The Dissolve Pitchfork Pitchfork Pitchfork News Latest News Advance Tours The Pitch Reviews Tracks Features Cover Stories Interviews Articles Guest Lists Staff Lists Columns Rising Photo Galleries Pitchfork.tv P4K Radio Best New Music Best New Best New Tracks Best New Reissues 8.0+ Reviews Staff Lists 2013 Albums | Tracks 2012 Albums | Tracks 2011 Albums | Tracks 2010 Albums | Tracks 2009 Albums | Tracks 2008 Albums | Tracks 2007 Albums | Tracks 2006 Albums | Tracks 2005 Albums | Singles 2004 Albums | Singles 2003 Albums | Singles 2002 Albums 2001 Albums 2000 Albums 2010-2014: Albums | Tracks The People's List: 1996-2011 P2K: The Decade in Music 2000-04 Albums | Singles 1990s Albums | Tracks 1970s Albums | 1980s Albums 1960s Tracks Artists Festivals Chicago Festival Guide TPR Featured Interviews: The Proverbial Wisdom of Earl Sweatshirt Pull the Thread and Unravel Me: Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield Update: Fix the Future: Holly Herndon's Col lective Vision Update: Perennially Contentious: The Return of Faith No More Show No Mercy: Death Becomes Them: Bell Witch's Doomed Ghost Stories Photo Galleries : Show No Mercy SXSW Showcase Into the Black: 's Dark Disco Empire P hoto Galleries: Pitchfork SXSW Parties 2015 Rising: Bully Op-Ed: Plagiarize This : A Reasonable Solution to Musical Copyright After “Blurred Lines” Interviews: Passi on Pit’s Path Through the Darkness Tired and Hungry and Alive: 36 Hours with Court ney Barnett Playing House Update: The Liturgy Manifesto Views

From the 6: Inside Drake s Toronto Guest Lists: Tobias Jesso Jr. Interviews: Po p Sovereign: A Conversation With Madonna Electric Fling: Let Me Be Your Radio: T he Bizarro Universe of The Connection Is Made: Elastica Goes M.I.A.

Paper Trail: Unconventional Idol: Kim Gordon s Girl in a Band Interviews: Specif ically Ridiculous: Nick Kroll on the Music of “Kroll Show” Show No Mercy: No Words: Sannhet’s Uncategorizable Squall Guest Lists: Alvvays 5-10-15-20: Cannibal Ox Risi ng: Mumdance Interviews: True Myth: A Conversation With Sufjan Stevens Photo Gal leries: Kanye West x Adidas Originals / Roc City Classic Secondhands: Seeing Pur ple: Prince in the ‘80s Interviews: Jeff Bridges Interviews The Proverbial Wisdom of Earl Sweatshirt At 21, Earl Sweatshirt is reckoning with the persona he’s built up so far—as a h ermit, as a recluse, as a guy who names his new I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside—and finding a humane path through the misanthropy. By Jayson Greene. Articles

Pull the Thread and Unravel Me: Waxahatchee s Katie Crutchfield Katie Crutchfield sings and writes songs with an emotional specificity that makes it sound like she’s shining a light on her most crippling anxieties. But tha t vulnerability is just one side of her story; the rest isn’t even a little frail. By Jillian Mapes. Update

Fix the Future: Holly Herndon s Collective Vision Rather than using technology as an agent of isolation, this accomplished aca demic, singer, and composer looks to make philosophical that sh ines a spotlight on the cooperative nature of our modern world. By Philip Sherbu rne. Update Perennially Contentious: The Return of Faith No More After spending much of the ‘80s and ‘90s gleefully blowing up rock orthodoxy, Fa ith No More are back with their first album in 18 years. Stuart Berman talks to

them about going DIY for the new record and why they don t like being called a m etal band. Show No Mercy

Death Becomes Them: Bell Witch s Doomed Ghost Stories Named after a storied poltergeist, Seattle duo Bell Witch make slow, heavy m usic that evokes the suffocating experience of mourning. Brandon Stosuy talks to them about ghostly trauma, being trapped in a coffin, and pissing off death met al dudes. Photo Galleries Show No Mercy SXSW Showcase Trent Maxwell shoots our SXSW metal showcase featuring Youth Code, Indian, G naw, Kylesa, Primitive Man, Power Trip, and more. Articles Into the Black: Johnny Jewel s Dark Disco Empire Ian Cohen finds out how the mastermind behind Chromatics and per fected his bleary kind of cool—and how he escaped a kidnapping, cultivated an inde pendent (and lucrative) ethos, and befriended along the way. Photo Galleries Pitchfork SXSW Parties 2015 Our photographers capture moments with Speedy Ortiz, Courtney Barnett, Shami

