whether or not that is possible, we don’t know.” Music may not be the most lucrative creative outlet, but Schnug and Mondal have plenty keeping them busy.

Schnug is working on a dissertation in Visual & Environmental Studies, and Mondal is a pastry sous chef in Back Bay. It’s clear that no matter where Mini Dresses goes from here, its members will continue to make their creative mark one way or another.

Justine Cowan (Marketing)

A Influential Musical Backbone Drum Beats in Modern Music What do you do when a drummer comes to your front door? Pay for the pizza.

In the layman’s eye, drummers are typically just inches ahead of the bassist as the most disposable members of a band. Contrary to this belief, drummers can make or break the rhythm or groove of a song, especially when performing live.

I am not here to discuss the shining drummers of the past who defy this stereotype (especially those with 360-degree drum kits). Instead, I want to analyze an evolution of the drumming underneath the persona, the almost unconscious evolution of drumbeats in modern music. These foundational repeating rhythms are passed down from drummers, songwriters and producers who span from jazz to hardcore. Some are also captured and manipulated through samples that have defined classic hip hop and electronic subgenres. Here are the drumbeats that changed the course of both mainstream and underground music.

■

Chris Miller (Music Industry)

Kick, Kick Kick, Snare This drum beat name does not capture the rhythmic qualities through such simple words: the name only goes to show how iconic the pattern is. It originates from the song “Be My Baby” by The Ronnettes, a song produced and cowritten by Phil Spector. The drumbeat was conceived when the the drummer accidently forgot to hit the snare drum on beat two, thus leaving a sole snare hit on beat four:

H: s: k: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ It served as a foundation for other bands Phil Spector produced and inspired, such as the Beach Boys. What is truly fascinating is the beat’s evolution as bands inspired by the sounds of ‘60s pop music began taking not only the drum beat, but occasionally the accompanying percussion instruments, such as the persistent shaker and the tambourine on beat 4 of the pattern. Reverb has also become a central aspect of the pattern’s sound, as many songs using a variant simulate the drumbeat playing in a large reverberated hall to capture Spector’s production.

The Ronettes - “Be My Baby” Meat Loaf - “You Took the Word Right Out of My Mouth” God Help the Girl - “Perfection as a Hipster”

31

Feature

amen break

sampled drum beats

Despite being a cover song on a B-side, “Amen, Brother” featured a drum pattern solo that would define sampled music years after its release in 1969. I think it is so ripe for sampling because the beat is versatile, in that it features all the drum kit sounds as well as a crash hit and a ride bell hit that cannot be found on many other isolated drum patterns. Whether it be the original pattern or a warped and spliced version, this sample has been the standard for a lot of styles of electronic music, namely techno and jungle/drum and bass. The beat’s ability to rise to any tempo imaginable may have spurred such high tempo genres as jungle; the human drummer had a threshold, but a sampled version of the playing did not.

In the early days of hip hop and electronic music, producers were hungry for backing beats that did not require the use of a session musician. As a result, these cratediggers mainly turned to vinyl recordings from record shops where the drum was played on its own, but the drummer had to perform a beat and not a solo, now known formally as a “breakbeat.” Thus, they turned to more groove-oriented music such as pop and funk. With samples, not only were the rhythms important, but also the sound of the drum set itself from the recording.

N.W.A - “Straight Outta Compton” Squarepusher - “Planetarium”

Funky Drummer / Apache / Think About It This recording by James Brown in 1969 has seen as much use in hip hop as the “Amen Break” has in electronic music. The groove of the drum beat lends itself very well and may have influenced the swing in a lot of jazzier hip hop.

Like the “Kick, Kick Kick, Snare,” the drum is not the only part that has been transmitted across the decades. That notion rings true for the opening beat of “Apache” by The Incredible Bongo Band, which also features bongos in the beat. These bongos have been tinkered with along with the drums when sampled. On Lyn Collins’ “Think About It,” the tambourine is encased in the sample, giving the beat its own character. It’s fascinating that these samples became tools for the producer, each with their own subtleties that could be of great use to a hip hop or electronic instrumental.

