Will Hermes
Will Hermes is the author of Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Faber & Faber, 2011), an acclaimed history of the New York City music scene in the 1970s. A senior critic for Rolling Stone and a longtime contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” his work appears periodically in The New York Times; he has also written for the Village Voice, Spin, Slate, Salon, The Believer, GQ, Minneapolis City Pages,and other publications. He co-edited SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music (Crown/Three Rivers, 2006), and his writing has been included in the Da Capo Best Music Writing series. The King of New York, Will's biography of Lou Reed, was published in October 2023.
137 articles
List of articles in the library
A Tribe Called Quest: Beats, Rhymes and Life (Jive)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, September 1996
LESS INTROVERTED THAN De La Soul and less weird than the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest were always the populists of the Native Tongues ...
Aphex Twin: Richard D. James (Sire/Elektra)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, February 1997
IF EVERY DJ IS essentially a critic, as Robert Christgau once noted, then Aphex Twin Richard James is a critic's critic, using rave music signifiers ...
Live Review by Will Hermes, Spin, September 1997
"DO YOU WANNA see the first band, or do you wanna see me jump to my death?" a paunchy MC bellowed from a perch atop ...
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, 1948-1997
Obituary by Will Hermes, Spin, November 1997
IT'S SADLY IRONIC that superstar qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — the uncontested voice of modern Pakistan — would die on August 16, only ...
Lucinda Williams: The Fillmore, San Francisco CA
Live Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 11 December 1997
"I'VE READ that I'm a demanding perfectionist and a difficult diva," quipped a sinewy Lucinda Williams, who lately has gotten as much press for her ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 12 December 1997
LIKE The Grateful Dead, the eternally jamming Phish are best judged by their concerts. ...
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 2 April 1998
THE DO-IT-YOURSELF PSYCHEDELIA OF THE ELEPHANT 6 BANDS ...
Report by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 30 April 1998
IS ELECTRONICA STILL THE NEXT BIG THING? AT THE WINTER MUSIC CONFERENCE, IT'S ALL THAT AND MORE ...
Interview by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 28 May 1998
THE ORIGINAL Mack Daddy, John Lee Hooker represents the funkiest lowdown essence of the blues. Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, Hooker was a ...
Massive Attack: The Bristol Method
Profile and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, June 1998
Trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack heat up the chill-out room ...
Cypress Hill: IV (Ruffhouse/Columbia) ***½
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 October 1998
LIKE MUCH current literature, hip-hop is obsessed with memoir. That's why the lead track on Cypress Hill's IV is so radical; 'Eye of the Pig' ...
Vic Chesnutt: Gravity's Rainbow: Vic Chesnutt
Profile by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 24 November 1998
LIKE PLENTY of other folks in wheelchairs, Vic Chesnutt doesn't want your sympathy. In fact, he can challenge the compassion of even those closest to ...
DJ Rap, Neotropic (Riz Maslen): Neotropic, DJ Rap: D.A.T. Girls
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, December 1998
NEOTROPIC AND DJ RAP: TWO EAST LONDON DJ'S, TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SOUNDS ...
Barenaked Ladies: Northern Exposure
Interview by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 10 December 1998
The improbable and partially nude true story of how five funny guys from Toronto called Barenaked Ladies became the biggest new rock band in America ...
Beat Junkies: The World Famous Beat Junkies Volume 2 (Blackberry/Nu Gruv Alliance)
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 21 January 1999
A DJ scratch album that's a cut above the rest ...
Built To Spill: Keep It Like A Secret
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, March 1999
BUILT TO SPILL are maybe the only (formerly) indie rockers whose fans trade mad bootlegs but don't get into that cosmic noodle-dance thing. Sure, Pavement's ...
David Axelrod: 1968-1970: An Anthology (Stateside import); The Axelrod Chronicles (Fantasy)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, December 2000
IMAGINE ITALIAN film-score wizard Ennio Morricone as an acidhead staff producer at Stax/Volt, and you have a rough idea of the utterly cosmic funkiness of ...
Bright Eyes, Son, Ambulance, State of Bengal: Rack Jobbing
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, March 2001
More ace product with no market clout whatsoever ...
Tori Amos: Don't Mess With Mother Nature
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2001
Taking shots at male violence, the gun lobby, and Eminem, Tori Amos has made an unlikely covers record — a cross between Sybil and Quadrophenia. ...
Profile and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, November 2001
Phish x Primus + Police = Oysterhead. What's that smell? ...
