Table of contents for Feb-12-15 in Rolling Stone

1. The New Basement Tapes “Kansas City” This tune from the all-star 2014 project that built new songs from old, forgotten Dylan lyrics has been getting some love from satellite radio. It’s easy to see why: Marcus Mumford delivers a show-stopping lead vocal, and special guest Johnny Depp throws in scorching guitar licks. 2. Björk “Black Lake” Björk’s brilliant new breakup album, Vulnicura, peaks with this devastating 10-minute song suite. It’s full of skittering electronics, lush strings and enough raw, pure pain to take your breath away. 3. Frank Ocean “At Your Best (You Are Love)” The R&B auteur blessed his fans with this gorgeous falsetto take on the Isley Brothers’ 1970s hit, famously covered by Aaliyah in the Nineties. It’s not quite a new album, but we’re more than…

A LITTLE LESS THAN TWO YEARS AGO, Andrew Hozier-Byrne sat down at the piano in his parents’ home near Dublin to work on a song called “Take Me to Church.” Hozier-Byrne was a struggling musician, often seen at open mics around town. In front of him was a notebook full of lyrics, some of which expressed his frustration with organized religion – and particularly the Catholic Church’s history of mistreating gays and covering up child sexual abuse. “I was just fumbling around and I came upon the idea for a chorus,” says the singer-songwriter, 24, who performs as Hozier. “Then I went up into the attic and made a little demo.” Today, the vocals he laid down at that session are the key ingredient in a global smash. “Take Me…

In RS 1226, contributing editor Tim Dickinson wrote about how marijuana legalization and sentencing reforms now sweeping the country are helping to bring an end to four decades of failed drug policy [“The War on Drugs Is Burning Out”]. ROLLING STONE readers wrote in to comment. THE SOONER WE CALL this fiasco over with, the better. Legalize drugs, take them out of the hands of criminals and let cops do real work. Stop putting ordinary citizens in jail for engaging in activity that’s personal and private. It’s called freedom. Nicko T., via the Internet TIM DICKINSON’S FINE article on rational marijuana attitudes failed to mention November’s Florida medical-marijuana ballot question. More than 57 percent of our voters were in favor (60 percent was needed to pass), and more votes went…

of Florida Georgia Line With his country duo having recently kicked off their latest tour, we asked singer Kelley to tell us what he thinks of five songs. OLD The Smiths “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” It’s got this trippy hook going on. Even though the lyric’s kind of sad, it puts you in a great mood, and you can turn it up and jam. Shania Twain “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” I think even I know every single word of this song. It was an incredible play on words at the time. NEW Rae Sremmurd “No Flex Zone” This sounds like something I would have liked when I was a couple of years younger. I love the way their voices go back and forth. Ariana Grande feat. Zedd…

PANEL OF EXPERTS ALBUM OF THE YEAR Beck Morning Phase Beyoncé Beyoncé Ed Sheeran X Sam Smith In the Lonely Hour Pharrell Williams Girl THE EXPERTS SAY Eric Church This is an incredibly strong category. I like Ed Sheeran’s record, but I’m going to go with Beck’s Morning Phase, for the mood of it, and the uniqueness and the consistent vibe. Charli XCX Sam Smith has got this. His record is so universal, and I think he really deserves to be recognized for it – it’s so classic, but it’s also pop. I love Beyoncé too, though. Patrick Carney I’m picking Beck. I’ve been a Beck fan since high school. I probably saw the Odelay tour three or four times. VEGAS ODDS FAVOR Beyoncé…

HOT APP Thanks to a Russian-developed app called Wakie, 2 million users worldwide are getting a quick surprise every morning. The app lets you set the time you want to rise; like clockwork, you receive a phone call from another anonymous user, programmed to typically be someone of the opposite sex. The call lasts only 60 seconds, but some have tried to use it as a hookup tool. “It’s the worst dating app,” says CEO Hrachik Adjamian. “After one minute, you’ll never meet each other again!”…

Airplane Manager Bill Thompson Bill Thompson, 70, who managed the Jefferson Airplane through their successes in the late Sixties and Seventies, died of a heart attack in Mill Valley, California, on January 12th. Thompson took the reins from Bill Graham in 1968 and stayed with the group as it split into various new projects in the Seventies and Eighties. “He was wry, confident, tongue-in-cheek,” says Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen. “When he took over, we finally had one of us speaking for us rather than a cog in the establishment record business. I think it gave us the edge that we ultimately had.” ANDY GREENE Kim Fowley, Rock & Roll Impresario Kim Fowley, who died of cancer on January 15th at age 75, dubbed himself “Lord of Garbage” and left his…

