Chris Randle

Stumbling Towards the Mainstream: On Azealia Banks' Broke With Expensive Taste

Banks' long-delayed debut album arrived with a shrug, but this is less evidence of an artist failing to live up to her potential than of the still-crushing vagaries of the record industry.

Why Don't We Ever Land on Good Comets?

All the great celestial bodies in the universe to choose from, and we go and park ourselves on icy old 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

A Brief History of Prince Not Doing Things

Oh, like you've never cancelled an album because of a bad ecstasy trip.

Toronto's City Hall of Horrors

Considering some of the candidates that will be on Toronto's ballots next week, it's only fitting that election season is wrapping up on the cusp of Halloween.

Vapor Tales: On Tinashe, and Sounding Atmospheric

Like musicians whose songs you might instinctively call "angular" or "twee," the singer's debut album strikes immediately as "atmospheric"—whatever that means.

Out of the Woods and Into the Particle Accelerator

Figuring out the force behind Taylor Swift's new song, one component part at a time.

Revolutionary Cells of the World, Unite!

Inoculations have always been met with fear. But rewrite the metaphors associated with vaccination, Eula Biss’s On Immunity says, and people may realize they’re not about corruption, but community.

Negotiating With the Zeitgeist

Prince's new albums fit in with his recent output: variations on conventional songcraft spelled by stretches of self-quotation. And yet, there's still every reason to look forward to what's next.

Pop Montreal 2014 Postmortem: Jouissance Risks Fracture

Vaguely feverish notes on a few days of Ronnie Spector, Fagen-esque forgettable lyrics, the reunited Unicorns, and pastries unclassifiable in French or any other tongue.