Fresh off the heels of the latest blockbuster release for producer Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, I am convinced that the only creative music Antonoff is capable of producing is for his own group Bleachers. His trend, not only with Swift, but with every pop artist he's collaborated with including The 1975, Lorde, and Lana Del Ray, involves stripping away everything from music and refusing to play into the musician's strengths to create a generic, a-melodic, spoken word poetry album. This approach is guaranteed to only further jeopardize the jobs of other musicians since he has made it a hundred times easier for AI to write a pop hit now. This is not to say that Antonoff is unoriginal, uncreative, or a disservice to music: just to those he collaborates with. 

His latest release with his group Bleachers, the January Bleachers album, features more of the creativity than can be heard on the 90+ minutes of Swift's Midnights. My first listen of Midnights came on a drive home from Ohio with my sister in tow. I was vastly underwhelmed, almost asleep at times from the ambient, tonal background with little instrumentation and trackable melody. Swift's early music has power for a reason: it can be sung. 

Despite opening with a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking”, Meet the Residents" was neither the project of a Louisiana pop combo nor a release by a band in the traditional sense.  Instead, Meet the Residents is a dissonant avant-garde construction by a California-based collective of presumably rotating individuals who would protect their identities by performing in elaborate costumes, often in elaborate eyeball masks, under the tutelage of the mysterious and possibly non-existent composer N. Senada. The Dadaist mockery of the Beatles on the album cover gives some idea of what is contained inside, but if you come in expecting pure parody you’ll be disappointed. This is home-produced, featuring tape recordings cut with razor blades and spliced together, distorted horns, bizarre lyrics, and even weirder vocals. And it was ignored… mostly. The Residents were unphased and would go on to continue to produce albums and tour up to this day.  Retrospectively this album would garner critical acclaim for its challenging nature and willful deconstruction of Western music. This would be followed to an even greater extent in 1976’s Third Reich N’ Roll’s savage parodies of rock and pop music, but Meet the Residents shows pop, classical, and rock influences and then takes them to strange places.  

To give a brief sample, “Boots” is Nancy Sinatra if interpreted by a barbershop quartet of ghouls with ahooga horns added for good measure. The most pop-friendly song might be “Smelly Tongues” which features guest vocals by a high-school friend of the group and would be covered and released as B-side by Snakefinger, another friend of the group, later. “Spotted Pinto Bean” features soaring female vocals, resembling a him before devolving into percussive piano, and thunderous sounds while the lyrics focus on the coming of a bean. At nearly ten minutes, the closing track, “N-ER-GEE (Crisis Blues)” truly sounds like nothing else with snippets of the Human Beinz, the horns from before, what sounds like recorders and toy pianos, more nonsense lyrics, and vocals that sound like Mel Blanc as a neanderthal. 

An underground hyperpop/rap/glitchcore/pop artist from Indianapolis Indiana known as Midwxst may have dropped an album in 2023 that flew under the radar of many. The album starts off with the song “lost” which has influences of Kanye West and others with the gospel chorus vocals throughout the song. However the lyrics on the song are still that of the angsty teen that Midwxst still is with the lyrics “Time has changed me/But I don’t think you cared.” This angst is seen all throughout the album as with the second song “pretty girls” Midwxst is both singing and rapping to a lost lover. With lyrics such as “So gone, I’m wasted/I still miss the way you tasted” and “Pretty Girls will drive you crazy.” 

The album itself feels as though it is just another teen angst album, however with a deeper listen the time and technique put into the production of the album may push it to another level. From the Kanye gospel, to the shades of glitchcore and hyperpop mixed with Midwxst’s raspy singing voice create a soundscape that entraps you within the sound created by the blending of multiple genres. 

To those who know me, you’ll know that my least favorite question of all time is, “What’s your favorite album?” It’s a cruel question. Instantly, my mind runs to at least a hundred albums that I’ve once considered the best, mostly leading with whatever I’ve listened to last.

