Jeff Terich

Plus Tyler, the Creator, Thirdface, Tribulation, and Thus Love

Plus Full of Hell and Andrew Nolan, Cloakroom, and The Cure

We spoke to the New York rapper about 'Revelator', frustration, hope, and social media

We compile the best Mount Eerie albums and essential Microphones recordings in our Phil Elverum Beginner's Guide

An Aug. 10 article noted “the James River at Richmond is one foot below the zero mark, a record low reading for the ten years which measurements have been kept.”

Industrial and noise music are always relevant because the need to purge is evergreen. Anxiety, anger, frustration, fear—they ebb and flow, but they never really disappear, and as such need a periodic release valve. Take, for instance, where we are right now in America, unable to extricate ourselves from the precipice of the abyss and seemingly hell bent on leaping feet first into it. Indeed, times like these call for music that helps to burn a cleansing fire and draw out a primal scream from deep within those darkest places.

If we’ve learned anything from rock music in the ’00s, it’s that a rock band only really needs two members. Yet the guitar and drum (or bass and drum) duos who have made the loudest and most dynamic music are part of a more exclusive clique that make the most of their limitations, which in some cases is none at all. Lightning Bolt, Death from Above 1979, No Age and, of course, The White Stripes have all pulled off the trick of playing the most immense music possible while sticking to their minimal lineup. And they’ve all managed to do so without sounding anything like one another, with the dynamic ranging from Lightning Bolt’s noise assault, to The Stripes’ classic rock, to DFA79’s dance punk and No Age’s own unique blend of shoegaze and punk rock styles.

Indie rock doesn’t really have a single, unifying ethos, but the closest to such a thing might be “doing more with less.” It’s not by choice so much as necessity, however; with a smaller budget comes the increased challenge of stretching it as far as it will go, and finding a way to fill space without the added benefit of expensive studio equipment. Easily accessible recording software has changed some of that in recent years, and independent labels have increasingly been crashing into mainstream success, but in a pre-Arcade Fire world, it took a little more ingenuity to turn low fidelity into a higher form of art.

Since the release of their debut album Wagonwheel Blues in 2008, Philadelphia’s The War on Drugs have treated their album titles as a kind of shorthand for the stylistic techniques that color those very albums.

Nick Cave ‘s always been a storyteller, but for much of his career those stories weren’t necessarily his own. He delivered trash-culture retellings of Shakespeare and the New Testament. He reinterpreted American blues and folk tradition in more grim and shocking ways. And he created a definitive pop song depiction of the devil