SHORT TAKE Man Seeking Woman Wednesdays, 10:30 p.m., FXX A blind date with a troll. No, a real troll – not the message-board kind, the hideous mythical creature who lives under bridges and harasses goats. That’s just one of the nightmare dating scenarios on FXX’s outlandishly clever comedy Man Seeking Woman, and the punch line is that it’s quite possibly better than the leading man deserves. Creator Simon Rich bases it on his short stories in The Last Girlfriend on Earth, with Jay Baruchel as his stand-in, a sensitive young nebbish dude looking for romance in Chicago, where it usually takes the form of extended surreal-fantasy skits. His ex’s new boyfriend turns out to be Hitler, played by a never-tobe-typecast Bill Hader; a team of military strategists commands the war…

Bob Dylan Shadows in the Night Columbia As an encore at almost every show on his North American tour last fall, Bob Dylan performed an unlikely ballad: “Stay With Me,” recorded by Frank Sinatra on a 1964 single and written for a 1963 film, The Cardinal, about a young priest who ascends to a post in the Vatican. Sinatra cut the song, a prayer for guidance, as if from on high, in orchestration as grand as papal robes. On this quietly provocative and compelling album, Dylan enters the words and melody – as he did onstage – like a supplicant, in a tiptoe baritone through streaks of pedal steel guitar that suggest the chapel-like quiet of a last-chance saloon. But Dylan’s need is immediate, even carnal, and he pleads…

Father John Misty I Love You, Honey bear Sub Pop Singer-songwriter Josh Tillman debuted “Bored in the U.S.A.” – a highlight of his ornate second LP as Father John Misty – on Letterman with a Celine Dion-worthy string orchestra, a wayward laugh track and prankster soulfulness. “Save me, white Jesus. . . . /They gave me a useless education/And a subprime loan on a Craftsman home,” he crooned, with acuity even Springsteen might admire, along with any fan of heartbroken-wiseguy song craft. Upping the spectacle from Fun Fear, his 2012 debut, I Love You, Honey bear is an autobiographical set about love, marriage and derangement that’s both ironic and empathic – an approach connecting him less to his previous band, Fleet Foxes, than to the So Cal tradition of…

Ida Agata Trzebuchowska Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski NOW THAT THIS HAUNTING Polish film starring and directed by artists with unpronounceable names has been nominated for a foreign-language Oscar and for its exquisite, boxy, black-and-white cinematography, Ida is back in the conversation. Even if it’s not at a nearby theater, you can buy or rent it on Blu-ray or stream it on Netflix. As for the bitching that the English subtitles are too small to read on a smartphone, come on. They’re no smaller than a tweet. Don’t be a lazy-ass. Ida is an art film in the finest sense of the term – it is austere technique counterbalanced by emotions that bleed. Director and co-writer Paweł Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love) sets his tale in 1962, when convent-raised Anna…

John and Yoko’s Final Embrace RS 335 Yoko Ono and John Lennon Photograph by Annie Leibovitz On December 8th, 1980, hours before he was murdered, John Lennon opened his New York apartment to Annie Leibovitz. “He said, ‘I know they want me by myself on the cover,’ ” recalled the photographer, “ ‘but I want Yoko to be on the cover with me. It’s really important.’ ” Knowing the two had a history of posing nude together, Leibovitz asked them to strip down, but Ono felt shy and refused. The day after Lennon’s death, Leibovitz came to the RS office and saw a cover mocked up with a close-up of Lennon’s face: “I said, ‘Jann [Wenner], I promised John that the cover would be him and Yoko.’ And Jann backed…

Nicki on Top NICKI MINAJ HAS IT ALL [“Darling Nicki,” RS 1226]: beauty, brains and a superior work ethic. Growing up in Queens prepared her for life’s realities, but her drive and talent made her able to leap obstacles like a female Napoleon. Tammy Faye Gonter Marietta, GA I WASN’T EVEN A LITTLE SURPRISED to read that Nicki now ties Madonna for Top 100 hits by a woman. Unrivaled divas, both of them. Oh, and I’ve had The Pinkprint on “repeat” for weeks, and, yes, it is a classic. Gregor Mendoza Via the Internet ISSUE 1226, NICKI MINAJ equals the best cover in, duh, like, forever. Dave Synwolt Kalamazoo, MI IT’S ADORABLE THAT NICKI Minaj thinks she’s a businesswoman. One note: Businesswomen do not show up two hours late for…

