Table of contents for June 15, 2017 in Rolling Stone

The Nashville singer-songwriter just released Way Out West, a tribute to California’s influence on country music. The Ventures “Out of Limits” There’s a real connection between a garage-rock instrumental like this and the world of country music, like Merle Haggard and the Strangers. The twang is the common denominator. Richard Bennett “Riviera” Richard rescued Nashville from the urban-cowboy bullshit. You could make an entire movie out of this song. It’s beautiful. The Byrds “Chestnut Mare” I play Clarence White’s actual guitar, which is the central guitar on this record. This song is cinematic, always one of my favorites. Marty Robbins “El Paso” This song tied the West with the East, the North and the South. It had no barriers. It’s a stunning piece of writing. There’s not a stray word.…

Elvis costello hasn’t released a new album in nearly four years, and he’s feeling pretty good about “stepping off that train.” He had time to finish his superb memoir, 2015’s Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, and is deep into work on a potential Broadway musical based on A Face in the Crowd, the 1957 film about a drunk who becomes a TV star and then a dangerous demagogue. And now Costello and the Imposters are prepping for more U.S. dates on a tour built around 1982’s Imperial Bedroom, the album where he calmed the Attractions’ carnival clatter into an intricate studio triumph that, until now, he’d struggled to reproduce live. All that, and there may be new music on its way. “Keep an eye out,” says Costello, who’s enjoying the…

THE LAST TIME Serj Tankian saw Chris Cornell, everything seemed great. On March 25th, the two friends – Tankian, the singer in the alternative-metal band System of a Down, and Cornell, the founding singer-guitarist of the pioneering Seattle grunge band Soundgarden – were guests at a star-studded 70th-birthday gala thrown by Elton John in L.A. “We had this long chat, sitting next to each other,” Tankian remembers. He and Cornell talked about composing for movies and the prospect of Cornell doing concerts with an orchestra. Tankian, about to go on the road with System of a Down, asked Cornell if he was tired of touring. “For myself, it’s fun but nothing new under the sun,” Tankian admits. Cornell “was just the opposite: ‘I’m really excited. I’m doing this tour with…

Gone Now RCA HHH½ Jack Antonoff is a grown-up emo kid and a fully realized tune machine – an Elton John whose yellow-brick road always leads back to his sad bedroom. Bleachers’ second LP exudes a kind of afflicted bliss, anthemic Eighties pop and R&B impressions built from the harried diaristic isolation that era’s Top 40 only allowed in at the margins. Lorde co-writes and sings on the synth-pop gusher “Don’t Take the Money,” and Carly Rae Jepsen shows up on “Hate That You Know Me,” part snappy electro-pop tune, part industrial angst spiral.…

Kids in the Street New West Alt-country heir breathes new ideas into rootsy nostalgia Forming a trilogy with 2014’s Single Mothers and 2015’s Absent Fathers, J.T. Earle’s latest teams him with Omaha indie-rock don Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) for his rangiest set yet. “What’s Goin’ Wrong” is clarinet-spiked Texas-swing impressionism, and “15-25” is vintage New Orleans R&B gumbo. The LP always feels organic, never mannered. On the title track, acoustic guitar slices through a pedal steel reverb haze, as Earle waxes nostalgic for a childhood in the 1990s with a timelessness that could conjure the 1890s just as well.…

Relaxer Canvasback/Atlantic HHH What if Radiohead had used their Nineties digital prog to escape into the past rather than fight the future? That’s the vibe of “3WW,” the prettily mordant first track on Alt-J’s third record, a glitch-y modern version of Fairport Convention’s folk pastorales. The U.K. art rockers have a nice time messing with history – their “House of the Rising Sun” is a minimalist chamber rumble, with singer-guitarist Joe Newman adding his own poetry to the original. At times their idea-heavy songs can feel weighed down by cleverness (the Primus-y “Deadcrush”). But Alt-J can create a dark beauty that’s like moonlight on an English moor.…

War Machine Brad Pitt Directed by David Michôd HH IN “THE RUNAWAY GENERAL,” a 2010 article by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, talked shit about President Obama’s war policy and got canned for it. But the core of Hastings’ piece and of his book, The Operators, is the war machine and how it operates. Now Hollywood and Netflix take a crack at it. Brad Pitt stars as the McChrystal character, here dubbed Gen. Glen McMahon for reasons best known to litigators. Pitt can be great in go-for-broke roles (Inglourious Basterds), but he pushes the general far into caricature. There are three dimensions to this ramrod, but Pitt and the script give us only one. Writer-director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom)…