r, QT, Rae Sremmurd, and more at this year s Pitchfork SXSW day parties at the H ouse of Vans in Austin, . Rising Bully By screaming out her personal doubts over crunchy power pop, Alicia Bognanno discovered a powerful road to self-acceptance. The Bully frontwoman talks to Ev an Minsker about learning from Steve Albini, loving Pinkerton, and embracing her own voice. Op-Ed Plagiarize This: A Reasonable Solution to Musical Copyright After “Blurred Lin es” Musician and writer Damon Krukowski breaks down the woefully outdated and hi ghly subjective system that we currently use to measure musical copyright—and how it can be fixed to better fit our digital era. Interviews Passion Pit’s Path Through the Darkness After opening up about his bipolar disorder three years ago, Michael Angelak os found himself flailing to respond to cynics who thought his mental health iss ues were all for show. With new album Kindred, he’s moving past bitterness and ang er with what matters most: family, gratitude, love. By Ian Cohen. Articles Tired and Hungry and Alive: 36 Hours with Courtney Barnett With her deadpan delivery and keen eye for quotidian detail, Australian sing er/songwriter Courtney Barnett provides the calm narration of a deeply hysterica l reality. By Amanda Petrusich. Articles Playing House House shows aren’t just for punks anymore—a growing number of singer/songwriters are ditching noisy clubs for cozy living room gigs. Joel Oliphint breaks down t he emotional—and financial—rewards of this new generation of fireside concerts. Update The Mountain Goats On Beat the Champ, uses the world of professional wrestling a s a backdrop for his songwriting, teasing out the humanity of his favorite large r-than-life combatants along the way. He talks with Evan Minsker about the reali ties of the ring, the primal satisfaction of being hit, and more. Articles The Liturgy Manifesto This Brooklyn band made their name as brainy black metal lightning rods—a rep that often overshadowed their music and split them apart. Grayson Haver Currin t ells of how they reunited for new album The Ark Work, which tries to answer ques tions about a genre that no one thought to ask. Articles

Views From the 6: Inside Drake s Toronto With If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, Drake turns his hometown into a mytho logical hip-hop locale where the highways are empty and the penthouses are full.

Jamieson Cox breaks down Drake s Toronto and how it fits into the city’s reality. Guest Lists Tobias Jesso Jr. The burgeoning L.A. singer/songwriter talks to Ryan Dombal about worshipping Adele and D’Angelo, his troubling toothpick addiction, serving coffee to zoo anim als, how to peel a mango without getting sticky, his secret talent, and other ve ry random stuff. Interviews Pop Sovereign: A Conversation With Madonna She built the house that so many pop stars now get to call home, but what do es it mean to be Madonna in 2015? T. Cole Rachel sits down with the 56-year-old star in this career-spanning interview. Electric Fling Let Me Be Your Radio: The Bizarro Universe of Italo Disco In his latest column, Andy Beta delves into what could be the most amazingly uncool genre ever created—Italo Disco—and how its hopeless chintziness still inspir es dance artists to this day. Articles The Connection Is Made: Elastica Goes M.I.A. Stuart Berman details how one era-defining classic—Elastica’s Britpop-bombing 19 95 debut—spawned another: M.I.A.’s Arular, which turns 10 this year. Paper Trail

Unconventional Idol: Kim Gordon s Girl in a Band Jenn Pelly talks with the experimental rock icon about her revealing new mem

oir, the familial trauma that led to her famed elusiveness, and living a life ou tside the margins: “Convention isn t awful, it s just not something that I really aspire to.” Interviews Specifically Ridiculous: Nick Kroll on the Music of “Kroll Show” Corban Goble talks with the sketch-comedy mastermind and his collaborators a

bout their bizarre brand of musical parody, which pokes fun at Guns N Roses, Ju stin Bieber, Pitbull, Billy Joel, and more. Show No Mercy No Words: Sannhet’s Uncategorizable Squall Brandon Stosuy sits down with burgeoning Brooklyn trio Sannhet, who are maki ng a name for themselves with epic instrumental tracks as well as a positively b linding light show. Also: Listen to an exclusive stream of their new album, Revi sionist. Guest Lists Alvvays Molly Rankin, frontwoman for anthemic Toronto indie rockers Alvvays, talks t o Stuart Berman about the supreme idiocy of brunch, how Noel Gallagher taught he r to play , her undying love of Celine Dion, and the most terrifying motel in Canada. 5-10-15-20 Cannibal Ox With their first album in 14 years out next month, the NYC hip-hop duo talk to Evan Minsker about the music of their lives: the transformative power of Big Daddy Kane, the poetic vulnerability of Billy Corgan, the preternatural wisdom o f Lorde, and more. Rising Mumdance Blending hard-nosed grime aesthetics with beatless atmosphere, this UK produ cer wants to open up our idea of what club music can be: “If something confuses th e shit out of you on the dancefloor—that’s a beautiful thing.” By Philip Sherburne. Interviews True Myth: A Conversation With Sufjan Stevens After 15 years of translating his personal phantasmagorias through various a mbitious musical styles, Sufjan Stevens does away with all of the pomp on Carrie

