Table of contents for December 14, 2017 in Rolling Stone

1 Kendrick Lamar DAMN. Rap’s most powerful voice at the absolute top of his game, with nothing left to prove but his staying power. Lamar’s 2015 watershed To Pimp a Butterfly was a brilliant hip-hop therapy session, exploding with quick-change flows, warped introspect and kaleidoscopic beats. The chart-topping DAMN. is his bare-knuckled MC blowout, just as potent but hitting with more immediate impact. He brushes off haters on “YAH.” (“Fox News wanna use my name for percentage”), then dives deeper, musing on family and referencing the Bible. On “FEEL.” he unloads his head over a trippy slow jam, going roughly 50 lines without break on one breathless stretch, a virtuoso synaptic display that’s dense without becoming impenetrable, thanks to Lamar’s feel for flow and hooks. The single “HUMBLE.” is a…

TALK TO ANY OF TIMOthy “Timbaland” Mosey’s friends, and you’ll hear the same thing: that just a couple of years ago he was a totally different man. They’ll tell you that he had lost his way, becoming depressed, overweight and contemptuous of the severely minimal beats that fueled hits by new artists like Future and Migos. He hadn’t had a major success since Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled LP; his marriage was faltering; and his closest industry friends, the producers Pharrell Williams and Swizz Beatz, were concerned enough that they were checking in to give him pep talks. “I felt like I wasn’t committed, I was riding off ego,” says Timbaland, 45, looking back. “It was really about me neglecting my gift. As a producer and a soundmaker, I had to find…

Grohl Gets His Guns Back in the early-Nineties grunge culture wars, things got so heated between Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses, they nearly came to blows at the VMAs. The ex-rivals shared a stage in Oklahoma, with Dave Grohl joining GNR for “Paradise City.” Axl Rose said Grohl “happened to be in the neighborhood.” Slash was also psyched: “Dave’s got some amazing energy.”   <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> Eagles Over Paris Two years after a terrorist attack during their show at Paris’ Bataclan, Eagles of Death Metal played a memorial honoring victims. “We have a responsibility to make certain everyone knows love exists in this world,” said singer Jesse Hughes. <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div> <div class="thick-border"></div>…

Miguel War & Leisure ByStorm Entertainment/RCA HHH½ A psychedelic-funk party for a world in flames The L.A. soul explorer’s fourth album creates a space where psych-funk splendor coexists with deep anxiety. It’s not all downers: “Pineapple Skies” punctuates its bubbly synths with speaker-rattling bass hits, as Miguel’s amped-up vocals make his “everything gonna be all right” exhortations feel like a mantra. But uncertainty creeps in at the margins: The skeletal booty call “Come Through and Chill” references Colin Kaepernick and “Trump saying slick shit,” while “Now” ends the LP with Miguel’s voice slicing through clouds of guitar, as he reels off a list of social ills. In 2017, every pleasure comes with a shot of pain. MAURA K. JOHNSTON Chris Stapleton From A Room, Vol. 2 Mercury Nashville HHH½ Country-music…

1. Eminem feat. Beyoncé “Walk on Water” “Time to wash out the blond,” Eminem raps on what might be his most self-lacerating song ever. The gripping can’t-look-away results are so emo even the deus ex machina of a Beyoncé cameo can’t save him from himself. 2. Kamaiyah “Dope Bitch” This imperiously cool Oakland rapper – “illest chick alive in some panties and a bra” – just released a great mixtape, Before I Wake. On “Dope Bitch,” she brings it like an Eighties gangsta over a trunk-rattling beat worthy of Too $hort. 3. Nilüfer Yanya “Baby Luv” “Do you like pain?” this 22-year-old Londoner sings sweetly over just a spare, surging guitar. “Call me sometime.” She spins her pain into Saturday sunshine. 4. Superchunk “What a Time to Be Alive” More…

1 Harry Styles Sign of the Times Styles’ first post-One Direction solo single was a shock – an eccentric piano ballad stretching to nearly six minutes, aiming for Bowie/Queen levels of glam grandeur, with the singer hitting heavenly high notes as he broods on death and rebirth. The reckless ambition of the song is only part of what’s brilliant about it. The confidence and empathy in his voice just keep surging as the music builds. Styles was the only rock star all year (Bono excepted) to aim for such a giant-hearted sound. A high-risk move for a former boy-band star – but he made it feel real. 2 Lorde Homemade Dynamite Lorde had an astounding breakthrough with Melodrama, but “Homemade Dynamite” is her shattering peak, a nervously sexy synth-pop thriller…

‘I’VE NEVER FELT LIKE A POP STAR,” MALCOLM YOUNG TOLD ROLLING STONE IN 2008. “This is a 9-to-5 sort of gig.” Playing with AC/DC, the guitarist stood in the back, stone-faced, holding down the rhythm as his younger brother Angus soloed and stalked the stage in his trademark schoolboy outfit. When the Rolling Stones invited the Youngs onstage for a blues jam in 2003, Malcolm at first refused. “He said, ‘I can’t,’ ” former AC/DC singer Brian Johnson recalls. “There was nothing funnier than Keith Richards and Ron Wood trying to drag him up there. He did a bit of a song with them and then walked back to the amps. That’s just the way he was.” But Young, who died on November 18th at 64 of complications from dementia, was…

