Articles for First Listen

First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting's 'Race For Space'
10 years, 1 month ago

First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting's 'Race For Space'

NPR  

First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting's 'Race For Space' Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, combines news footage and music to tell the story of the first 15 years of the Space Age. BOILEN: This is the music of Public Service Broadcasting, two nerdy British dudes that go under the name of J. Willgoose, Esq., and he plays …

Record Public Service Man Earth Song Houston Host
First Listen: Thompson, 'Family'
10 years, 4 months ago

First Listen: Thompson, 'Family'

NPR  

First Listen: Thompson, 'Family' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Enlarge this image toggle caption Linda Thompson/Courtesy of the artist Linda Thompson/Courtesy of the artist Family Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Here's Teddy Thompson, singing about the perils of being surrounded by his particular relatives: …

Family Thompson Richard Linda Teddy Linda Thompson First Listen
First Listen: Bryan Ferry, 'Avonmore'
10 years, 4 months ago

First Listen: Bryan Ferry, 'Avonmore'

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First Listen: Bryan Ferry, 'Avonmore' Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist Avonmore Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Ferry's "Loop De Li," the album's opener, has the stinging guitars, wisps of sax and lush keyboards of old favorites like "Both Ends Burning" and "Love Is the …

Ferry Roxy Music Midnight Train Avonmore Bryan Ferry First Listen
First Listen: Damien Rice, 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy'
10 years, 4 months ago

First Listen: Damien Rice, 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy'

NPR  

First Listen: Damien Rice, 'My Favourite Faded Fantasy' Enlarge this image toggle caption Lilja Birgisdottir/Courtesy of the artist Lilja Birgisdottir/Courtesy of the artist My Favourite Faded Fantasy Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. There's nothing reluctant or halfhearted about the bold, dreamy, impeccably rendered music on My Favourite Faded Fantasy, which gets plenty …

Rice Fantasy Favourite Faded First Listen Damien Rice My Favourite Faded Fantasy
First Listen: Neil Young, 'Storytone'
10 years, 5 months ago

First Listen: Neil Young, 'Storytone'

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First Listen: Neil Young, 'Storytone' Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist Storytone Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Whether he's recording front-porch ballads, anthemic rock, early archival tapes, scathing protest music or even a rock opera, Young has become one of the most uncompromising, unpredictable, unbound …

Young Neil Young First Listen Storytone
First Listen: The Flaming Lips, 'With A Little Help From My Fwends'
10 years, 5 months ago

First Listen: The Flaming Lips, 'With A Little Help From My Fwends'

NPR  

First Listen: The Flaming Lips, 'With A Little Help From My Fwends' Enlarge this image toggle caption George Salisbury/Courtesy of the artist George Salisbury/Courtesy of the artist With A Little Help From My Fwends Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Last year's pulverizing and strangely pretty The Terror was often punishingly uncompromising, but …

Help Lips Flaming First Listen My Fwends
First Listen: Medicine, 'Home Everywhere'
10 years, 5 months ago

First Listen: Medicine, 'Home Everywhere'

NPR  

First Listen: Medicine, 'Home Everywhere' Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist Home Everywhere Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Medicine's first two albums got a recent reissue, just as many new bands — Diiv, Wild Nothing, Yuck, Tame Impala — were drawing on the smeared melodies …

Medicine Song First Listen Home Everywhere
First Listen: Robert Plant, 'Lullaby And... The Ceaseless Roar'
10 years, 6 months ago

First Listen: Robert Plant, 'Lullaby And... The Ceaseless Roar'

NPR  

First Listen: Robert Plant, 'Lullaby And. The Ceaseless Roar is an expression of many kinds of rich, autumnal love: of the English countryside to which Plant recently returned after several years living and working in Nashville and Texas; of the musical diaspora he's been exploring since Led Zeppelin first connected its American-inspired blues to North Africa in "Kashmir"; of the …

Music Album Led Plant Led Zeppelin Robert Plant First Listen
First Listen: Sinkane, 'Mean Love'
10 years, 7 months ago

First Listen: Sinkane, 'Mean Love'