MUSIC BIZ In 2004, when U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb leaked online two weeks earlier than planned, the band’s label scrambled to contain the damage by hastily streaming it on MTV’s website. Those weeks are an eternity compared with how Björk and Madonna handled their music’s premature arrivals over the past month: After Björk’s Vulnicura leaked in mid-January, her label rushed it onto iTunes within three days, and Madonna did the same with six Rebel Heart tracks after a December leak. “We were running as fast as we could to get the music ready,” says Guy Oseary, Madonna’s manager. “She had the foresight to say, ‘I don’t care, I’m putting this out now.’” In the old days of CDs, warehouses and record stores, album leaks could be far…

RISING STAR Desiree akhavan is tired of being compared to Lena Dunham. “It’s f lattering – I love Lena’s work,” says the 30-yearold actress, writer and director. “But there’s this subtle implication that there’s room for just one funny woman whose work can be monetized. And I resent that.” Akhavan’s first feature film, Appropriate Behavior, debuted at Sundance in 2014 and just hit theaters in limited release. A self-aware romantic comedy, it follows Akhavan’s character, Shirin, as she navigates a breakup with her girlfriend while reliving the relationship in flashbacks. It’s full of references to Akhavan’s Persian heritage, complete with secondgeneration guilt when Shirin can’t bring herself to come out to her relatively liberal parents.Though her characters spill drinks and get into awkward threesomes, there’s a deeper theme of isolation…

MARK RONSON IS, AT HIS CORE, A DJ and a producer for other artists – he considers his four solo albums side projects. But for his latest, the high-concept Uptown Special, he and Bruno Mars have a Number One hit, “Uptown Funk” – a Morris Day and the Time-like throwback that only hints at the album’s diversity, with guests from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker to Mystikal to Stevie Wonder. Ronson, 39, is pleased with the song’s success, but after its agonizing months-long genesis, he’s even happier just to have finished it. “The thing that I’m really proud of,” he says, “is there were so many times when I would leave the studio and be like, ‘Fuck, man, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.’ But we’d get back together and…

“I don’t think I can live in a world where that’s even possible.” —Noel Gallagher on Ed Sheeran headlining Wembley Grohl’s Wild Night Dave Grohl turned 47 with an epic bash at L.A.’s Forum, where the Foo Fighters backed several all-star guests, including Lemmy, David Lee Roth and Paul Stanley – who stepped up for Kiss’ “Do You Love Me.” “I thought my 40th birthday party at Medieval Times was cool,” says Grohl, “but this one takes the fuckin’ cake.” Back to the Boardwalk For the 11th time, Bruce Springsteen was the “surprise” guest at Asbury Park’s Light of Day benefit for Parkinson’s research. Bruce joined old Jersey Shore buddies Southside Johnny (right) and Joe Grushecky for seven Darkness-era cuts and covers such as “Higher and Higher.” At one point,…

Björk Vulnicura One Little Indian Björk’s 2011 Biophilia addressed the universe, from molecular to cosmic levels, and was presented in elaborate formats, including an interactive app. Her latest couldn’t be simpler: a breakup album, that most common pop coin. But with Björk, even simplicity is intricate business. Arranged for voice with orchestral strings and electronic beats, Vulnicura is a unified set of nine dark, swarming, melodically distended songs. There is clearly some autobiography here about her relationship with artist/co-parent Matthew Barney. But whatever informed it, this may be the most heart-rending music she’s ever made. The first six songs chart the before and-after arc of a crisis, pivoting on the 10-minute “Black Lake.” It’s the set’s most devastating number, unfurling in slowmo, with knife-twist lyrics (“Your heart is hollow”)…

Rhiannon Giddens Tomorrow Is My Turn Nonesuch ½ Over the past two years, Rhiannon Giddens has become one of the most promising voices in American roots music. The front woman for adventurous string-band trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops, she’s taken showstealing turns on T Bone Burnett-helmed projects like last year’s New Basement Tapes, doing retooled Bob Dylan tunes alongside Marcus Mumford and Elvis Costello, and at the blockbuster 2013 New York concert that coincided with the release of the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. Now, with the Chocolate Drops on hiatus, Giddens is having a solo coming-out party, displaying her classical vocal training and ability to reanimate traditional music in her own nuanced image. Produced by Burnett, Tomorrow Is My Turn is a feminist tour of the American roots…