Public Enemy – “Fight the Power” Jamie XX – “Gosh” Nas – “Made You Look”

Spring 2018

32

D beat / blast beat

c: s: k: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ H: s: k: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ I find this beat to be pivotal to the evolution of many styles of punk, from the harsh sounds of hardcore to the tunefulness of pop punk. The beat has become so commonplace that it inadvertently causes songs to be at a certain tempo and for only select guitar rhythms to accommodate its specific rhythm.

The blast beat is a more straightforward take on the D beat, made famous by the band Napalm Death on their debut album Scum. Interestingly though, there are some variations on this beat as well:

Designer: Sarah Ceniceros Gomez (Graphic Design)

D beat refers to the specific style of hardcore punk popularized by Discharge, but the D beat was later rebranded by punk singer Rob Militia to refer to the drum playing on the Discharge EP Why?. There are separate forms of the beat on different tracks of the EP, as well as adaptations by modern punk drummers:

c: s: b: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ c: s: b: 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+

The effect the beat gives is disorienting at any tempo. It is relentlessly repetitive in extreme metal bands such as Darkthrone, but other hybrid metal bands such as Converge use it in short bursts. The beat only shows more of the solid genres lines that connect the ferocity of hardcore punk and extreme metal.

Discharge- “The Nightmare Continues” Title Fight – “Coxton Yard” Napalm Death- “Scum” Darkthrone – “Transilvanian Hunger”

33

IN DEFENSE OF

Etcetera

SYRE

Designer: Brooke Dunahugh (Studio Art)

In every possible way, SYRE has no right to be a good album. If you look past the fact that it’s made by the son of Will Smith, who delivered such rap travesties as “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It,” and the brother of Willow Smith, who is in on the cringe with “Whip My Hair,” you’re still left with a Jaden Smith who asks such ponderous questions as the infamous “How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real.” So given the reputation of the family, SYRE was doomed to be critically panned. Pitchfork called it a “sophistic, paranoid fantasy.” NME said it’s “overblown” and “often nonsensical.” But at the end of the day, it’s just Jaden Smith. SYRE is surprisingly conceptual, and if you look past the occasional cringy lyric, it’s a certifiable masterclass in production with loads of energy and originality.

The main purpose of SYRE is to tell everyone that Jaden Smith is “more than the kid with a chauffeur.” For this reason he tries to distance himself from the stigma around Jaden Smith and uses his middle name as the album title. He also does this to build the narrative’s main character, Syre, a mishmash of both what Jaden loves and hates about

“The character Syre reveals a relatable side of Jaden, one that struggles with relationships, identity, and finding a place in the world.”

Spring 2018

34

himself. If you doubt Jaden can be that selfanalytical, look no further than the extended album title: SYRE: A Beautiful Confusion.

Jaden knows he’s building a character of “passion, pain, and desire,” but it seems like no one else does. This is where those critics that discredit SYRE as simply self-serving and pompous failed. Based entirely on

Jaden’s reputation, they decided that SYRE could be nothing more than fake-deep, where in reality Jaden has something interesting to say both about himself and how he sees the world. The character of Syre reveals a relatable side of Jaden, one that struggles with relationships, identity and finding a place in the world.

The second major theme of the record is that Jaden Smith is exuberantly sad. The album starts with the four-track opening section “B,” “L,” “U,” “E” to set the despondent emotion that underlies even the most upbeat tracks. This emotional appetizer adds an ambivalent layer to even the most boastful efforts, such as rap-rock banger and “Black Skinhead” reprise “Watch Me.” This sort of cohesion is another strong point of SYRE. Tracks seamlessly flow into one another both thematically and stylistically.

Sonically, SYRE has some clear influences, namely Kanye West and Kid Cudi, with a

“Sonically SYRE has some clear influences, namely Kanye West and Kid Cudi with a healthy dose of Frank Ocean.” healthy dose of Frank Ocean, but those are not bad comparisons to make when the current popular rap scene relies so heavily on trap production. Jaden is inspired by these greats and chooses not to ride a wave with the instrumentals, but instead brings a very diverse album to the table. Tracks like the “B,” “L,” “U,” “E” series and “Hope” are elegant and often feature long instrumental breaks, while “Icon,” “George Jeff” and “Rapper” feature some trap influence, but with a unique flavor reminiscent of acts like BROCKHAMPTON.

“Jaden is choosing not to ride a wave with the instrumentals, and instead brings a very diverse album to the table.”