There have been deadlier incidents – at Paris’ Bataclan theater, where three gunmen killed 90 fans at an Eagles of Death Metal concert in 2015, and at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, where a shooter killed 49 last year. But the May 22nd bombing at an Ariana Grande concert at England’s Manchester Arena was a new kind of horror. The attack was shocking both for its apparent targeting of young people, and for the ease with which it was carried out: By detonating his device in a foyer area just outside the venue, the 22-year-old bomber found a way to circumvent security at a major arena. “My first thought is, ‘How do they let this guy in a venue?’ Because everybody has cracked down on security,” says Bob McLynn, manager of Lorde,…

IN THE MID-1960S, THE ACID TESTS THROWN BY KEN Kesey and his Merry Pranksters were the white-hot center of the psychedelic revolution: dusk-to-dawn parties, usually in the Bay Area, that brought together freaks and Hells Angels, offered free LSD in plastic tubs and sometimes featured live accompaniment by the Grateful Dead. One night in 1966, Kesey and his followers found an unlikely figure in their midst: a genteel, Virginia-born former newspaper reporter in a three-piece suit. The book that Tom Wolfe would write about Kesey and his orbit, 1968’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, became the first great account of the Sixties counterculture. It also helped redefine journalism, thanks to a wild-eyed, fast-paced style that dropped readers right inside the action. “Not even the hip world in New York,” Wolfe…

Teenage Emotions Virgin/EMI Meet the giddy teenage boss of “bubblegum trap” Nineteen-year-old “bubblegum trap” sensation Lil Yachty brags that he’s “never took a sip of beer.” But he has an intoxicated flow, crooning notes he can’t hit and enthusiastically rapping beyond the beat as he happily disregards traditional ideas of rhythm and melody. Rapping gleefully about looking at the stars, going back to high school to stunt on his teachers and having sex with his friends’ moms, he opens hip-hop to the giddy and childlike – more like the naif rock of Beat Happening than his Atlanta peers.…

Roger Waters Is This the Life We Really Want? Columbia HHHH “Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains/Picture a leader with no fucking brains,” snarls Roger Waters near the start of his first proper rock LP in 25 years, unsubtle as a hammer between the eyes. But the grim charm of this set, a dystopian concept album that makes The Wall read like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, is precisely his off-the-leash ranting, a fitting response to our times. The LP is not without humor. It opens with the old rock star imagining his first act as God: undoing the long-term effects of alcohol on his face (priorities, people!). Elsewhere, classic song allusions flicker sardonically (“Wish you were here in Guantánamo Bay!”). But it’s a relentlessly dark image feed: drone warfare (“Déjà…

In the past few years, you’ve become a much bigger concert draw. What happened? I don’t like to think about why – because then you find out. I have a theory about any success I’ve had. I don’t think I’m all that bad. I just think I’m competent. I know how to write. I know how to play. I know how to sing in key. I don’t like my own voice. Do you consider yourself a great songwriter? I think I’m OK. Some of my songs are pretty damn good. Some stink out loud. I once tried to write a song in French, and I don’t even speak French. I played it in France and asked a promoter why they didn’t like it. He said they thought I was singing…

1. The National “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” The beloved Brooklyn indie-rock crew usually goes for refined gloom. But the first song we’ve heard from its forthcoming new LP (due late summer) is straight-up aggro, right down to Aaron Dessner’s searing guitar solo. 2. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit “If We Were Vampires” A powerful meditation on love and mortality from one of the best alt-country artists around – with his wife, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires, adding vocals. 3. Beach House “Chariot” The dream-pop duo have a new B-sides set coming out. Judging by this elegiac gusher, they’ve got some great leftovers. 4. Selena Gomez “Bad Liar” This bubbly jam lifts its groove from Talking Heads’ 1977 classic “Psycho Killer,” adding a cool, creepy edge to lyrics about…

