Eight Best Songs of the Week: Julien Baker, The War on Drugs, LCD Soundsystem, Wolf Alice, and More

Aug 18, 2017 Christopher Roberts

Charlottesville, Virginia is only just over an hour a way from Under the Radar's headquarters. It's the best local city to see shows in and it's a great little progressive college town that we visit often. So we watched in horror, disbelief, and disgust last weekend as the violent and tragic events in Charlottesville surrounding the white supremacist rally dominated the news.

UNKLE on “The Road: Part 1”

Aug 18, 2017 Web Exclusive

Some 25 years ago, James Lavelle, then 18 years old, was running around London, earnest and passionate, his already magnified eyes covered by horn-rimmed glasses seeming like they would pop right out of his head. That head, filled with so many original ideas, including his visionary musical venture, UNKLE released on his legendary independent label, Mo' Wax.

Downtown Boys - Victoria Ruiz and Joey La Neve DeFrancesco on “Cost of Living”

Aug 17, 2017 Web Exclusive

On tour, it's not unusual for Downtown Boys' frontwoman Victoria Ruiz to wake up at 6 a.m. and field conference calls for the Center for Popular Democracy, all day, until show time. Day jobs are a fact of life for almost anyone in a band, minus pop stars and rock and roll fossils, but vary rarely do they align so purely with a group's philosophy.

Middle Kids

Jul 21, 2017 Issue #60 - Father John Misty

The band name chosen by Sydney, Australia trio Middle Kids also describes the upbringing of singer Hannah Joy and multi-instrumentalist Tim Fitz. "Tim and I are both middle kids," Joy explains. "I think it's common to find middle kids being a little bit unsure of their place in the family.

Under the Radar’s Top 50 Albums of 2017 So Far

Jul 13, 2017

In the past we've avoided posting midyear best albums lists. It seemed somehow impatient and premature to evaluate the year's albums halfway through. And how do you decide which period the list covers, which arbitrary release date do you work out is the cut off point, as every midyear list seems to cover a different period? But 2017 is a year that demands a partial evaluation. The first half of the year has already produced enough strong albums to easily fill a Top 50, but also the second half of 2017 is stacked with so many high profile releases that threaten to overshadow some of the gems released so far. For example, we've already heard some August and September releases that we're certain will make the upper echelons of our final best albums of 2017 list come December.

To make this list an album had to be released for the first time (no reissues) somewhere between January 1, 2017 and last Friday, July 7. That means there are some good albums out tomorrow (such as Waxahatchee, Japanese Breakfast, and The Dears) that may made this list had we extended the period that far. Fourteen of our writers and editors (including myself and my co-publisher/wife Wendy Redfern) each submitted a list of their 20 favorite albums released this year thus far. Their number one album was worth 20 points, their number two worth 19 points, and so on until their number 20 album and any honorable mentions were worth one point each. All of that was calculated into the final list. By the way, this year we've interviewed 38 of the artists in the Top 50 and reviewed almost all these albums, so continue reading Under the Radar, both in print and online, for further proof that in-depth music journalism is far from dead. By Mark Redfern

Panorama 2017: Highlights & Observations

Aug 04, 2017 By Austin Trunick

NYC’s Panorama is a relatively young festival, which makes the smoothness with which it ran very impressive.

Soundtracking the Resistance - Fascists in America

Aug 18, 2017 By Stephen Mayne

With the President outdoing himself in a bid to appear like a terrible human being, there's only really one thing to talk about this week. Still, read on and you might find a few positive developments outside his Charlottesville debacle.