VMP Magazine

Meg Remy has been thinking a lot about the past, both on a micro and macro scale. Between now and her last U.S. Girls record, 2018’s In A Poem Unlimited, she began going to therapy to work through personal experiences from throughout her life. She’s been reading a lot of history to help her better understand the current events of today, and to consciously deflect the “fascist techniques” that the mainstream news media uses to influence its viewers.

In 2019, mainstream music seems like a solo artist’s game. The “Rock is dead” discourse gradually spread to bands in general, and many popular acts today (i.e. Bon Iver or Tame Impala) are essentially one-person endeavors buoyed by a few regular live musicians. Fortunately, the members of Free Nationals committed to the idea of a shared musical vision long before these conversations become de rigueur.

Wading in the middle of a sea of early ’00s pop twinkles and silky ’80s synths is Magdalena Bay, comprised of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin.

For Caroline Polachek, each album she makes produces an equal and opposite LP down the road. She’s been making hard sonic and thematic pivots in her music since she was part of the acclaimed group Chairlift, going from smart-yet-staid fringe pop songs on their debut to more urgent, angular, and electronic tunes on their subsequent projects. The trend has continued into her eclectic solo career.

On a drizzly April evening in New York's Chelsea, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, and Janet Weiss pack onto a stylish couch in the windowless bowels of a creative agency. Slumped a bit after a long day of shooting the cover of Sleater-Kinney’s ninth studio album, The Center Won’t Hold, they engage in a brief discussion about an unidentified object in the corner of the room made up of a large barrel, approximately 10 brooms, and a plastic children’s urinal (Is it art? The consensus is yes). My request to know what we can expect from the album art is met with three smirks, followed by the type of silent eye contact conversation that seldom occurs outside of people who have known each other for decades.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Reba McEntire’s For My Broken Heart, our July Country Record of the Month, Reba spoke with us about the tracks, videos and impact of her 1991 album.

Image by Brett Carlson

There’s nothing like the feeling of stumbling upon a great album you’d forgotten about. Buried in the depths of your mind are lyrics you thought were long lost and unexpected memories with a whole host of songs. In the case of Matthew Dear, there was one extra caveat — the album he rediscovered was one he’d made himself.

“It’s pretty fucked up, because Sam [Valenti] of [my label] Ghostly, he was the one that kinda put all the things together again and said to me, ‘Hey remember all this? Remember this thing?’ And when I heard them it was so messed up, because I could sing every one. My wife, too,” Dear recalled. “She remembered every song and we looked at each other like, ‘Oh my god.’”

Photos by Elijah Lee Taylor

In Inside Listening, a new series from VMP, we’ll be holding up a lens to the sacred listening spaces of various vinyl collectors from all over, one collection at a time.

In honor of his new album, Quietly Blowing It, which is out June 25, we took a visual tour through the personal listening space of MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger), as Taylor gave us a track-by-track breakdown of the new record.

Praising Hop Along’s 2015 album Painted Shut, Jillian Mapes wrote, “Listening to Frances Quinlan fray her vocals is like watching someone rip a gnarly run in their black tights.” If Hop Along reflects that torn brutality, then Quinlan’s solo effort Likewise is the gradual unraveling of the tights’ threads, a tear slowly widening into a gash. Likewise is tough and tender: ethereal in its imagery, but absolute in its craving for connection.

We sat down to talk with Melana Bass, the UW-Madison First Wave scholar and artist who created the unique art print included in our Nina Simone Sings the Blues packages. Here she talks about her art, Nina Simone’s beauty and music and the inspiration she drew from it, and the process of making this month’s print.