95 North. . . The Newspaper

J. Cole's most recent album,  KOD , arrived at an interesting point in pop music: Lil' Pump and the other lil's are dominating the headphones of teenagers, filling in a cultural void with blue hair, Xanax, learn, and generally ignorant behavior. Such is the long-told story of youth. 50 years ago the Beatles were wearing their mops, smoking marijuana, and perfecting the devils music. They said they were bigger than Jesus. People burned their records. Old timers complained about the hippies. Those hippies grew up, and complained about the gen-X kids who were fed a steady diet of malaise, Beavis and Butthead , punk rock, and Mad Magazine . Those kids grew up and had millennial's- a generation of spoiled, but poor kids who whiz through life on apps, killed the traditional music business, elected Obama, and deferred their student loans. J. Cole, born in 1985, is a millennial, and perfectly typifies the general experience of a millennial in many ways. His first album,...

Better Oblivion Community Center? The phrase itself purports that we make a collective attempt to improve on our, well, failure. It's sort of what we run into as we scroll through Instagram, as corporations feed us the anecdotes to the anxieties they create, and the market is awarding them. The better the oblivion, the bigger the profits, the deeper the oblivion-inducing claws sink into our very humanness. At least that's the idea that two s ongwriting aces, Conor Oberest and Phoebe Bridgers, came up with- releasing a concept album of sorts detailing the feelings that fill each step between us and the outside world- a political parade with confetti- a small black box we live through.  Heavy political notions and societal critiques aside, if you listen to any song off of Better Oblivion Community Center, let it be "Dylan Thomas". Named after the famed early 20th century Welsh poet, "Dylan Thomas" greets us with a jingly, bright, energetic...

Sufjan Stevens, the guy who's in tune with the inner working of the heart, has a song for us this independence day: "Fourth of July", off of his excellent 2015 album Carrie & Lowell . The album itself is a reflection on Sufjan's turbulent childhood, with images of his mother dying her hair and smoking cigarettes in the bathroom, leaving him at the video store when he was 5, day drinking, and other similar scenes filling the contents of the record. In this context, "Fourth of July", a song about her death, finds itself placed right in the middle of the album- constituting the heart of the Carrie & Lowell project. The song is carried by a hauntingly beautiful piano melody that seems to sweep right through you- delicate, yet strong in the sense that it all but demands a wide-eyed introspection of some sorts. Here, Sufjan encounters his emotions, a vivid imagination, and the natural world as he retells the story of his mothers death. He imagine...

Hiss Golden Messenger is the musical moniker for singer/songwriter MC Taylor. In 2010, he released a stark, acoustic based album entitled Bad Debt . The album is full of late night brooding. . . a kitchen table lit by candles and a baby sleeping in the other room. The kinda dark hours where you're soul bursts, explores some dark territory, and scans all corners of the mind, trying to map meaning. The best of the batch of songs featured on Bad Debt is represented by "Jesus Shot me in the Head". A provocative title, for sure, meant to convey the radical act and nature of an instantaneous religious conversion experience. Here, the metaphor of salvation- or dying to your old self- comes in the form of Jesus' killing off one's old self, in order to be "born again". Often, born again conversion experiences are preceded by a life lived on the low, which is accurately described here- the rough friends, the Motel 6, the drugs, the drinking. . .it's all pa...

Phoebe Bridgers had been circling around the L.A singer-songwriter scene for a few years. It was inevitable that her talent would see her through- with an ear for melody and class A writing skills, Bridgers steadily attracted the attention of many- and unfortunately, that of Ryan Adams. Adams, who was revealed by the New York Times to be at best, a manipulative, misogynistic, and coercive force (see the article  here ) that dangled record deals and studio time for talented young women like Bridgers. In this context, "Motion Sickness" is a song that recounts an ill-fated, manipulative relationship with an older man. A few steady sweeps of an electric guitar greet us at the start of the song, sending the whole enterprise in motion, down the sidewalk, down memory lane, down a reflective L.A. street lit with regret, anger, and just enough catharsis to roll everything downhill.