BONO HAD A LOT ON his mind before U2 kicked off the Joshua Tree 2017 tour. There were logistical questions, like whether it was a good idea to spend the first 25 minutes on a tiny B stage with no video screens, or whether there were too many obscure songs. But his biggest worry centered on the idea of the tour itself: “It’s so not us to throw ourselves a birthday party,” he says. “We didn’t know if we could pull off a tour that honors The Joshua Tree without it being nostalgic – that’s an oxymoron.” But shortly into opening night on May 12th at Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium, Bono stopped worrying. The group tore through the 1987 opus – which made U2 one of the world’s biggest bands…

Tracy Morgan STAYING ALIVE Netflix Morgan’s highway crash and recovery are the subjects of his special. But this is no therapy session: The accident is a jumping-off point for jokes about physical therapy, Caitlyn Jenner and the settlement that allowed him to move into a new neighborhood: “I forgave who hit me. But I’ll tell you who is mad at him: all my white neighbors.” Norm Macdonald HITLER’S DOG, GOSSIP & TRICKERY Netflix Macdonald riffs on why he’s terrified of Germany (“Who did they choose to go to war with? The world! It was actually close!”). He also examines the meaning of the phrase “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” “It’s very simple,” he says. “You can have sex with a prostitute, and she will not tell your wife.”…

THOM YORKE HAS FOUR WORDS OF BLUNT ADVICE FOR his younger, twitchier self, that paranoid twentysomething humanoid who made his band’s turn-of-the-millennium masterpieces. “Lighten the fuck up,” Yorke says, laughing hard. Radiohead’s frontman, who turned 48 in October, is long past his days of hiding in tour buses and venting pain and fear into spiral notebooks. Now, he dances onstage and DJ’s in clubs. At the moment, he’s sitting in Little Dom’s Italian restaurant in the Los Feliz neighborhood of his adopted hometown of Los Angeles, wearing a bleached denim jacket with the collar popped up, a thin white T-shirt and what appear to be leather pants. His long hair is pulled back into a tiny, tight bun; he has a stylish gray beard. Little Dom’s is one of his…

“When you start to feel the rush Of crimson headache aching blush And you surrender to the touch, You’ll know.”—Halsey, “Heaven in Hiding” Halsey Hopeless Fountain Kingdom Astralwerks HHHH BY ROB SHEFFIELD It makes sense that Halsey proclaims herself a “Marvel nerd,” because she definitely nailed the origin story. Born in 1994, she blew up into an out-of-nowhere pop icon with her breakout hymn, “New Americana,” speaking for a new generation of electro-angst youth: “High on legal marijuana/Raised on Biggie and Nirvana.” Halsey keeps leveling up her pop-rebel game, with the sass of a confessed “fucked-up stoner kid” who grew up as suburban Jersey girl Ashley Nicolette Frangipane and renamed herself after a Bushwick L-train station. Bisexual, biracial, bipolar, but definitely not buying your next drink, she comes on like…

Phoenix Ti Amo Loyaute/Glassnote HHH½ The biggest and best French rock band ever has proved that you can still go pop on the strength of cagey songcraft and retro-rock sophistication. “Champagne or prosecco?” frontman Thomas Mars offers over a New Wave mirror-ball glide on the title track of Phoenix’s sixth LP, before dropping references to the Buzzcocks, soft rock and that venerable old-school smoothie Beethoven. Phoenix’s 2013 LP Bankrupt! seemed to pull back a bit from the spit-polished bounce of their wondrous surprise hits “1901” and “Lisztomania.” This time out, they’re heavy into mellow Seventies sunshine, with major ELO/10cc/ Steely Dan overtones. “J-Boy” is posh, pouty disco kicks impacted with lyrics that evoke a sci-fi dystopian romance. And “Fior Di Latte” is sad-hearted yacht-soul splendor. Phoenix are at their most…

Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art? Vice Music HHH These garage-rock vets have always idealized the Sixties at its scuzziest. But their eighth LP has bigger ambitions: Sean Lennon produced, and his mom, Yoko Ono, appears as a guest star, resulting in an 18-song suite with all the highbrow fixings (interludes, spoken-word bits, etc.). They bounce between genres with screwball zeal, but the anti-concept loopiness can be weird fun – from the Wild West psychobilly of “Occidental Front” to a mutant girl-group ballad “Crystal Night” to a cover of the Beatles’ “It Won’t Be Long” that imagines its crushed-out giddiness as woozy sitar-and-guitar slop dementia.…