It’s not all so deep though. There are definitely moments on SYRE that hold the record back from being more widely acknowledged. Namely, there are some Jaden Smith signature flat-out stupid lyrics. On “Hope,” it’s Jaden spitting 9/11 truther lyrics like “Building Seven wasn’t hit and there’s more shit to come. The Pentagon is on the run.” Other times, it’s just corny: “I spit that radiation like I’m Chernobyl” and “I got my lasers on you like a UFO.” These lines are relatively few and far between, but given that the album is a ridiculous 70 minutes long, there are certainly enough to notice Jaden’s lyrical shortcomings.

In a world where boring and unoriginal hip hop is often rewarded with mainstream success, many took issue with Jaden’s claim on SYRE that he would “save rap music.”

Certainly that’s a pretty ambitious goal, but I’d venture that Jaden’s done a pretty good job. He’s used his notoriety to promote a different style of modern rap that has yet to break fully into the mainstream. He has made a stylistically diverse, lyrically narrative, groundbreaking album that’s been utterly dismissed. SYRE is far from a perfect record, but Jaden Smith deserves much more credit for it than he has received.

• Grant Foskett (Computer Science)

Local Photos

Girlpool, Paradise Rock Club

Photo by Colleen Curtis (Graphic Design)

Tennis, Royale

Photo by Natalie McGowan (Behavioral Neuroscience)

Nation of Languages, Paradise Rock Club

Photo by Brian Bae (Industrial Engineering)

Ashe, Brighton Music Hall

Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Industrial Engineering)

Fetty Wap, House of Blues

Photo by McKenna Shuster (Interaction Design)

Lauv, Brighton Music Hall

Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Industrial Engineering)

Fetty Wap, House of Blues

Photo by McKenna Shuster (Interaction Design)

Show Reviews Tiny Moving Parts, Mom Jeans., Oso Oso February 10 @ Sinclair With a sold out show at The Sinclair, Tiny Moving Parts, Mom Jeans., and Oso Oso set out to reach all subgenres of punk – the stoner crowd, angsty pre-teens and those of us who never grew out of our angsty pre-teen phase (sorry mom). Mom Jeans.’ youthful, confessional lyrics are the perfect embodiment of West Coast punk, proving to be the perfect contrast to Oso Oso’s sophisticated pop-punk sound.

The slow progression of relaxed punk to powerpunk could not have prepared fans more for Tiny Moving Parts, a band whose insecurity ridden lyrics juxtapose their happiness while performing.

The show began with Oso Oso, a band whose album, The Yunahon Mixtape, launched the emo underdogs into success. Oso Oso has been a favorite new discovery from 2017, and honestly, I was there for them. The band’s songs quickly flowed into one another, with a few interjections from lead singer Jade Lilitri.

As Lilitri began to thank the audience at the end of the set, his voice cracked, proving punk truly brings out the inner pre-teen in all of us.

Even though I adored watching Oso Oso live and their performance met my expectation, the crowd would have greatly benefited from more

interaction from the members, since about half of the crowd had never heard of the group.

The California band Mom Jeans. quickly took the stage after Oso Oso departed. I was stunned to see half the members were in shorts and not mom jeans, but apparently I was the only one shocked. The rest of the crowd erupted in shrill screams as bandmates Eric Butler, Gabe Paganin and Austin Carango took the stage. The set was filled with dad jokes from bassist Gabe Paganin, which I really could not get enough of. Although lead singer, Eric Butler, was suffering from the wretched influenza, his rich punk vocals were strongly on display.

“Brace yourself,” I hear a fan behind me yell as dramatic music queued the entrance of headlining band, Tiny Moving Parts. As a fellow Minnesotan, I was already required to be a fan of the band by state law. Regardless of if you like punk music or not, this three-man band put on one of the best performances I have ever seen. Lead singer, Dylan Mattheisen, took every possible moment to connect with the audience in between songs, as well as by getting as close as possible to fans during guitar solos. As all signs of security dissipated and anarchy reigned free, at least two crowd

members would be crowd surfed onto the stage, shout a few lyrics with the band, and belly flop back out into the audience, in true punk-rock fashion. Tiny Moving Parts is by far one of the most entertaining bands to watch live; I’m positive Matthiesen, also lead guitarist, didn’t stop moving once. The feat of combining both instruments takes an enormous amount of focus, and was very commendable to take on both roles at once, while putting on a great show.