Obituary by Will Hermes, Spin, February 2002
THE YOUNGEST member of the world's most revered rock group, George Harrison — who died of cancer on November 29 at age 58 — worked ...
Norma Jean Bell, No-Neck Blues Band: The Fringe: Rackjobbing
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, February 2002
American music you can believe in ...
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 9 April 2002
LET US NOW praise great Americans: Louis Armstrong, Jerry Garcia, and Grandmaster Flash made their history with equal parts pioneer cojones and improvisatory derring-do. They ...
Trey Anastasio: Trey Anastasio
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, June 2002
IF YOU'RE THE DE FACTO LEADER of a band long dismissed by critics, it takes cheek to open your solo debut with a chorus of ...
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, July 2002
NOW THAT MOBY AND FATBOY SLIM HAVE BECOME POP-CULTURE POSTER BOYS, IS IT TIME FOR HIP-HOP MONK JOSH DAVIS, A.K.A. DJ SHADOW, TO CLAIM HIS ...
Dave Matthews Band: Busted Stuff (RCA)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, August 2002
DAVE MATTHEWS' dark side has been spotted frequently but only fleetingly, lurking in the shadowy corners of otherwise upbeat tunes but bolting the minute those ...
Book Review by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 25 August 2002
Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead ...
Gorillaz, Linkin Park: Linkin Park: Reanimation/Space Monkeyz Vs. Gorillaz: Laika Come Home
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, September 2002
WHO INVENTED the remix? Let P. Diddy debate that one with a posse of royalty-deprived Jamaican dub producers. ...
Jay-Z, Kelis, N.E.R.D.: N*E*R*D: Irving Plaza, New York City
Live Review by Will Hermes, Spin, September 2002
WHAT do you do when you're a studio rat who's passed the Courvoisier with Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy and logged hits for 'N Sync, ...
Caetano Veloso: Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil (Knopf)
Book Review by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 24 September 2002
IT'S TOUGH TO imagine an American pop star penning a memoir like Tropical Truth. That's not just because our musical celebs are rarely imprisoned for ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2002
Tears of a Clown: Beck is back, riding that midnight train from Malibu ...
The Streets: Bowery Ballroom, New York City
Live Review by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 29 October 2002
TALK ABOUT BRINGING coal to Newcastle. Sunday's New York debut of U.K. MC The Streets (a/k/a Mike "A Day in the Life of a Geezer" Skinner) drew ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, November 2002
IF ROCK'N'ROLL were high school, Ryan Adams would be the faintly irritating yet firecracker-hot 2001 valedictorian-acing history, kicking it with that cute young chem teacher, ...
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, November 2002
BE CAREFUL what you wish for. When we asked Tori Amos to compile a list of the records that have inspired her music, she brought ...
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Yanqui U.X.O. (Constellation)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, March 2003
GODSPEED'S 1997 debut CD, f#a#?, began with words so eerily prescient that it's a wonder the Montreal band aren't currently being held at Guantánamo Bay. ...
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, March 2003
Do you suffer from skammdegispunglyndi? For many Icelanders, the cure for this brand of wintertime depression — in addition to drinking — is making weird ...
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Pig Lib
Review by Will Hermes, Entertainment Weekly, 21 March 2003
STEPHEN MALKMUS is indie rock's Jack Nicholson: a guy whose insouciant faculty is so great he need only arch a musical eyebrow to entertain. And ...
Guide by Will Hermes, Spin, April 2003
With rock'n'roll in an early-'70s hangover, what could've been more welcome than Third World soul at foot-massage tempos advocating cultural revolution and spliff-smoking? Coming after ...
Phish: Madison Square Garden, New York City
Live Review by Will Hermes, Spin, April 2003
YEP, the drummer still wears a housedress. The band still pause mid-song for the occasional "silent jam". And the shows still draw more deadlocked whiteys ...
Lucinda Williams: World Without Tears
Review by Will Hermes, Entertainment Weekly, 11 April 2003
"WE ARE SO out of touch," sang Lucinda Williams on 2001's Essence. It's a line that could double as a proud slogan for her label, ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, 26 June 2003
BETWEEN U.K. MC Ms. Dynamite's debut and the rhyme battle rumoured to be brewing between Birmingham's Mike "the Streets" Skinner and Brixton's Roots Manuva, 2002 ...
