Heaven Can Wait: How The Format Went From 2000s Obscurity to 2020s Arena-Fillers
They never dented the Billboard charts or crossed into mainstream stardom, but those who encountered The Format during their initial 2000s run were deeply enamored. The creative partnership between singer Nate Ruess and instrumentalist Sam Means explored a maximalist take on indie-pop, fearlessly blending big, sing-along hooks and bright guitars with subtly devastating lyricism. The […]
How Screensaver Perfected The ‘Three Lens Approach’ On Their Dark, Weird And Unflinching New Album
Forming in Melbourne in mid-2019, darkwave post-punks Screensaver burst onto the scene with a barrage of vintage synthesizers and a jolty, gothic-tinged, angular sound. Their sense of urgency wasn’t confined to the studio either, with their first run of live shows making an impression and establishing them as an exciting new presence in the city’s […]
Album Review: bar italia, ‘Some Like It Hot’
Junior: “Does that mean you play that very fast music? Jazz?” Sugar: “Yeah! Real hot!” Junior: “I guess some like it hot. I personally prefer classical music.” This exchange between Tony Curtis’ Junior and Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar in the 1959 film Some Like It Hot is where the titular phrase stems from. And it has […]
Album Review: The Starting Line, ‘Eternal Youth’
Small actions can have massive consequences—a truth the butterfly effect has been trying to sell us for decades. Case in point: in April 2024, Taylor Swift released the single “The Black Dog,” where she sings about a former lover getting excited at a bar “when someone plays The Starting Line.” But his new flame doesn’t […]
Album Review: Gelli Haha, ‘Switcheroo’
One late night in Nov. 2022, on the dark streets of New York, a woman with the TikTok handle @princessazula0 filmed herself in front of an intersection. “You know what it never was?” she asked, seemingly to no-one in particular but her front-facing phone camera. The answer? “That serious. It was never that serious. Quite […]
Album Review: 100%WET, ‘100%WET’
One of the digital era’s greatest byproducts has been the explosion of subgenres. By 2025, we’ve reached a point where people are literally playing games to guess whether a subgenre actually exists or was just made up on the spot. So, imagine the collective singular eyebrow raise when Copenhagen duo 100%WET describe their sound as […]