Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, and 19 more albums we can’t wait to hear in June
Music News Modest Mouse
Summer is ramping up, vaccinations are in effect, and more and more live music is being announced—arguably to the degree that many of us are seeing our fall dance cards filling up rapidly. (If you haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, please do so ASAP, as the safety of many of these planned events depends on it.) So while we break out the grills and remember what it’s like to be near other humans again, a lot of artists are stepping up to bring us the new soundtracks to these celebrations. From beloved hip-hop acts like Migos to A.V. Club mainstays The Mountain Goats, there’s a host of great music coming out in June. So take a look at what we’re most excited to hear this month, and hopefully you can come away with a few new acts to check out. Plus, if there’s something you’re looking forward to that you don’t see here, let us know in the comments; as always, there’s way too much good stuff happening in the music world to possibly cover in a single list.
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45 Comments
Somehow looking forward to LP more than SK based on this. Brownstein’s vocals are tiresome these days. I don’t know the rest, (well Mountain Goats, Modest Mouse of course but not intimately) sorry old indie guy I will fo and die now.
you rednecks are quite silly mods for such a dirt trash slideshow ghetto redneck American freakshow website like this 🙂
Redneck slideshow ghetto dirt trash American
I think we can all agree that Cautious Clay is a terrible, terrible name.
I miss the “this year in terrible band names” feature, it was always good for several belly laughs
My son and I would go over that every year and laugh our asses off.
Looking forward to the new Modest Mouse, even though I didn’t really dig their previous album that much. Starting to sort of get into Japanese Breakfast, so that’s probably the only other one of this lot that have much interest in.
I can see not loving the last MM as a whole album but I really thought “Lampshades on Fire” should have been a bigger hit
No John Mayer? Did he get bouced to make room for Modest Mouse? The new single sounds like 2004 so much I wanted to protest G.W. Bush and buy a ticket to The Aviator.
Finding myself weirdly indifferent to this month, just not a lot of stuff catching my interest. I am excited for Crowded House’s comeback this week – Neil Finn doesn’t write bad songs – and the excellent Australian psych/funk/trip-hop band Hiatus Kaiyote towards the end of the month. Other than those, catchup month for me it seems
How can you not be excited for new music from Modest Mouse and Sleater-Kinney?
Love both, but to be fair, both are past their prime. I’m definitely looking forward to SK more of the two and am intrigued by what a pure Carrie/Corin album will sound like, but Modest Mouse have been on autopilot since “We Were Dead…”
‘Cos they chucked Janet.
When Modest Mouse hasn’t released any good new music in about 14 years.
Modest Mouse are one of my favourite bands, but their last album six years ago was a big swig of nothing and the singles more recently were honestly terrible. I’ll listen to the new one for sure, it might have some good songs, but they’re just a band way past their prime who could have bowed out gracefully after We Were Dead…as for Sleater-Kinney, they’re still great but the whole thing with Weiss being pushed out left a really sour taste in my mouth and I feel like the band just wants us to forget she was ever a major part of their sound? it was just a weird situation to follow even as a casual fan.
for me it’s like: Sleater-Kinney is a trio, not a duo…I’m trying to find the right example…acting like S-K is only Carrie and Corin is extremely insulting, like Janet has only been their session drummer for decades (not to mention being in Wild Flag)…but it’s also just incorrect? Like…Pixies aren’t the Pixies without Kim Deal. Journey! Journey likes to talk about how they existed before Steve Perry, then they play all the Steve Perry songs…they just aren’t Journey without Steve Perry. I can’t quite come up with the right example. But the fact that Carrie’s statement appear to show that is what she thinks, that Janet was basically never in the band, is pretty revolting
read a S-K short interview in…New York Mag maybe? The interviewer asked about Weiss leaving the band because she had no creative input. Brownstein is dismissive of the question, says “I always thought Sleater-Kinney was whatever we were doing” meaning only her and Corin Tucker, and in response to criticism of the last album (which was widely criticized as “not very good”) she says it was great to break up with white male music critics. So I guess the people who didn’t like the album and weren’t white males are now officially white males, that’s one way to deal with criticism (there’s also the old favorite “all critics are retroactively biased against me! They’re not judiced, they’re PREjudiced!”). I remember Grimes once threw an entire album away because she was like “I went down the wrong path with that one”…and the songs I remember from “Center Won’t Hold” like “Hurry Home to Me” were less experimental pop than vapid. Vapid pop can be fun, but not when you’re telling your (legendary) drummer she should art less and talking about how you want your band to have its own font. (smh)
It’s definitely a shame that Janet Weiss revealed herself to be an old white man.