Bright Eyes, Cursive, The Faint, The Good Life: Omaha: Next Stop Nowhere
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, July 2003
America's new indie-rock capital was born when a 13-year-old songsmith named Conor Oberst started putting out recordings on his brother's bedroom cassette label. Ten years ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, July 2003
IT'S ALL RIGHT – you can admit it. When the bedroom lights are out and all you can see are the shooting stars on your ...
Belle and Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress (Rough Trade)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2003
BELLE AND SEBASTIAN are more than a band of underachieving indie-rock layabouts from Glasgow. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, 13 November 2003
MAYBE THEY COULD change their names to the Jaxxes. With half-assed rock bands now enjoying all the hype once reserved for half-assed DJ acts, it's ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, December 2003
POP RADIO is so appalling that even a modest charmer like Nelly Furtado's 'I'm Like a Bird' makes you kneel in gratitude. ...
Dizzee Rascal: Boy in Da Corner (XL/Matador)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, February 2004
Speaking in Tongues: East London rap star Dizzee Rascal's war of words ...
Bright Eyes: Northsix, Brooklyn, New York
Live Review by Will Hermes, Spin, December 2004
WHEN CONOR OBERST WAS 16, he fronted a promising, alt-rockin' band calledCommander Venus. They signed an ill-fated contract — at one unfortunate juncture, the band ...
Pavement: Gold Standardz: Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins (Matador)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, December 2004
Pavement's second album gets classic-rock props ...
Nirvana: With the Lights Out (Geffen/UME)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, January 2005
A decade later, Kurt Cobain's last words ...
Queens of the Stone Age: Lullabies to Paralyze (Interscope)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, April 2005
Josh Homme, all alone, explores his artistic side ...
Hot Hot Heat: Elevator (Sire/Warner Bros.)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, May 2005
BACK IN THE day, new wave meant different things to different people. For some it was a way to add a little bump'n'grind to punk ...
Konono No. 1: Konono No.1: Congotronics (Crammed Discs)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, May 2005
IN FEBRUARY the Motherland finally got its own MTV channel; vive la revolucion! Sure, there may be just one TV for every 16 people in ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, June 2005
SONY STUDIOS, New York, March 25. With aromatherapy candles lit and a soul-food spread in the back. Common plays his latest album for a bunch ...
Coldplay: Dodge Music Center, Hartford, Connecticut
Live Review by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2005
Even after The New York Times declared them "the most insufferable band of the decade" (does that include the new INXS?), Coldplay continue to exist ...
Interview by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2005
Reflecting on Seattle's dangerous heyday and Pearl Jam's legacy, the grunge icon comes clean ...
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2005
Proof that there's an Icelandic word for uplift — and we can't pronounce it ...
Emmanuel Jal: Straight Out of Sudan: A Child Soldier Raps
Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 2 October 2005
THE CONSENSUS among American rappers may be that happiness, as John Lennon once sang, is a warm gun, but Emmanuel Jal is more ambivalent on ...
Sinéad O'Connor, Liz Phair: Playing Against Type: When Musicians Change, They Risk Alienating Fans
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 17 October 2005
WHEN JOHNNY CASH returned to the spotlight in 1994 with American Recordings, the first in a series of records that presented him as a folkie ...
Dan Zanes: The Making of the Next MTV Generation
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 23 October 2005
TWENTY YEARS AGO, when Dan Zanes fronted the punky roots-rock band the Del Fuegos, MTV was changing the business of rock 'n' roll. He has ...
Kate Bush: Doesn't Tour, Hates Attention, Likes Home
Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 30 October 2005
POP MUSIC has seen a lot of '80s musicians angling for a second act lately — the Pixies, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, among others. Partly ...
Patti Smith: Apocalypse Then: Patti Smith's Horses
Retrospective and Interview by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 15 November 2005
ON OCTOBER 30, 1975, the Daily News printed its "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD" cover. But long before that other unelected president refused to bail out our ...
Nik Cohn: Triksta – Life and Death and New Orleans Rap
Book Review by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 4 December 2005
The Rap Before the Rain ...
Hot Chip: Coming on Strong (Astralwerks)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, January 2006
TIMMY THOMAS' 1972 beat-boxdriven hit 'Why Can't We Live Together?' is a paradigm of how machine rhythms can make the human voice sound simultaneously stalwart ...
Cat Power: The Greatest (Matador)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, February 2006
Memphis Belle: Down South, Chan Marshall gets the blues ...
