The 1975

Leonard Cohen’s career had reached a low point when he wrote “Hallelujah.” It was 1984, and he had been out of the spotlight for quite a long time. His 1977 LP, Death of a Ladies’ Man, a collaboration with Phil Spector, was a commercial and critical disappointment, and his next album Recent Songs fared no better. When Cohen submitted the songs for his subsequent LP, Various Positions, to Columbia, label execs didn’t hear “Hallelujah,” the opening song of Side Two, as anything special. They didn’t even want to release the album, though it eventually came out in Europe in 1984 and America the following year. It took a few years for “Hallelujah” to emerge as a classic. Bob Dylan was one of the first to recognize its brilliance, playing it at a couple of shows in 1988. The Velvet Underground’s John Cale tackled it on the piano for a 1991 Cohen tribute disc, and three years later, Jeff Buckley took inspiration from that … [Read more...] about How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion

One afternoon in 1974, the five young Mexican American musicians who had recently christened themselves Los Lobos gathered for a rehearsal in the back yard of Cesar Rosas’s house, a small stucco bungalow fifty yards from the freeway in East Los Angeles. And on that day, the members of Los Lobos turned their attentions for the first time from the rock & roll of their youth to the traditional Mexican songs of their parents and grandparents. Rosas and his friend Frank Gonzales had already begun learning a dance number called “Mil Amores” from an album that Rosas’s mother owned, painstakingly adapting the violin part for mandolin and guitar. Now the other three — guitarist David Hidalgo, bassist Conrad Lozano and drummer Louie Perez — were filling out the arrangement. Over the din of the passing cars, they worked fitfully, running inside the house to listen to a tricky portion of the song for reference, going out for a few more six-packs and, Perez … [Read more...] about Los Lobos: The World of Their Fathers

EDITOR’S PICK: Pistol Annies, Interstate Gospel“The ethos of the Pistol Annies, who steep their classicist country — rife with despair and misfortune — in rootsy arrangements, has not been welcomed within the mainstream confines of the genre in some time,” writes Jonathan Bernstein. “The Pistol Annies’ solution? Doubling down on the roots-blend they’ve honed over the better part of the past decade, merging Ashley Monroe’s East TN bluegrass roots, Angaleena Presley’s hardscrabble Kentucky country-rock and Miranda Lambert’s Texas honky-tonk. On paper, the Annies’ latest, like its predecessors, focuses on the type of small-town domestic drama the group has become known for. Their songs are populated by men and women struggling with prescription medication, marriage, mid-life crises, malaise and marijuana. But unlike past efforts, where the narratives were mostly distant character sketches and the messy … [Read more...] about 13 New Albums to Stream Now: Pistol Annies, Rosalía and More Editors’ Picks

EXCLUSIVE: The Craig Brewer-directed Dolemite Is My Name stars Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore, the unsung filmmaking hero who would eventually help define the Blaxploitation era of cinema. Written by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (Big Eyes, Ed Wood, The People Vs. Larry Flynt), Dolemite is essentially a story about the American Dream and a sense of community for those in the margins in Hollywood. Moore was a comedian who had more failures than successes until he assumed the persona of Dolemite. Many saw the alter ego as crude, and his blatantly explicit album covers and songs were too racy for radio, so they began selling bootlegs of his albums. Wanting to elevate and expand the character, Moore went to socially minded playwright Jerry Jones (played in the film by Keegan-Michael Key) to make a film, helped by his new comedic partner in crime Lady Reed (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and hoity-toity director D’Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes). Despite a lack of money, … [Read more...] about ‘Dolemite Is My Name’: Read Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski’s Script For Eddie Murphy’s Netflix Movie