Review: Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness – Zombies on Broadway

Andrew McMahon is an artist who has had a very loyal and passionate following for a very long time. Starting with Something Corporate, which offered a piano-led twist on the emo/pop-punk trends of the early 2000s, McMahon has been regarded as a master of melody and a writer capable of churning out fiercely relatable songs. Suffice to say that BuzzFeed hit the nail on the head (for the first and last time) when it labeled “Konstantine” as the emo “Freebird.” When McMahon transitioned his career from Something Corporate into the poppier and more mature Jack’s Mannequin, it was a testament to his talent as a songwriter, his likability as a performer, and the strong personal resonance of his work that just about all of his fans were willing to go along for the ride.

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Interview: Andrew McMahon

Andrew McMahon

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness will release their sophomore LP, Zombies on Broadway, later this week. I spoke with McMahon on the phone about the new record’s pop-leaning direction, his ever-evolving sound, the way family has defined his last few albums, and whether or not he’d ever consider writing a memoir. We also spoke briefly about next year’s 10-year anniversary of Jack’s Mannequin’s The Glass Passenger and whether or not fans can expect any special tours or reissues to mark the occasion.

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Review: Japandroids – Near to the Wild Heart of Life

Japandroids - Near to..

“It’s a lifeless life, with no fixed address to give/But you’re not mine to die for anymore/So I must live.” On the list of the best lyrics of the decade so far, that one—the most climactic line from the Japandroids’ blistering, cathartic “The House That Heaven Built”—has to be near the top. To me, that line has always been a beautifully apt statement about growing up and moving on. I suppose you could read it as a lyric about a break up, but I prefer to see it as a vow to let go of the things that used to define your life and build new ones in their place.

In a way, that’s exactly what Japandroids are doing on Near to the Wild Heart of Life, their third full-length album and their first in nearly five years. Their last record, 2012’s Celebration Rock, was more appropriately titled than any other album released in the past seven years. Beginning and ending with fireworks, the album raged with pounding guitars, blitzkrieg drums, and shout-along choruses that could put anyone in a party mood. It was an album about being young, staying up all night, making memories with friends, and drinking way more than could feasibly be deemed “necessary.”

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Review: Natalie Hemby – Puxico

Natalie Hemby

In the summer of 2015, when I put Chris Stapleton on the last-ever incarnation of AbsolutePunk.net’s Absolute 100—a feature dedicated to celebrating up-and-coming, under the radar artists—I asked a pair of questions that have since proved to be prophetic. The first was “If given the opportunity, how many of country music’s gun-for-hire songwriters could make better records than any of the artists they write for?” The second was “How many of them could make masterpieces?” More than I thought, apparently.

Since Stapleton’s breakout success, the songwriters seem to be taking back Nashville. 2016 brought major critical and/or commercial successes for Maren Morris (who had previously written for Kelly Clarkson and the TV show Nashville), Brandy Clark (who had previously written for Sheryl Crow, Miranda Lambert, and Toby Keith, not to mention a slew of co-writes with Kacey Musgraves), and Lori McKenna (who penned two of the biggest hits in modern country with Tim McGraw’s “Humble & Kind” and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush”). Hopefully, these big successes will push Nashville labels to take chances on more of their top songsmiths. Who knows how many stars are waiting to be born in the liner notes of your favorite country records.

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Chorus.fm’s Top 25 Albums of 2016

The Best of 2016

Well then. That was a weird year.

In many ways, 2016 was a whirlwind—a confusing and frustrating year that will probably always be defined by its political tension and long list of celebrity deaths. For our staff and community, 2016 was also marked by the end of AbsolutePunk.net and the birth of Chorus.fm, a major transition that brought some serious nostalgia about the place where many of us grew up online.

No matter where you were or what you were going through in 2016, though, you probably at least had a great soundtrack to keep you company. By almost every metric, 2016 was a remarkable year for albums. If you are a fan of pop music and superstar acts, there was certainly no shortage of marquee releases for you to sink your teeth into. Even beyond the blockbuster surprises and capital-I “Important” albums, though, the year was a goldmine. Rock music was vibrant, highlighting both new bands and longtime veterans. Country music continued a resurgence that even self-described country haters could get behind. Hell, even the movie musical came back in a big way.