What I particularly enjoyed about this concert was that each band had a completely different aura and playing style. Tiny Moving Parts could not have chosen a better line up, as the bands complimented each other exceptionally well, slowly hyping the audience up with a lighter punk tone and edging into true emo fashion. Oso Oso proved themselves to be a band on the rise, as they begin to establish their own performance style with room to incorporate more audience interaction like fellow bands Mom Jeans. and Tiny Moving Parts. If they proved anything, it’s that the punk scene is alive and well for all ages.

Maya Dengel (Communications & Media and Screen Studies)

Mykki Ekko February 11 @ House of Blues The lights dimmed as the guitar started with a loud chord. The drums steadily strummed a classic, hard-hitting beat. After grabbing the microphone and belting the first note, every set of eyes turned towards the stage and were unable to look away. Mikky Ekko has a way about his movements and his gestures that are so unbelievably captivating it seems as if he were serenading each person in the audience.

Ekko is currently touring with artists BØRNS and Charlotte Cardin in support

of his sophomore album, Fame. Known best for his feature on pop megastar Rihanna’s 2012 hit “Stay,” Ekko has continued to release records consistently over the years, none however reaching the commercial success that “Stay” exhibited. Mykki Ekko nods to this by always concluding his set with “Stay,” as he did at his most recent show.

Covering the better-known songs by his cult following, such as “Light the Way” and “Smile,” Ekko switched between strutting

across the stage and using a midi touchpad to manipulate his vocals and draw the crowd in further. His 2018 single, “Not the One,” was powerful and heartbreaking, and caused the audience to sway and sing along. After performing his most recent release, he announced that the next song was going to be the last he would perform that night, and that’s when the magic began.

It was then that he climbed over the metal railing separating the stage from the 41

Reviews

people and fully immersed himself into the crowd. Immediately, the lights came on, everyone’s phones came out, and the security guards became readily alert. The band started up with a soft, almost acoustic rendition of “Stay.” Ekko’s voice carried each note beautifully and his soulful sound echoed throughout the room. Everyone surrounded him as he stood in the middle of the floor, and joined in singing the expressive words.

The passion and romance found in the lyrics almost tangibly passed into the hearts of every person there. He ended the set with the lyrics, “I want you to stay,” completely a

cappella, and the last note stayed in the air until loud applause broke the silence.

Although he has ventured back into obscurity since his big hit, Mikky Ekko will continue to shock crowds and stand out from other artists due to his unmitigated passion for singing and songwriting. Even though the audience was gathered for the headliner, BØRNS, his performance stood out and made one thing undeniably clear: Mikky Ekko is here to stay.

We publish show reviews online too! tastemakersmag.com

Sabrina Zhang (Political Science & International Affairs)

Trinidad Cardona January 21 @ Paradise Rock Club Trinidad Cardona may not be a name you recognize at first glance, but that is soon about to change. Just a year ago, Cardona was a normal eighteen-year-old boy who hailed from Arizona, working on music in his spare time and posting videos online of himself messing around with his friends. One of these very videos, was Cardona singing a clip of his song “Jennifer” in a high school bathroom.

Normal turned into touring artist signed to Island Records faster than someone could even think up a music career. The video went viral on Facebook overnight and the rest was quite literally, history.

Since he has abruptly burst into mainstream urban music in 2017 with his viral hit “Jennifer,” It’s been nonstop focus on music in every way he knows how. As a new artist, getting into songwriting sessions, releasing innovative new singles and getting as much exposure as possible has been Cardona’s plan of attack. He arrived at the scene full force as a supporting act on YouTuber Alex Aiono’s 2018 “Feels Like Tour.”

Spring 2018

42

Not often do you come across opening acts that make the headlining artist need to work a little bit harder to one-up their performance, but Trinidad Cardona showed he was a forced to be reckoned with. His brief but impactful and high energy set seized the attention of the crowd almost immediately.

He was instantaneously charming once he hit the stage, flashing smiles to the girls in the crowd as he danced throughout the entirety of his time on stage. The dynamic between Cardona and his DJ Tre Trax, made it feel as if you were a part of the performance with them. They were able to work off one another’s stage presence to make every moment something to watch. The niceboy charm combined with the swagger of a long-time artist made it seem like he’s been doing this his whole life. It came so naturally for someone in a very unnatural and new environment, you would have never known it was his first tour.