But after some deliberation, I usually end up with the same answer: “Faces” by Mac Miller. An hour and twenty five minutes of some of the most dope beats and bars I’ve ever heard. Mac Miller has always been my favorite rapper (I’ve even got a tattoo inspired by his music!), and to me, this was his magnum opus. However, as great as this project is to me, I technically can’t give it as an answer. “Faces” isn’t an album at all: it’s a mixtape.

On Sunday April 14th the West Virginia Mountaineers face the #17 Central Florida GoldenKnights at 1:00 pm at the Kendrick family Ballpark as they look to earn the sweep in this pivotal Big 12 series.

The Mountaineers who moved to 21-13 in last night's matchup are coming into Sunday's game after rallying late in Friday's opener to take game one. Kyle West led the late comeback with a game tying two-run HR in the 5th and a go ahead RBI triple in the seventh. 

Dolly Parton’s album ‘Jolene’ turned 50 this past February. On February 4th 1974, Dolly Parton released the iconic album ‘Jolene’. This was Dolly Parton’s thirteenth solo album. While the song ‘Jolene’ is one of Dolly’s most celebrated songs, this album also holds another one of Dolly’s notorious songs, ‘I will always love you’. Most people recognize Whitney Houston for this beautiful song but it was actually originally written and released by Dolly Parton. Dolly said in an interview that she actually wrote ‘I will alway love you’ and ‘Jolene’ on the same day. 

A countless number of artists have covered ‘Jolene’ as well as ‘I will always love you’. One of my favorite covers of ‘Jolene’ is when Miley Cryus and Noah Cryus performed this song at Miley’s New Year’s Eve Party on NBC in 2022. Both Noah and Miley are so talented and their voices together while singing this song is truly breathtaking. The most famous cover of ‘I will always love you’ is for sure when it was sung by Whitney Houston. 

Beverly Avenue. 9:50 PM. March 28th. The sound of crashing drums streams out through my neighbor’s garage as the nursing student working the doors marks my hand. I proceed through the garage into the smallest basement venue I have ever been in.

“We’re not playing yet, we’re just f****** around,” I hear. Two dozen or so people fill the basement looking eagerly at a group of people, one behind a drum kit, two with stringed instruments, and one with …  a saxophone? This wasn’t going to be an ordinary punk show. This was Auric Echoes, a Morgantown band that had long been on my radar but I had yet to check out. I was excited for them– but the real treat would come later in the evening.

Imagine for a brief moment that you are approaching your 13th birthday. You may have experienced some success in your life before, but now you are worried about what you will be leaving behind in the world. What would you do? Would you give more to charity or volunteer more? If you’re Robert Smith, lead vocalist of The Cure, you go down a different route. Instead, you make Disintegration. The eighth studio album by The Cure is slowly nearing its 35th anniversary on May 2nd, and it is about time that we look back on it and see just how well this gothic album really holds up.

When it comes to the history of this album, we need to go way back. We need to go all the way back to 1987, fresh off the tail of Kiss me, Kiss me, Kiss me, The Cure’s previous album. It was an absolute smash hit, but the idea of being a pop star wasn’t sitting right with Robert. As part of a coping mechanism with this stress, he soon turned to psychedelics to hopefully alleviate the stress. Then there was the fact of Rober Smith’s age. He was swiftly realizing that in a year he would be 30, a sort of unstated deadline for artists to make their most iconic pieces. Eventually, partially due to said substances, Smith had finally decided on what this album would be. Stepping away from the more pop-based trappings of the last album, the band decided to return to its more gothic roots. The hope was that this darker album would show the listeners just how misunderstood the band really was! Smith’s dismay over his age leaked into the composition and form of the album. After a year of recording and 32 tracks recorded, even though 12 would actually make the final cut, Disintegration was finally finished.

West Virginia is coming off two straight conference wins against the number 17 ranked Oklahoma Sooners.

David Hagaman had a good night on the mound last game as he had 10 strikeouts and only one earned run in six innings pitched.

The West Virginia Mountaineers took down the Princeton Tigers 63-53 to advance to the second round of 32 in the NCAA tournament. 

West Virginia used its best field goal shooting performance in an NCAA Tournament game at 52.5% and a dominant third quarter to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021.