If the first step in your artistic vision is silencing a powerhouse drummer like Weiss, then I wouldn’t want to stick around either.
It’s literally the old joke: “What did the drummer say that got them fired? Hey guys, I wrote a song”.
Alternatively: what do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?A drummer.(Except, Janet was clearly the top musician in Sleater-Kinney while she was in them. She is fucking amazing.)
Sleater-Kinney is the Portlandia of bands. Super popular in the NW and critical darlings, but at the end of the day they both actually suck.
Whew, I’m almost wishing I hadn’t scrolled down to read this comment (not because your comment is bad! It just breaks my heart!). I had come here to say that I struggle mightily with S-K that has no Janet, and now I REALLY struggle with it. The last album wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t so amazing that it would make sense that they’d consider it worth alienating Janet over, and now that I know more… I… I may just skip this one. Feels weird to type that about a band I’ve loved since I was a kid.
It’s on me for not reading up on it but for some reason I thought Janet primarily left over health issues. 🙁
yeah, even with whatever happened, “Janet was never actually Sleater-Kinney she was just a guest drummer for 20 years” is a revolting take.
Carrie Brownstein’s memoir is a good read, but not if you want to think of Carrie Brownstein as a chill person.
I love Rostam’s solo work, but the implication that VW’s “Father of the Bride” shouldn’t be counted among the band’s greatest albums is bizarre. It feels like a fantastic culmination of what the band had done so far, while also being a major leap forward.
I found it to be less than the sum of its parts, but even I know I’m in the minority in saying so.
I totally agree. Plus, they only have four albums, anyway, all of which were more or less critically acclaimed. It’s kind of weird to talk about their “greatest records” as if they’ve had this long career with some hits and some misses.
I’m not a VW fan but find myself liking his solo work and collaborations with the guy from The Walkmen
Father of the Bride was my second favorite album of 2019 behind Cheekface’s Therapy Island. It’s every bit as good as the rest of VW’s catalog.
After two massive disappointments for S-K and Phair, I’m cautiously optimistic about their new work.
Seriously, for those of you who haven’t heard Funstyle, it’s not just bad, it sounds unhinged.
I was weirdly just watching Todd in the Shadows take on Fun Style and I was baffled by even just the excerpts I heard.
A fact that is interesting only to me: my good buddy is the roadie for Red Fang. He appears early in the video in the bathrobe. Super funny dude. Red Fang is only ‘meh’ though.
Starting with Good News For People Who Love Bad News, Modest Mouse has been making music for the sensitive frat boy
meh that’s a shit take
Listen to “Fire It Up” again
“I’m really into Modest Mouse”: the start of the least interesting conversation you’ll ever have with a bearded guy.
Yes, “we’ll always miss Weiss.” No Sleater-Kinney for me until they get Janet back. And if that means never… we’ll, it’s never.
Can’t believe you left out the new James album that I am so excited for. As far as legacy bands, I feel like they have been more consistent and interesting than Modest Mouse for a decade. And their new single, ‘All the Colours of You’ is a far better indictment of Drumpf America than anything else I’ve heard.
No mention of KGatLW’s ‘Butterfly 3000′ album. I’m getting this distinct feeling you all hate the Gizz.
Fear Factory is the only decent thing coming out in June. Fuck all this trash.
No Weiss, no listen.
“Some fans loved the LP; others didn’t know how to feel”
I am confident that the feeling that I was having when I first listened to ‘The Center Won’t Hold’ was disappointment. That was soon followed by indifference. After the whole Weiss thing, I discarded it entirely.
I was initially very sceptical that Wolf Alice could follow up Visions of a Life, an album that won the Mercury Award for Album of the Year, but seriously, I’m impressed.They really are one of the best British bands right now.
The new Wolf Alice is great! Not “Visions Of A Life” great, but still great. New King Buffalo dropped today, which is excellent.