The way Cardona so effortlessly shifted between his more rhythmic, rap based tracks to his slower tempo R&B jams was equally impressive. When the mood of

the song dropped, the audience seemed to liven up even more as he crooned towards girls screaming to him in the crowd. At one point, DJ Tre Trax picked out a girl from the audience to bring up on stage, and as one could infer, the entire room lost it as groups of girls ushered their friends to follow suit.

Although bringing a fan on stage was the most personal fan connection of the night, Trinidad still interacted with the audience, as a whole, personally. Some people laughed, screamed or cried when he got near them and it made for at its core, a very fun show.

With such a blank slate and so much talent, Cardona is mapping out his next step to take over the charts. The confidence, charm and talent demonstrated in his first tour shows the future endeavors of Trinidad Cardona have pretty much nowhere to go but a positive direction.

Elena Sandell (English & Communications)

43

Feature

The Birth of the Internet’s First Boy Band Believe it or not, when I talk about today’s hottest boy band, I’m not talking about One Direction (rest in peace). I’m talking about BROCKHAMPTON. When you think of a boy band, surely a 15-strong rap collective is not one that comes to mind, but that’s exactly what BROCKHAMPTON is. The group originally formed on a popular Kanye West Reddit fan forum promoting “The Internet’s First Boy Band.” The collective, which was founded by Kevin Abstract, ranges from budding rappers to web and graphic designers. Abstract refers to this as the formation of his “dynasty,” even comparing BROCKHAMPTON to companies like Paramount — a company (or in BROCKHAMPTON’s case, a boy band) so ambiguous no one quite knows who is behind it. Everything in BROCKHAMPTON is done in-house, from mixing and recording to filming and editing their music videos; the combination of all these outlets under one, specific collective is new in hip-hop. BROCKHAMPTON’s first debut mixtape All American Trash was released in 2016. In 2017, the collective released the SATURATION trilogy, with SATURATION I in June, SATURATION II in August and SATURATION III in December.

Kevin Abstract

Kevin Abstract (born Ian Simpson), is the most well-known member of the group, as he released two solo albums before the establishment of BROCKHAMPTON. Much of Abstract’s lyrical work addresses his homosexuality and distance from his family life, especially on his most popular song, “Empty.” He is attributed to the formation of the group, and also operates as a creative director for the boy band. Abstract met BROCKHAMPTON members Van, Wood, Champion and JOBA in high school, where the 5 of them became AliveSinceForever. However, the group disbanded in order to create BROCKHAMPTON with the other 10 members.

Ameer Van

Van is a vocalist for the group and another recognizable member of BROCKHAMPTON, as he is the face of the SATURATION trilogy.

Kevin Abstract calls him “the star” of the SATURATION projects, with his strong verses catching the most attention among fans. His lyrics often reference the low point in his life when he began using and distributing drugs, especially on SATURATION II’s “FIGHT.”

William Andoh “Merlyn” Wood

William Andoh Wood, better known as “Merlyn,” undoubtedly has the highest energy in the group, as he zips around the stage at any given moment. Much like his performance style, Wood’s lyrical content is considered “disruptive,” with a distant sonic range that features some of the most attention-grabbing, manic lines, prominently on “HEAT.” Wood started as an Architecture student, and after a year or so in, he decided to drop out to dedicate himself to music full time.

Romil Hemnani

Romil Hemnani got his entrance into BROCKHAMPTON’s production and engineering team after helping produce both Kevin Abstract’s debut album MTV1987 and Dom McLennon’s mixtape Sandy Shore Motel. Romil performs alongside fellow members as the group’s DJ and hype man.

Spring 2018

44

Dominique “Dom McLennon” Simpson

Matt Champion

Q3

Jabari Manawa and Isaiah “Kiko Merley” Merriweather make up “Q3,” as they work together to create beats for the group. The two often work behind the scenes. Jabari is the only other international member, coming from Grenada.

Henock “HK” Sileshi

Champion, a Texan native, met Abstract, Boring, Wood and Van in high school and began making music with them. Many of Champion’s verses toy with serious topics in the form of playful language as seen in songs like “JUNKY” on SATURATION II on which Champion tackles the issue of sexual assault.