Various Artists: Run the Road Volume 2 (Vice)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, February 2006
U.K. rap's coming-out party gets its second act ...
Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, March 2006
BESIDES HAVING THE SEXIEST snaggletooth in indie rock, Neko Case may be the scene's hardest-working gal. She records and tours with Canuck ultrapoppers the New ...
Bruce Springsteen's take on classic folk
Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 18 April 2006
ASBURY PARK, New Jersey — On a bright, brisk April afternoon in one of America's most famous faded seaside resorts, a band is playing in ...
Lee "Scratch" Perry: African Roots
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 June 2006
Lee Perry's lost Congolese album and other global grooves. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 June 2006
Eclectic miniopera from Brazilian master of the weird ...
Review by Will Hermes, Entertainment Weekly, 19 June 2006
POP STARS generally xerox other acts' looks and hooks — it's expedient, and it works. But Nelly Furtado's multiplatinum 2000 album, Whoa, Nelly! (which included ...
The Incredible Bongo Band, DJ Kool Herc: All Rise for the National Anthem of Hip-Hop
Retrospective by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 29 October 2006
THIS IS A story about a nearly forgotten album and the birth of hip-hop music. Like many good hip-hop tales, and pop yarns in general, ...
Daft Punk, Justice: Electronica that Rocks, à la Française
Report and Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 1 July 2007
ONE OF THE most blogged-about sets at this year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California took place on a stage dominated by ...
Retrospective by Will Hermes, The Village Voice, 31 July 2007
OH YES, it was wicked cool: getting jacked at machete-point on the subway after a night of clubbing, and at bayonet-point outside of high school. ...
Young Marble Giants: Colossal Youth
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, October 2007
THIS EXQUISITE trio's sole LP, released in 1980, is coolly minimal and warmly human, all understated guitar and bass lines, chintzy organ riffs, and cheap-drum-machine ...
Gnarls Barkley: The Odd Couple
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, 25 March 2008
IN 2006, TWO avant-garde hip-hoppers — a producer known for DJ'ing in a mouse costume and a Dirty South MC who abandoned a legendary crew ...
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend (XL)
Review by Will Hermes, Spin, June 2008
AT 1:32 A.M. last Valentine's Day, a demo titled 'Oxford Comma' by a band of Columbia University buds was posted on the blog Music for ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 26 June 2008
LIKE FELLOW CROONERS Amy Winehouse and Kate Nash, Adele Adkins polished her skills at the Brit School in south London – as good a finishing ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 26 June 2008
COLDPLAY'S FOURTH release has been billed as their experimental record, as well as their political record. And it is both, relatively speaking. Viva la Vida ...
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals: Cardinology
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 30 October 2008
RYAN ADAMS' drug problems and public tantrums have often overshadowed his music. But Cardinology may put an end to that. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 5 February 2009
AGE CAN undermine lesser rockers. But time's cruel toll just validates Morrissey's morbid drama-queen spiels — to paraphrase a lyric from his old band the ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 8 September 2009
PHISH TURNED 25 last November quietly; after all, they'd been defunct for over four years. So consider their reunion LP, the self-released Joy, a belated ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 3 March 2010
PART KANYE WEST, PART BRIAN ENO, producer-musician Brian Burton — a.k.a. Danger Mouse — has defined himself with his excellent taste in brilliant misfits. His ...
Laurie Anderson: Electronic Expressions in the Service of the Soul
Profile and Interview by Will Hermes, The New York Times, 25 June 2010
LAURIE ANDERSON was home for a few hours last month — a rare occurrence. This musician and multi-media artist had returned from Poland, where she ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 19 July 2010
"DON'T FUCKIN' tell me what to do," chants reformed teen-pop prodigy Robyn. No worry, girl, things are under control. ...
Arcade Fire Go Big at Madison Square Garden
Live Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 5 August 2010
A FEW YEARS BACK, U2 used Arcade Fire's recording of 'Wake Up' to pump up arena crowds before they hit the stage. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 22 September 2010
ROBERT PLANT'S 2007 ALBUM with pop-bluegrass songbird Alison Krauss, Raising Sand, did something 25 years of solo records never quite managed. It fully transformed him ...
Kings of Leon: Come Around Sundown
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 18 October 2010
IN THE RUN-UP to Kings of Leon's fifth album, frontman Caleb Followill fretted publicly over his band's swelling popularity. Sorry, dude: That horse left the ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 22 November 2010
KE$HA'S MAIN competitor rocks a mean meat dress, but can she rock a couplet like "Your little heart goes pitter-patter/I want your liver on a ...
