Eating Indian food can involve a level of ceremony. As teeming balti dishes of vindaloo and biryani are placed alongside baskets of paratha—in rhythm one after the other—diners methodically load and share in silence, communicating mostly by pointing a finger at a serving, indicating that it’s time for that one.

Six minutes into the original 1996 infomercial for the George Foreman Grill, product-hawking queen Nancy Nelson segues from ghastly broiler-cooked hamburgers to ask former boxer George Foreman about his then-nine kids (he has a dozen now), so that the audience might acknowledge him as quite the family man. Foreman…

In 1997, CD Warehouses proliferated across suburban strip malls, sterile repositories of cheap, hard-plastic media where Joe Hedgetrimmer could methodically click-click-click through Eagles and Beatles greatest-hits albums in hope of making his 15-minute commutes easier to digest. It was an era of accessibility in…

Obsessive music fans are a strange ilk. Not only will they fill their homes with every deluxe reissue of a record, but they’ll take on some barely functional curiosities, too. Here’s a look at the releases that stretch the definition of “album,” often requiring so much effort that it begs the question if it’s worth…

Bacon products should probably have bacon in them—right? Rocco Loosbrock, founder of online marketplace BaconFreak.com, certainly thinks so, noting that the best kind of bacon-flavored snack always contains real bacon, be it his maple bacon breakfast blend tea or bacon chocolate chip pretzel cookie. Loosbrock’s store…

There’s no easy way to summarize the year in music given how much of it took us by surprise. High-profile albums would be announced with little warning, arriving on streaming services in a flash, and dominate the cultural conversation until the next one came along. Similarly, some of the most innovative names in music…

Given that so many people contribute to our yearly best-of lists, it’s hard to get a glance at an individual’s favorites. But hey, that’s what ballots are for! After giving our top albums of 2016 a glance, dig into the individual lists our writers submitted. It includes their top 10 lists, honorable mentions, and…

Even as Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss have moved away from and fudged with the blown-out, hook-driven simplicity of their much-hyped 2010 debut full-length, Treats, they’ve mostly kept on keepin‘ on, tipping a hat to what made Sleigh Bells, well, Sleigh Bells. The foolproof template: Miller programs super beats to…

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to review sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…

Hardcore has always defined itself as a close-knit community, especially underlined by the youth-crew movement of the early to mid-’80s. The bands often lack pomp and frills, the kids dress down, and together everyone assumes an almost implicit underdog mentality. Because for all its aggression, hardcore is predicated…

Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to review sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…

Early on England’s Wild Beasts reveled in the Morrissey-like theatrics spilling from their brooding indie rock, with dual vocalists Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming candidly gnawing the scenery of each track. They were an acquired taste. The vocals felt like one continuous flourish, practically operatic in form, and the…

Every Friday, dozens of new records are released into the wild. Some make big splashes, and others sink almost immediately. For most music consumers, it’s almost too much information, and save for those precious few who spend their hours glued to reviews sites and release calendars, it’s hard to know what’s coming out…

Ringworm represents the blue-collar, working-man metalhead in all of us: steadfast, bent out of shape, and 100 percent loathe to sugarcoat one goddamn fucking thing for you. Born from a hulking early-’90s hardcore scene, the Cleveland band quickly called it after just a handful of years on the circuit—a demo, split,…

Having officially passed 2016’s midway point—look for a catch-up guide on the year’s best releases soon—the new music train just keeps on rolling. On first glance, July seems slight, but it’s stuffed in ways other months haven’t been. Featuring reissues from icons such as David Bowie and R.E.M. and new albums from…

Digging through the contemporary dance-punk canon of the early ’00s, it’s pretty easy to bridge a few characteristics back to the ’80s glam-metal party, but only at the most basic of levels. For example, the musicianship of both eras is pretty undeniable, but the cock-of-the-walk swagger—stylistically in both hair and…

On stage the normally stoic, meditative Michael Gira performs as a sort of mad conductor, gyrating and flailing with what’s to be perceived as the primal, cathartic release of Swans’ music. Omniscient crescendos pile one atop the other as Gira’s possessed body movements often work independently of a track’s overall…

Angry music ain’t easy. Maintaining peak levels of disgust with sociopolitical hierarchies, religious bastardization, or the human race in general takes a lot of elbow grease—particularly over the course of a full-length record. Nails have it figured out, though: Don’t trifle. Since 2009 the SoCal grind merchants have…

For two decades, the French duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have been devoted in their focus to suspend focus via series after series of downtempo synths and treated, blissful vocals—so much so that it seems out of character for them to celebrate their legacy with a high-gloss deluxe anthology. It’s damn…