Henock Sileshi, known as HK, is a part of the creative direction and graphic design team within BROCKHAMPTON. HK became involved in BROCKHAMPTON after volunteering his artwork for the groups use. At the time, he was studying graphic design at college in North Florida before dropping out and becoming an official member of the group. HK also edits the groups music videos.

Russell “JOBA” Boring

Ashlan Grey

Born Russell Boring, JOBA’s biggest role in BROCKHAMPTON is producing, mixing, and mastering the songs. JOBA often adds musical diversity to BROCKHAMPTON songs with the layering of harmonies and falsetto vocals. Before forming AliveSinceForever, JOBA helped Van, Wood, Abstract and Champion record their own music, charging them a fee for his musical services. As the group began collaborating more, JOBA became an integral member in creating the sound of BROCKHAMPTON, with his vast knowledge of music theory.

Ciraán “Bearface” McDonald

Ciraán McDonald, better known as Bearface, is another main vocalist for the group. His vocals are most prominently displayed on “SUMMER,” the final song of SATURATION II. Bearface also contributes to the production side of the records. Bearface is one of two foreign members in Brockhampton. Originally from Belfast, North Ireland, Bearface spent much time in the early formation of BROCKHAMPTON flying back and forth from the United States due to complications with his VISA. However, he now has secured a 3-year VISA and is able to be a part of the boy band full time.

Gray met Abstract online and began helping the group with social media. On a whim, the young photographer quit his job to join BROCKHAMPTON full time. Often collaborating with HK, the two work to create a unique and unified aesthetic for the boy band.

Robert Ontenient

Originally joining as a producer for BROCKHAMPTON, the group required a website for their growing collective, which led Ontentient to volunteer, despite having zero knowledge regarding web design.

Later, he became an addition to many music videos and songs with his persona “Roberto,” that supplied mini Spanish skits.

Jon Nunes

Designers: Anna Smith (English & Graphic Design) and Colleen Curtis (Graphic Design)

Dominique Simpson, otherwise known as Dom McLennon, is a Connecticut native. With versatile and technically impressive verses, McLennon’s style is most prominently featured on SATURATION I. McLennon is also a major activist for mental health, opening up about his personal struggles with self-harm on songs like “TRIP.”

Nunes is also included in the official BROCKHAMPTON team, as he operates as the manager of the group. He often works from behind the scenes, but is an integral part of the team, nonetheless.

• Maya Dengel (Communication & Media and Screen Studies)

45

THIS AIN’T A SCENE, IT’S A

Etcetera

FALL OUT BOY DISCOGRAPHY

By Taylor Piepenbrink (Music Industry)

Spring 2018

46

Created in a Chicago suburb and rooted in punk rock, Fall Out Boy have consistently danced between the mainstream and alternative charts throughout their career. Consisting of lead singer Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley, Fall Out Boy and their ever-changing music has evolved and grown up along with many long-time fans. While they don’t have quite as expansive a discography as comparable artists with similar influence, their 17-year career thus far has produced quite a few radio hits and notable tries. Much has changed since the early days of playing in suburban Illinois basements, but even in 2018 the group has somehow managed to stay somewhat relevant in the pop mainstream.

Ready to revisit the soundtracks of your youth?

The group released Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girlfriend in late March of 2003 as a sort of demo tape, and featured tracks like “Calm Before the Storm,” which was later re-recorded onto Take This To Your Grave.

The tracks “Switchblades and Infidelity,” “Growing Up,” and “Moving Pictures” were taken from a split EP made with the group Project Rocket and released on Uprising Records in 2002. Unquestionably the rawest and most unfinished production that the group has released on an album, their slower instrumentation and often shaky vocals emphasize their unpolished sound.

Take This To Your Grave (2003) 2003’s Take This To Your Grave introduced some of the band’s best hits in the opinion of many old-school fans. Put out by the record label Fueled By Ramen, TTTYG is technically the group’s debut album and helped push both the label as well as the band towards the mainstream. Wentz, the main lyricist at the time, became known for his tongue-in-cheek lines and clever allusions. With classics such as “Saturday” and “Grand Theft Autumn / Where Is Your Boy” which are still well-known by fans and performed live to this day, few bands can claim that their debut album had the same potency as this record. Following the release of TTTYG, Fall Out Boy toured extensively and made appearances at South

by Southwest and Warped Tour. Take This To

Your Grave is sometimes overlooked in the context of Fall Out Boy’s discography, as it is commonly overshadowed by their second (and definitely better recognized) album From Under the Cork Tree, which brought them into the more mainstream spotlight, but it will always have a special place in Fall Out Boy fandom.

