News

Bruce Hornsby has served up an unlikely piano rendition of Dinosaur Jr.’s “Feel the Pain” for record label Jagjaguwar’s 25th-anniversary covers album Join the Ritual.

The former Grateful Dead pianist’s rendition is both a faithful rendering and disjointed take on the surprise 1994 hit single, with Hornsby’s piano replicating J. Mascis’ riff before spiraling off melodically.

Join the Ritual, out September 24th and available to preorder now, features nearly a dozen Jagjaguwar artists and alumni tackling songs by influential indie bands and labels like K Records, Touch & Go,...

Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair’s 1989 collaboration It’s Spooky will be reissued for its 30th anniversary, out April 10th via Joyful Noise Recordings. The track “Ashes on the Ground” is out now.

Fair, vocalist and guitarist of the punk band Half Japanese, first began corresponding with Johnston in the late Eighties. They finally met in person in New York in 1989. “I was doing some recording with Mo Tucker [of the Velvet Underground],” Fair recalls. “Daniel was in town, staying with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. Daniel and I became friends and I invited...

Daniel Johnston, who died Wednesday at 58, was one of a handful of artists whose work immediately seeps into the soul. Once you’ve heard one Daniel Johnston song, whether it’s one of his hauntingly plaintive unrequited love songs or one of his whimsical earworm bops, you will never be the same. An underground fixture for years, he practically invented Diy recording and the lo-fi aesthetic that dominates independent music and art today. Johnston reached a new level of stardom in 2005 with the release of Jeff Feuerzeig’s trailblazing documentary “The Devil and Daniel Johnston,” which IndieWire recently named the best music documentary of the 21st century.

As a longtime fan, Feuerzeig’s journey with Johnston predates his personal relationship with the late musician and artist. Feuerzeig sees in Johnston’s Diy and punk aesthetic direct parallels to the independent film boom of the 1980s, pioneered by Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch,...

“The world is crumbling and I don’t have much to say,” sings Greta Kline, leader of the band Frankie Cosmos, on the band’s new album. It’s a striking admission in a time when everyone else seems to be playing pundit in their own teapot echo chamber. And despite specializing in gently drifty guitar-rock and singing with the kind of recessively reedy voice that usually implies a retreat into one’s interior biosphere, Klein isn’t an escapist, at least not always. “For what it’s worth,” she notes a couple songs later,...

As many of you readers know, I've been a fan of Cineplexx for years. Their latest single -- "Te Quiero"-- is an infectious "afrofunk" tune lifted from their new album Florianopolis. Cineplexx is actually the Argentina-born, London-based Sebastian Litmanovich. His smart indie pop-rock features collaborations with Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Duglas Stewart & BMX Bandits, Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub), Nigel Baillie (Camera Obscura), Cathy Claret, Lilies on Mars, Ally Kerr, Federico Aubele, Natalia Clavier, Daniel Melero, Wechsel Garland, Montag, Lupe Nuñez (Amor de Dias), Yushimi, to name but a few. Buy it today!