In virtually every genre or category, 2016 provided a wealth of new musical treasures. It’s no wonder that our contributors placed votes for 267 different albums while compiling this list. Ultimately, though, it was the 30 records listed below that rose to the top.

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Craig Manning’s Top Albums of 2016

Say what you want about 2016, but the music was fantastic. It would have been damn-near impossible for this year to top last year in terms of albums I loved—simply because 2015 completely reconfigured my tastes and taught me entirely new ways to love music. Even still, 2016 brought its fair share of riches. Butch Walker, Jimmy Eat World, and Green Day all released their best records since 2004—a miraculous feat, given that 2004 remains my all-time favorite year for music. Dawes continued to redefine what their sound could be, with a record so adventurous it cost them a few long-time fans. Discoveries like Parker Millsap and Lori McKenna wowed me with their songwriting prowess and became potential new favorite artists. Sturgill Simpson and Maren Morris led the vanguard of country music’s renaissance, following in the footsteps of what Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell were able to accomplish in 2015. And Yellowcard, one of the most important bands in my personal musical development, decided to call it quits.

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Review: La La Land

La La Land

I don’t write a lot of film reviews, partially because I write for a music website and partially because I’m not usually on top of new releases enough to prepare anything that is particularly timely or relevant. But I just had to sit down and write something about La La Land, simply because I can’t remember the last time I loved a move so wholeheartedly.

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Review: Bon Iver – 22, A Million

Bon Iver - 22 a Million

The first time I heard 22, A Million, the long-awaited third album from Bon Iver, I hated it. To my ears, it sounded like a formless mess, devoid of any clear highlights (at least on the level of the best songs from Justin Vernon’s previous albums) and frequently undone by head-scratching production choices. Granted, I was listening to a shitty rip of a shitty stream that had leaked to the internet months in advance. I’d also had my expectations sent through the roof by live recordings of the band’s full playthrough of the record at this year’s Eaux Claires music festival. Even an amateur audience recording of the performance captured the magic of the new songs and made it sound like 22, A Million—despite arriving on five years’ worth of built up anticipation—was going to live up to my every expectation. Hearing the same songs in studio form didn’t hit me the same way, and I spent months considering 22, A Million my biggest disappointment of the year as a result. Even after the album officially released in September and I finally got to hear a full-quality version, I heard it as a distinct step down from its two predecessors.

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Review: Hailey, It Happens – Hailey, It Happens

Hailey, It Happens

Nothing good comes out in December, right? That’s more or less what most of the major music publications would have you believe, as End-of-the-Year lists start hitting the web in earnest earlier and earlier each year. This year, the start date was around Thanksgiving week. Maybe by 2026, we can make it all the way to Halloween! Personally, I’ll never finalize an AOTY list until mid-to-late December, and albums like Hailey, It Happens are Exhibit A for why that is. Not only was this record—the fourth official release and second full-length from Boston-based electropop duo Hailey, It Happens—a December 2nd release, but it’s also the kind of album that wouldn’t have sounded quite right until this particular time of year. On Hailey, It Happens, the band’s sound is driven by icy synths, yearning vocals, and wistful hooks built to come alive on the coldest nights of the year.

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Review: Countless Thousands – You’re Goddamn Right

I don’t review anywhere near a high percentage of the albums that land in my inbox. Largely, this fact is due to sheer, raw statistics. I get dozens of promos a day, most of them from artists I’ve never heard of. I don’t even have time to listen to the majority of them, let alone put pen to paper and give each album a fair, in-depth write-up. Believe me when I say that I wish I did have that kind of time.