NPR  

First Listen: Sinkane, 'Mean Love' Enlarge this image toggle caption Martine Carlson/Courtesy of the artist Martine Carlson/Courtesy of the artist First Listen: Sinkane, 'Mean Love' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. His voice offset by weepy steel guitar, he repeats the line, sometimes adding the words "mean to me" as punctuation, and by …

Love Mars Mean Gallab Sinkane First Listen Mean Love
First Listen: Cameron Carpenter, 'If You Could Read My Mind'
10 years, 7 months ago

First Listen: Cameron Carpenter, 'If You Could Read My Mind'

NPR  

First Listen: Cameron Carpenter, 'If You Could Read My Mind' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Skeptics who equate the instrument with fusty church traditions might convert to organ believers after hearing Carpenter's new album, If You Could Read My Mind. The multicolored chirps, burps and bells deployed in Bernstein's Candide Overture would …

Instrument My Mind Carpenter Bach Organ First Listen Cameron Carpenter
First Listen: Orenda Fink, 'Blue Dream'
10 years, 7 months ago

First Listen: Orenda Fink, 'Blue Dream'

NPR  

First Listen: Orenda Fink, 'Blue Dream' Enlarge this image toggle caption Bill Sitzmann/Courtesy of the artist Bill Sitzmann/Courtesy of the artist Blue Dream Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. On her new album, Blue Dream, Orenda Fink crafts a collection of distinctly futuristic love songs. Fink and her Azure Ray bandmate Maria Taylor …

Fink Blue Dream First Listen Orenda Fink
First Listen: Sarah Jaffe, 'Don't Disconnect'
10 years, 7 months ago

First Listen: Sarah Jaffe, 'Don't Disconnect'

NPR  

First Listen: Sarah Jaffe, 'Don't Disconnect' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album has been released. Enlarge this image toggle caption Dutch Rall/Courtesy of the artist Dutch Rall/Courtesy of the artist When Texas singer-songwriter Sarah Jaffe released The Body Wins in 2012, it functioned as both a high-profile introduction and a radical left turn. Guided by …

Jaffe First Listen Sarah Jaffe
First Listen: Alvvays, 'Alvvays'
10 years, 8 months ago

First Listen: Alvvays, 'Alvvays'

NPR  

First Listen: Alvvays, 'Alvvays' Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist Alvvays Audio for First Listens is no longer available once the album is released. That borderlessness is sewn into the fabric of the self-titled debut album by Alvvays, a Toronto band whose beach-pop seems to come straight from the California shore. Bethany Cosentino …

Cosentino Alvvays First Listen Songs Particularly
First Listen: White Fence, 'For The Recently Found Innocent'
10 years, 8 months ago

First Listen: White Fence, 'For The Recently Found Innocent'

NPR  

First Listen: White Fence, 'For The Recently Found Innocent' Enlarge this image toggle caption Ruth Swanson/Courtesy of the artist Ruth Swanson/Courtesy of the artist For The Recently Found Innocent Audio for First Listens is no longer available when the album is released. Tim Presley has been performing as White Fence for a few years now, building on a diverse resume …

White White Fence First Listen
First Listen: Clipping., 'CLPPNG'
10 years, 9 months ago

First Listen: Clipping., 'CLPPNG'

NPR  

First Listen: Clipping., 'CLPPNG' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Enlarge this image toggle caption Cristopher Cichocki/Courtesy of the artist Cristopher Cichocki/Courtesy of the artist CLPPNG Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. The Los Angeles trio — consisting of MC Daveed Diggs tacked onto industrial soundscapes …

First Listen Clppng
First Listen: Gabriel Kahane, 'The Ambassador'
10 years, 10 months ago

First Listen: Gabriel Kahane, 'The Ambassador'

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First Listen: Gabriel Kahane, 'The Ambassador' Enlarge this image toggle caption Josh Goleman/Courtesy of the artist Josh Goleman/Courtesy of the artist The Ambassador Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Composer and singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane says that the inspiration for his new album, The Ambassador, is 10 buildings in Los Angeles — appropriate, given …