From Under the Cork Tree (2005) Of course, we can’t talk about Fall Out Boy without mentioning this pivotal album that likely provided a couple of bangers during your formative grade school and middle school years.

From Under the Cork Tree launched the band onto a higher platform and put them on the radar as a respectable group worthy of more mainstream media attention. I mean, with tracks like “Dance, Dance” and “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me,” how could you ignore them? Sure, they weren’t quite as angsty as their first recordings and their sound had become a little more polished and radio-friendly, but Stump’s sometimes wailing vocal delivery will forever be enshrined within our fond memories of school dances.

With Wentz and Stump working together to combine the lyrics and music, the group’s resulting sound was just gritty enough to be edgy and cool but still be respected by adult audiences. Unfortunately, this time in the band’s career was also plagued by Wentz’s declining mental health, which ultimately resulted in an unsuccessful suicide attempt prior to the album’s release. Luckily, Wentz began recovery and the band was able to release From Under the Cork Tree in May of 2005, where it reached an all-time high of number nine on the Billboard 200. At this point, the band successfully breached the alternative rock borders and transcended into the pop charts with multiplatinum success.

Infinity on High (2007) Infinity on High followed headlining a lengthy pop punk tour with The All American Rejects, Hawthorne Heights and From First to Last. It was a clear departure from their previous sound, with charting singles such as “Carpal Tunnel of Love” and “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race.” The record addressed the issues of the group achieving and maintaining fame as well as the growing complaint that they were “selling out,” which is best represented through the music video for “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs.” Aside from their immediate hits, Infinity On High includes the catchier, but perhaps continually overlooked singles “The Takes Over, the Breaks Over” and “I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)” as well as one of the group’s most gratifying album openers, “Thriller,” featuring a defiant and jubilant introduction by Jay-Z. Following the album’s release, Fall Out Boy embarked on the Honda Civic Tour featuring +44, Cobra Starship and The Academy Is…. (Is anyone else upset that there was no 10-year anniversary tour to celebrate this album? Just me?)

It seemed that Fall Out Boy were on top of the world with the band’s dominance in many subgenres of rock and the WentzStump dream team pumping out hit after hit, but as is evident with so many bands that reach success, there was high tension between the bandmates over creative control and what direction the band should take next.

Designer: Srilekha Nuli (Computer Science & Design)

Evening Out with Your Girlfriend (2003)

47

Etcetera

Folie à Deux (2008)

Hiatus (2009 – 2012)

Save Rock and Roll (2013)

Folie à Deux was released in December of 2008, and while debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200, it failed to reach the successes of its predecessors. Opening with the athematic stomps and Stump’s proclamation to “boycott love” in “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes,” this record is even more experimental in sound (if you can call Fall Out Boy experimental), and has commonly mixed reviews from fans. For the first time, Wentz shifted the lyrical focus to reflect the outside world and not personal events that related to the band, making it an arguably more relatable album. As a whole, the record sounds more confused than any of those

Ah, of course. We’ve come to the hiatus. After years of heavy touring and continuous album cycles, the boys were clearly ready to take a break. The group’s indefinite hiatus left many fans feeling anxious as to whether the group would ever reunite. During the nearly four-year break, Hurley, Stump, Wentz, and Trohman all spent their time focusing on other projects, the most notable of which was probably Patrick Stump’s brief solo career which resulted in a self-produced, full length album that leaned more towards R&B and soul and flexed his creative abilities in ways that Fall Out Boy essentially couldn’t. All factions of the band received minimal response from their separate endeavors, and the future of FOB was kept under wraps until 2013.