Captain Beefheart: 10 Essential Captain Beefheart Songs
Guide by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 20 December 2010
Tracks that mixed free-jazz with the blues, and influenced everyone from PJ Harvey to the Black Keys. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, February 2011
ADELE ADKINS' retro-soul debut, 19, was striking less for her songs than for that voice: a voluptuous, slightly parched alto that swooped and fluttered like a ...
Radiohead: The King Of Limbs – A Track-by-Track Breakdown
Guide by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 18 February 2011
RADIOHEAD RELEASED its eighth album, The King of Limbs, as a digital download this morning, a day earlier than expected. With eight tracks spanning 37 ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 26 May 2011
JUSTIN VERNON'S life could be the most implausible reality-TV show ever. Five years ago, he split from his beardy prog-folk band, DeYarmond Edison, and moved ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, December 2011
OVER 10 YEARS and seven albums, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have turned their basement blues project into one of America's mightiest bands. ...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: Marley: A Legend in Sharp Focus
Film/DVD/TV Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 16 August 2012
New documentary may be the definitive portrait of international pop's most potent star. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 20 September 2012
IT'S HARD TO imagine a more preposterous road to platinum success than the one Mumford & Sons travelled. Sigh No More, the 2010 debut by ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, October 2012
ELLIE GOULDING emerged in 2010 with a one-two punch: first, her (still-rising) helium-voiced hit 'Lights', then, an elegant read of Elton John's 'Your Song' that ...
Alabama Shakes' Unlikely Triumph
Interview by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 14 March 2013
BRITTANY HOWARD, the powerhouse 24-year-old frontwoman for Alabama Shakes, isn't much for red carpets. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 April 2013
JAKE BUGG is a 19-year-old from a Nottingham housing project whose self-titled debut topped the U.K. pop charts late last year, somewhat astonishingly, with songs ...
Daft Punk: Random Access Memories
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, May 2013
FRENCH DUO Daft Punk helped create our current stadium-shaking, Coachella-dominating dance-music moment, and their new album is by far the year's most anticipated EDM set. ...
Civil Wars, the: The Civil Wars: The Civil Wars
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 1 August 2013
TAYLOR SWIFT disses exes with singalong choruses, Rihanna duets with her abusive beau, but no pop act makes outsize romantic dysfunction sound as extravagantly pretty ...
Neko Case: The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 3 September 2013
ONCE MERELY A third of the New Pornographers' indie-rock-Avengers front line and a solo act with country-rock leanings, ginormous pipes and comedy-club-stage banter, Neko Case ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 5 November 2013
IF MAYA ARULPRAGASAM has a persecution complex, she's earned it. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 21 November 2013
THERE'S SOMETHING deliciously perverse in hearing Justin Timberlake sing — gorgeously, it must be said — old-timey roots music. ...
Mike Bloomfield: Michael Bloomfield: From His Head to His Heart to His Hands (Columbia/Legacy)
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 13 April 2014
Anthology captures the titanic legacy of the late talent who inspired Clapton, Dylan and more. ...
Sharon Van Etten: Are We There
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 5 June 2014
Sharon Van Etten's follow-up to her 2012 breakthrough is full of elegantly drawn gloom. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 3 July 2014
On first LP since 2009, Vermont's shaggy heroes return to the studio in full-on party mode. ...
Stevie Nicks: 24 Karat Gold – Songs from the Vault
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 23 October 2014
The star re-records a batch of lost demos from four decades, using Nashville session A-team. ...
Charli XCX: Sucker (Atlantic/Neon Gold) ****
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 18 December 2014
The U.K. singer reinvents pop punk on her loud, fun, ridiculously catchy new LP ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 9 April 2015
"I'M JUST A horse with no name," sings Laura Marling on 'Warrior' — slyly invoking the 1970s soft-rock hit by America while conjuring a wanderer ...
Parquet Courts: Live at Third Man Records
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 9 April 2015
Brooklyn rockers rip through a ferocious concert album ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 21 April 2015
Soul rockers free their minds to explore new psychedelic worlds on their second album ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 28 April 2015
ZAC BROWN Band's cocktail of soul, rock, jazz and more is tasty, even when it's a little predictable. They triangulate country bounce, classic-rock flex and ...