Song Ambassador Kahane First Listen Gabriel Kahane
First Listen: Royksopp & Robyn, 'Do It Again'
10 years, 10 months ago

First Listen: Royksopp & Robyn, 'Do It Again'

NPR  

First Listen: Royksopp & Robyn, 'Do It Again' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Do It Again, by the Scandinavian dream team of Röyksopp and Robyn, is neither act's official "new album," but rather a five-song mini-album from the group Röyksopp & Robyn — which, truth be told, is a catchier name than …

Album Robyn First Listen Listen Royksopp Röyksopp
First Listen: Lee Fields, 'Emma Jean'
10 years, 10 months ago

First Listen: Lee Fields, 'Emma Jean'

NPR  

First Listen: Lee Fields, 'Emma Jean' Enlarge this image toggle caption Danny Miller/Leon Michels/Courtesy of the artist Danny Miller/Leon Michels/Courtesy of the artist Emma Jean Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Add that comparison with the vocalist's complete title — Lee Fields & The Expressions, his backing band — and it's even easier …

Sound Song Fields Emma Lee Jean Lee Fields
First Listen: Brian Eno & Karl Hyde, 'Someday World'
10 years, 11 months ago

First Listen: Brian Eno & Karl Hyde, 'Someday World'

NPR  

First Listen: Brian Eno & Karl Hyde, 'Someday World' Enlarge this image toggle caption Perou/Courtesy of the artist Perou/Courtesy of the artist Brian Eno And Karl Hyde, 'Someday World' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Sponsor Message That collaborative spirit continues with Someday World — recorded with Underworld member/vocalist Karl Hyde — which …

Underworld Hyde Brian Eno Someday First Listen World Eno Someday World
First Listen: Kishi Bashi, 'Lighght'
10 years, 11 months ago

First Listen: Kishi Bashi, 'Lighght'

NPR  

First Listen: Kishi Bashi, 'Lighght' Enlarge this image toggle caption Kaden Shallat/Courtesy of the artist Kaden Shallat/Courtesy of the artist Kishi Bashi, 'Lighght' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. That song morphs quickly into Lighght's first single, whose title sounds like a mission statement in and of itself — "Philosophize In It! Sponsor …

Second Album Ishibashi Bashi Kishi Bashi First Listen Lighght
First Listen: Ambrose Akinmusire, 'the imagined savior is far easier to paint'
11 years ago

First Listen: Ambrose Akinmusire, 'the imagined savior is far easier to paint'

NPR  

First Listen: Ambrose Akinmusire, 'the imagined savior is far easier to paint' Audio for First Listens is no longer available after the album is released. Enlarge this image toggle caption Autumn de Wilde/Courtesy of the artist Autumn de Wilde/Courtesy of the artist Pre-Order The Album Amazon iTunes In early September, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire teased the new album he was recording: …

Album First Listen Imagined Savior
First Listen: Beach House, 'Teen Dream'
15 years, 2 months ago

First Listen: Beach House, 'Teen Dream'

NPR  

First Listen: Beach House, 'Teen Dream' Hear The Duo's New Album A Week Before Its Release On Jan. 26 Audio for this feature is no longer available. Enlarge this image toggle caption Jason Nocito Jason Nocito Beach House writes gauzy, dreamy songs with droning melodies, but the music is far from formless. Sponsor Message Centered on cascading guitars, arpeggiating piano …

Teen Dream Beach House Legrand Teen Dream First Listen
Exclusive First Listen: Mount Eerie, 'Wind's Poem'
15 years, 7 months ago

Exclusive First Listen: Mount Eerie, 'Wind's Poem'

NPR  

Exclusive First Listen: Mount Eerie, 'Wind's Poem' Audio for this feature is no longer available. At first listen, Mount Eerie's latest album, Wind's Poem, buries its themes under a swarm of distortion and synths. Elverum's inspiration for Wind's Poem comes from two strange, seemingly disparate places: David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks and black metal. You can hear the detached …

Wind Mount Mount Eerie Elverum First Listen Poem Exclusive