The band announced a miraculous return after their hiatus by dropping the single “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” and announcing the upcoming release of Save Rock and Roll out of the blue. SRAR is a powerful album that both marked their return and their complete transition into the pop mainstream, much to the dismay of many fans. Produced

by Butch Walker, this was a record that took the scene by surprise and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The unexpected return of the band was mirrored with a progression of unconventional collaborations with names like Big Sean (“The Mighty Fall”), Courtney Love (“Rat a Tat”) and, most surprisingly of all, Elton John on the album’s almost overwhelmingly powerful closer, “Save Rock and Roll.”

prior. The 11th track, “w.a.m.s” forces a jazzier guitar riff interlude into the same 4-mintue track as Stump’s soul influence in the outro, while other tracks like the incredibly emotional “What A Catch, Donnie” is sure to have any reminiscent fan weeping as a slew of guest singers (Brendon Urie, William Beckett, and Travis McCoy, among others) blends old hits in a somber medley.

Spring 2018

48

American Beauty / American Psycho (2015)

M A N I A (2018)

The next album in the lineup is American Beauty / American Psycho, which further drove the notion that Fall Out Boy would never sound the same again. With more synthesized tracks, heavy sampling, relatively unwitty lyrics compared to releases prior, and continuously upbeat poppy-ness, American Beauty feels as though it leaves listeners with almost no room to breathe. Stump’s vocals are noticeably more edited, and the instrumentation is more electronic than ever before. While the record did yield some radio hits, such as “Centuries” and “Uma Thurman,” the presentation of this newer, more mainstream sound attracted many newer, younger fans, but further alienated the aging and already estranged older fans.

The most recent endeavor, M A N I A shows us where Fall Out Boy is today: still seeking greatness, but through completely different means. Bereft of any of the alt-rock tones that inhibited their other albums, M A N I A seems as though it may as well have been made by a completely different band. They’ve never settled on one consistent sound, but this knocks their other attempts out of the park with their EDM-esque attempt in the opening track “Young and Menace” and mishmashes of various influences that seem to collide into a chaotic, overly-produced mess in tracks like “Church” and the reggae-infused “Sunshine Riptide.” Having pushed back the initial release date several months, fans

are left wondering what other material was scrapped to result in this chaotic end product. (Although, it did debut at No. 1 on Billboard, so they really must be doing something right…)

Ever ambitious, it seems that Fall Out Boy are still setting their goals high and seeing just how far they can bend a genre. And at this point, honestly, who knows what else might be in store for the Chicagoan rockers that refuse to be left behind?

49

JUST A TAST E O F

The Shirts and Shoes

Etcetera

Where are you from?

Where can people find your music?

We’re based out of Lowell, MA. Tyler, Emi and Alec met

You can find our music at

living in the infamous Fox Hall at UMass Lowell on

Theshirtsandshoes.bandcamp.com if

the fourteenth floor. Tyler and Eric have been playing

you want to name your own price, or on

together since middle school.

Spotify and Apple Music.

How would you describe your sound?

What other musicians are you into at the moment?

While maintaining our roots in rock n’ roll, we often like to mix elements of jazz and progressive rock music to create

We love so many different bands, but some

a familiar yet decorated sound. With a combination of

of our favorites are Queens of the Stone

juicy guitar riffs, buttery bass licks, succulent drum fills,

Age, Foo Fighters, Primus, Audioslave,

and zesty guitar solos you’ll be getting a mouthful.

Tame Impala, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

If your band collectively turned into an animal, what would that animal be?

We’d be an elephant.

The Shirts and Shoes

Spring 2018

50

LOCAL PHOTO Wrabel Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Industrial Engineering)

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST We’ve compiled all the songs from page 26’s Peaceful Protest Through Music and added a few more of our own for a kickass protest playlist.

Find the playlist at: sptfy.com/Dkb

1. “Blowin’ In the Wind” — Bob Dylan 2. “Paper Planes” — M.I.A. 3. “What’s Going On” — Marvin Gaye 4. “Big Yellow Taxi” — Joni Mitchell 5. “Quiet” — MILCK 6. “For What It’s Worth” — Buffalo Springfield 7. “Praying” — Kesha 8. “A Change is Gonna Come” — Sam Cooke

FIND KANYE

9. “Mosh” — Eminem 10. “Alright” — Kendrick Lamar 11. “LAND OF THE FREE” — Joey Bada$$ 12. “Entertain” — Sleater-Kinny 13. “Fuck the Police” — N.W.A. 14. “War” — Edwin Starr 15. “Strange Fruit” — Billie Holiday

FOLLOW US We’ve hidden Yeezy somewhere in this issue. Find him and maybe something cool will happen...

Like what you read? Check us out online. tastemakersmag.com @tastemakersmag 

51