Americans can’t agree on much these days, but at least we agree unanimously that 2018 was a shitty year. It sucked more than 2017, which had somehow outdid 2016 before it. Now all of a sudden everyone is hopeful for new year, so why don’t we ring it in by crying it out to these top tearjerkers of 2018.

“Nobody” by Mitski from Be the Cowboy

My God, I’m so lonely

So I open the window

To hear sounds of people

Venus, planet of love, really was drastically altered by global warming. But it’s no surprise heartache abounds even…

Thinking about the LA teacher’s strike today. I have so much respect for teachers. My mom was a teacher so I know the amount of work they put in to those thankless jobs. And one of the primary complaints of this strike has to do with class size and support staff, which were also pertinent issues in central Florida where I grew up. As citizens have been told again and again, there just isn’t the money to create smaller class sizes.

Here the teachers are focusing on their efforts on securing funding for the schools, rather than an increase in…

Earl Sweatshirt just released the first track off his upcoming album, to understandable fanfare. Last week, Vince Staples announced “Earl is back,” after the misanthropic rapper graced us with his presence for 20 glorious seconds on Vince’s excellent release FM!. This time around, we’re lucky to get almost 2 minutes out of him.

“Nowhere2go” is definitely a departure for Earl. The beat sounds like something he would spit over when he went by Sly, but this track is free of the tongue-twisters that defined his early work. At this point in his career, his poetic prowess means he doesn’t have…

The cover is “Postcards from Asia: The Floodplain,” by Pat Presley, a landscape of walking houses with steampunk spider legs, reminiscent of Howl’s Moving Castle. In the foreground, a figure guides a similarly stylized catamaran towards the crawling houses. The scene is portrayed simply, sentimentally, like a future drawn by a clone of Norman Rockwell. But it serves to show that ancient floodplains will be used by people in the same way they always have, even as technology shifts and grows around them.

The first story, “The Miracle Lambs of Minane,” by Finbarr O’Reilly, is also a sentimental portrait of…

We’re a week out from the release of Death Grips’ sixth album, Year of the Snitch. Let’s review the singles the group has released so far.

Death Grips gave us the first hint of the their new album with the video for “Streaky,” which is viscerally uncomfortable in a way that only a Death Grips video can be. The images are mild and repetitive, but there’s something about them that just feels gross. A woman turns on a device and lies in front of its flashing lights. She seems mesmerized by the changing colors, just as you are mesmerized by…

Witch Mountain is back with their new self-titled album, their fifth overall and their first with new singer, Kayla Dixon. Dixon was only 19 when she replaced the band’s previous singer, Uta Plotkin, and her youth has certainly imbued the band with a renewed energy and momentum. But don’t mistake that youth for inexperience, as she belts out bluesy melodies worthy of an ‘80’s hair metal queen that she would be too young to know about. Her control is stunning, shifting effortlessly from classically emotive singing to sweltering screams.

The two opening tracks show Dixon’s versatility and their tightness as…

It’s been widely cited that Madlib sent Kanye a beat tape for the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sessions, but Kanye passed on all of them. Until his most recent album, that is, which features a classic Madlib beat on the Kendrick-collabo “No More Parties in L.A.” This is probably the best song off of The Life of Pablo, and clearly belongs alongside its choppy production style. A lot has changed in the past six years, so it’s easy to wonder how might this song be different if it were released back in 2010, when Kanye first got it.

For…

When Kanye teased “No More Parties in L.A.” at the end of the “Real Friends” premiere, there was no indication that the final product would be this behemoth of a track. Kanye and Kendrick are a dream team, but a great song still needs a great foundation. Here we have a classic Madlib beat with all the fixins: a jittery soul sample that recurs throughout the song, disintegrating into a rolling, rumbling bassline and a guitar lick that methodically crawls along the track. …