Grateful Dead: Soldier Field, Chicago
Live Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 5 July 2015
Grateful Dead's Goodbye, Night Two: Chemistry Lost, Cash-Grabs Abound. For the second of three Fare Thee Well shows, the band goes into latter year doldrums ...
Keith Richards: Crosseyed Heart
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 14 September 2015
KEITH RICHARDS' first solo album since 1992 opens like a fever dream, with the 71-year-old rock god croaking acoustic blues like Robert Johnson after burning ...
Patty Griffin: Servant Of Love
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 15 October 2015
WHEN JIMMIE RODGERS, the "Father of Country Music," cut 'Blue Yodel #9' with Louis Armstrong in 1930, combining rural mountain music with blues and jazz ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 29 October 2015
THE OBVIOUS QUESTION trailing Trey Anastasio's latest: How much did he take home from his summer vacation with the Dead? Answer: About what you'd expect ...
The Replacements: Bob Mehr: Trouble Boys – The True Story of the Replacements
Book Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 10 March 2016
A new biography dives deep into the "'80s punk underdogs" epic, tragic story. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 10 March 2016
NOT SINCE Herbie Hancock robo-rocked the Grammys in 1984 have jazz and pop felt as closely intertwined as they do this year. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 28 June 2016
DEV HYNES described his third LP under his Blood Orange moniker as something "like my version of [the Beastie Boys'] Paul's Boutique." ...
Brandy Clark: Big Day in a Small Town
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 1 July 2016
BRANDY CLARK'S 2013 DEBUT, 12 Stories, heralded a Nashville songwriting renaissance, alongside pathfinders like Kacey Musgraves and Eric Church. Its sequel, and proper major label ...
St. Paul & The Broken Bones: Sea of Noise
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 8 September 2016
FROM FRANK OCEAN to Blood Orange, we're in a golden age of expansive R&B — meaning the bar is high, even for old-school revivalists like ...
David Bowie: How David Bowie, Brian Eno Revolutionized Rock on Low
Retrospective by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone Online, 13 January 2017
Singer-songwriter, producer devised 'a new musical language' in Berlin with help from Tony Visconti ...
Dirty Projectors: Dirty Projectors
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 24 February 2017
ALONGSIDE TV ON THE RADIO, LCD Soundsystem and Vampire Weekend, Dirty Projectors were a key part of New York's radical rewiring of rock in the ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 13 March 2017
"BRING BACK the neo-libs, I'm sorry/I didn't fuckin' mean to pray for anarchy!" apologizes Jason Williamson, sort of, on 'Carlton Touts', a hot rant about ...
Neil Young: Roxy – Tonight's the Night Live
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 23 April 2018
The songwriter opened a legendary L.A. club in 1973 with an incredible performance that spotlighted his classic album. ...
"Country Music … Was Anything BUT Pure": An Interview with Bill Malone and Tracey Laird
Retrospective and Interview by Will Hermes, Longreads, 4 June 2018
The co-authors of Country Music USA – a revised edition of the genre's definitive history – talk about the music's African-American tributaries, its unpredictable politics, ...
Blood Orange’s Haunted, Sexy Negro Swan
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 27 August 2018
Dev Hynes delivers praise songs to self-realization and fluidity, with help from Janet Mock, A$AP Rocky, P-Diddy and others. ...
The Struts: Young and Dangerous
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 19 October 2018
THE STRUTS, hailing from the UK, have a head start on the revivalist circuit — two years into the game, in 2014, they opened for ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 25 October 2018
Her first album in eight years offers a personal take on disco's healing ecstasy. ...
Meg Baird, Mary Lattimore: Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore: Ghost Forests
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 13 November 2018
Experimental music that's warm and inviting. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 3 February 2019
BEIRUT MUSIC sounds like the fuzzy memory of a wedding involving distant relatives, where you were swept up in folk dances and traditional drinking games, ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 22 March 2019
On her fourth solo LP, the singer/songwriter returns with songs rooted in her home turf, with help from Beck, Ringo Starr and others. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 25 April 2019
On her third LP, the New Zealand singer pivots artfully from folk eccentric to pop eccentric. ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 11 July 2019
SINCE HER GOTHY 2014 single 'Beggin' For Thread' ("to sew this hole up that you ripped in my head"), Jillian Banks has stepped with a ...
Review by Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 2 October 2019
With cinematic strings and goth-noir drama, the singer-songwriter makes her biggest, boldest record yet. ...
Book Excerpt by Will Hermes, 'The King of New York' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), October 2023
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