With all that said, though, even I couldn’t resist giving Los Angeles rock band Countless Thousands a review, and their music was only one of several reasons. Between one of those eye-catching band names that pulls you in right away, a funny, tongue-in-cheek album title (You’re Goddamn Right), and an intriguing RIYL that included names like Against Me!, The Clash, and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, these guys won my attention in a way that few unknown bands ever do with a promo email. Add a serious master class in bio writing, which casts the four band members as a “show choir reject,” an “East Coast jazz legend,” a “cosplay nerd,” and a “Civil War reenacting drum geek,” and I was ready to write half the review before I even pressed play.

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Review: Max Fite – Shake It On Down

We’ve been hearing for years that “rock is dead,” but let’s just be honest: 2016 has been a damn fine year for rock music. Between new classics from the likes of Butch Walker and Jimmy Eat World, a Green Day album that was better than I ever expected a Green Day album would be in 2016, a sterling goodbye from Yellowcard, another strong round of emo releases led by The Hotelier, and the most ambitious Dawes album yet, 2016 has been the best year for rock in recent memory.

You can add Max Fite’s Shake It On Down to the list. An up-and-coming outfit from the Los Angeles area, Max Fite strike an effective balance between garage rock, 1990s brit pop, and whiskey-soaked southern rock. Held together by the voice of frontman Max Fitelson—who himself sounds like a mix between Craig Finn (The Hold Steady) and Noel Gallagher (Oasis), the band’s collision of different sounds coheres surprisingly well.

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Review: Miranda Lambert – The Weight of These Wings

Earlier this year, in a 10-year retrospective piece for Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium, I talked at length about the impossibility of double albums. The crux of my argument there was that the double album was something of a cautionary tale. So many artists have tried and failed to make compelling double albums, free of filler and with enough thematic or sonic cohesion to hold together over the course of two discs. Even as a songwriter myself, I can’t fathom wanting to attempt a double album. The idea of writing lots of songs is that you can take the finest ones, the ones that best cohere to your vision, and put them on a record together.

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Review: Green Day – Revolution Radio

Green Day - Revolution Radio

A lot of people probably thought Green Day were down for the count leading into 2004. They’d had a tumultuous decade of success in the 1990s, capturing the sound of a generation on Dookie and then writing the definitive graduation song with “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Their catalog was stacked with hit singles and earworm hooks, but they’d ushered in the start of the new millennium with little fanfare. 2000’s Warning got decent reviews but changed their sound in ways fans probably weren’t expecting and weren’t terribly psyched about by being more folk-pop than pop-punk. That, combined with the lack of a world-conquering single and the fact that Napster was busy taking a hatchet to the record industry, meant that Warning only ever went gold. Not bad for your average band, but not so great for a group that had gone either multiplatinum or diamond on their three previous albums. Add the 2003 theft of the record that was supposed to the follow-up to Warning, and Green Day seemed washed up and left for dead.

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The Killers’ ‘Sam’s Town’ and The Hold Steady’s ‘Boys and Girls in America,’ 10 Years Later

Between 2002 and 2009, Bruce Springsteen released five studio albums. Rather remarkably, that statistic made the aughts Springsteen’s most prolific decade ever. The Boss fired off four straight classics in the 1970s (Greetings from Asbury Park, The Wild, The Innocent, The E Street Shuffle, Born to Run, and Darkness on the Edge of Town) and put out four more in the 1980s (The River, Nebraska, Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love) before faltering in both quality and output in the 1990s. (The last decade of the millennium only saw Human Touch, Lucky Town, and The Ghost of Tom Joad, all of which are among Springsteen’s weakest LPs.)

The 2000s, though, brought the man back to life. Suddenly, Springsteen albums (and good ones) were a regular occurrence again. During the seven years that elapsed between 2002 and 2009, we got three E Street Band records (The Rising, Magic, and Working on a Dream), one acoustic album (Devils & Dust), and one tribute record (The Seeger Sessions). Four of those five records are worthwhile (Working on a Dream is the dud), and two are genuine classics (The Rising and Magic both recapture the…well, “magic” of the E Street Band’s golden age). However, there’s still an argument to be made that the three best Springsteen albums of the 2000s weren’t even written by Bruce, but by guys named Brandon, Craig, and Brian.

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