Atmosphere’s back, but unfortunately, without a vengeance. In the grand scheme of their discography, Southsiders is their least exciting release. Southsiders is Atmosphere’s first studio album in three years, and it seems as though they are pretty rusty and a little out of their element. The indie rap scene is evolving, but they’re lagging behind.…

A good cover appropriates the original song into the cover artist’s style. A great cover shows you something about the original song you weren’t even aware of prior. Escort’s cover of St. Vincent’s modern classic, “Actor Out of Work,” is such a cover. The 17-piece nouveau-disco group finds in the original chugging, guitar-driven St. Vincent…

  Hip-hop began as a culture of appropriating, of sampling, of taking existing sounds, chopping them up, and lacing them back together with words that reclaimed power. Throughout the 1980s, early hits by the Sugar Hill Gang, Public Enemy and Run-DMC made no apology for building off the sounds of others, but soon a copyright…

Written by Stefanie Fernandez The New York indie pop duo Cults possesses a much larger presence than the cramped, intimate atmosphere of The Space might suggest. The Hamden, CT venue, which bears more resemblance to a grungy version of the diner from Happy Days than a music club, is clearly a place where relatively obscure touring musicians can…

Written by Samuel Frampton In some ways, it’s easy to make fun of Kanye West.  Yeah, he interrupted Taylor Swift at the Grammys, dissed George Bush on national television, sold a bunch of plain white t-shirts for $120 each, briefly served as the mascot for an online cryptocurrency, and formally declared himself a god. And yeah,…