There is a remarkable scene early in Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars, the new Showtime documentary about the guitarist’s career, that sums up his meteoric rise as a British-blues prodigy and worldwide superstar: Bob Dylan in a London hotel room in 1965 watching John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers on TV and raving over that band’s guitarist – Clapton, then barely out of his teens. “I still can’t believe that’s real,” Clapton says, laughing in a New York hotel lobby the day after a screening. “I thought, ‘Oh, that must be Photoshopped.’ ” Life in 12 Bars also has extraordinary footage of Clapton with Cream, revealing interviews with the women in his life and painfully frank sequences on his battles with heroin, alcohol and the accidental 1991 death of his young son, Conor,…

“Love has got to fight for its existence. The enemy has armies of assistance. The amorist, the glamorous, the kiss, A fist, listen to this, oh.”—U2, “Get Out of Your Own Way” U2 Songs of Experience Interscope HHHH½ It is nearly business as usual. “Nothing to stop this being the best day ever,” Bono declares in “Love Is All We Have Left,” at the start of U2’s sequel to 2014’s Songs of Innocence. But the singer’s delivery is striking in its restraint: like cautious prayer or a fragile wish, suspended over the rippled-sea strum of the Edge’s guitar and Adam Clayton’s bass-guitar gravity. Bono quickly straps on his bravado in “Lights of Home”: “One more push and I’ll be born again,” he crows, framed by the Edge’s skidding-blues licks and…

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Get out of your own way. Ego is a killer. What does religion or spirituality mean to you? Spirituality is crucial. It is a very simple thing. You have to give the world back to the world. It is the law that I abide by. You get out of life what you put in. You put flop in, you get flop out. You put in love, you get out love. What are the best and worst parts of success? You’re like, “Fuck, this started supercheesy, get to the jokes.” The best part is your dreams come true. The worst part is that your dreams come true and you realize it ain’t going to fill that hole. It’s the ego, dude! Ego is the…

The singer-songwriter’s latest album, Modern Burdens, features new recordings of songs from her 1996 debut, The Burdens of Being Upright. Liz Phair “Fuck and Run” This song made me want to stop and write about real things. I realized you could have conversational lyrics and a good melody. Guided by Voices “I Am a Scientist” Robert Pollard is talking about self-discovery as a grown-up. The low-fi sound inspired me to try something similar. My Bloody Valentine “Only Shallow” I remember laying on my back with my friend, stoned, and listening to this. We could visualize the sounds coming at us on a conveyor belt. It’s superatmospheric. Tom Waits “A Little Rain” I love a good, sad, rainy-day song, but this one takes the cake. The line “a little rain never…

THE FIRST COLD NIGHT OF NOVEMBER IN PORTLand, Oregon, found John Gourley and Zach Carothers of Portugal. The Man in a familiar position: in a maroon Ford E350 van, Carothers driving, Gourley in the back. Nine years ago, after the van they’d been touring in shot its transmission for the fifth time, they bought this one used and have logged 217,000 miles since, enough to crisscross the country better than 77 times. During that time, PTM built themselves up from alt-rockers with a debt to Bowie and Pink Floyd and whatever else was handy to this year’s biggest crossover band, with a Top Five single, “Feel It Still,” that references everything from Motown to the Black Panthers and “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” Their breakthrough album, Woodstock,…

The Speaker System That Listens SONOS ONE Sonos’ smallest speakers have long been their best – now, the smart speakers get even better, thanks to Alexa voice control. Ask her to play a song and in an instant your tune can be playing on your Sonos system throughout the house. $199 sonos.com The Retro Shooter POLAROID ONESTEP 2 Instant photography comes alive again. The camera recharges via USB, and has controls for exposure and flash. $99 polaroid.com The Affordable 4K TV 55-INCH TCL P-SERIES With an impressively brilliant 4K display, HDR for more lifelike contrast and a Roku Wi-Fi interface that’s seamless, this is an ideal set for cord-cutters. $650 tclusa.com Budget Headphones, Big Sounds KOSS KPH30I Koss has a great rep among headphone geeks for low-cost models like the…

DESPITE ITS LEGISLAtive setbacks of the past year, the presidency of Donald Trump has been stunningly effective in its core mission, the dismantling of modern American government as it has evolved since the Progressive Era of the early 20th century. And even though a civil war looms inside the Republican Party, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and even frequent presidential critics like Sen. Bob Corker have firmly supported most of Trump’s program. This should surprise no one: In many respects, the administration’s agenda jibes with the main lines of Republican conservatism as laid down by Ronald Reagan more than 30 years ago, pressing massive tax reductions for the wealthy along with deregulation of finance and business. Trump’s adherence to Reagan’s dictum that “government is not the…

Björk Utopia One Little Indian HHHH “Two music nerds obsessing . . . sending each other MP3s,” sings Björk euphorically, over harp arpeggios, while multitracked Björks chirp like cherubs in the background. The track, a very Björkian reverie titled “Blissing Me,” sets the tone for a record that’s in some ways a polar opposite of 2015’s incandescently brooding Vulnicura. That LP was a surgical examination of post-breakup grief, framed by lush strings. Utopia mostly sends the orchestra packing, building its bright-lit world around birdsong samples, flutes, harp, choir and electronics, with input from innovative co-producers Arca and Rabit. The set radiates whimsy and pleasure – the opener, “Arisen My Senses,” is a breathless barrage of pop timbres, a musical multiple orgasm. But Utopia is no more “pop” than Vulnicura, and…