& Lowell, a meditation on the grief surrounding his mother s death. By Ryan Dom bal. Photo Galleries Kanye West x Adidas Originals / Roc City Classic

Photographer Erez Avissar captures the presentation for Kanye West s collabo ration with Adidas and his Roc City Classic show in Manhattan. Secondhands Seeing Purple: Prince in the ‘80s In this personal essay, Mike Powell details his gender-blurring experiences with the psychedelically ambiguous art of Prince and pinpoints why The Purple On e’s flashes of social utopia and sexual liberation are so timelessly subversive. Interviews Jeff Bridges Part comedy album, part ambient experiment, part conceptual prank, Jeff Brid

ges Sleeping Tapes is a captivating curio, but also much more. Philip Sherburne

talks to actor about the record s origins and how more installments are likely to follow. Overtones Notes You Never Hear: The Metaphysical Loneliness of George Harrison Of all the impossible-to-recreate sounds made by the Beatles, George Harrison’s le ad guitar might be the most elusive. Jayson Greene teases out its haunting essen ce with the help of a few Harrison acolytes, including his son Dhani. By Jayson Greene , October 13, 2014 Notes You Never Hear: The Metaphysical Loneliness of George Harrison Photo © Harrison Family Recently, Dhani Harrison was rehearsing “Let It Down”, from All Things Must Pass, wh en a member of his band told him he was playing his own father’s song wrong. “I was

doing my own solo, not the one in the song, and he couldn t take it,” Dhani laughs . “And he was right! I was fudging the chords a bit. I sighed and said, ‘OK then, le

t s go back and figure it out.’” Of all the impossible-to-recreate sounds made by the Beatles—Ringo’s drum fills, Pau l’s bass lines—George Harrison’s lead guitar might be the most elusive. Even his own s on has spent most of his life struggling to grasp its essence. “For most of my ear ly life, I tried not to learn my father’s music,” Dhani says dryly. He’s joking, at le ast partly: He has spent years preserving, protecting, and archiving his father’s legacy, and he knows every note, down to which guitar played it. In September, h e oversaw the remastering and reissuing of Harrison’s first six solo records, whic h were recently released on Capitol as The Apple Years: 1968-1975. So if you are looking for someone to explain the near-mystical quality of George Harrison’s guitar playing—or at least grapple poetically with its spirit—Dhani is you r best bet. “My father once said to me, ‘I play the notes you never hear,’” he remembers . “He focused on touch and control partly because he never thought he was any good , really. He knew he was good at smaller things: not hitting any off notes, not making strings buzz, not playing anything that would jar you. ‘Everyone else has p

layed all the other bullshit,’ he would say. ‘I just play what s left.’”

I just play what s left. There probably isn’t a more self-effacing way to describe it. But Harrison’s playing, both in the Beatles and in his solo work, has always sounded this way, like whatever resounding truth remained after all else was exh austed; it is an inner music. Like a chess master who stares motionless at the b oard while the pieces move in his mind, Harrison’s hardest work always happened be fore he began playing, as he painstakingly arranged and rearranged chord shapes: In her foreword to his memoir I, Me, Mine, Olivia Harrison fondly remembers her husband writing at home, one ear cocked to the side, endlessly working and rewo rking chord formations. “He looked very hard for the notes that were most suggestive of the whole,” Dhani sa ys, offering something close to a defining philosophy behind that rounded, softl y glowing tone. There is something almost metaphysical about its loneliness. His lead guitar was never a “lead” in a traditional sense; it is just one voice in an i maginary choir. His lilting solo on “Something” is both foreground—you can sing every note of it—and background, as misty and distant as the orchestra behind it. You co uld never imagine reaching out and touching it. Maybe it’s due to this remoteness that his style has quietly resisted cliché or agin g out of fashion. Bands that would never cite rock-god contemporaries like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page regularly namecheck him as an influence. “His chords were sometimes more a cluster of notes that, to my ears, are beautifully dissonant,” sa ys Weezer guitarist Brian Bell, who recently took part in a massive benefit conc ert called George Fest. Like all Harrison acolytes, Bell’s appreciation zooms in o n granular moments. “The turnaround lick over the last chord in the chorus of the Beatles’ ‘Help’ functions on many levels,” he explains. “It’s such an innovative use of the open G and B strings ringing out, while a minor 3rd shape chromatically descends below it.” “He mixed playing chords and single-note runs similar to a jazz player,” agrees Matt Mondanile, guitarist for Real Estate. Mondanile is a similarly unshowy player, someone who seems to convey the meaning of every note he plays so completely tha t you occasionally forget to notice him. He hones in on the way Harrison’s lead li nes wind around lead vocals. “I do that all the time,” he says. “On ‘Fake Blues’, ‘Beach Com

ber’, ‘Green Aisles’—basically any time an arpeggio floats around the melody, I m playin g Harrison,” he laughs. When I ask Dhani which of his father’s guitar lines linger with him today, he poin

ts instantly to the opening of “I d Have You Anytime” from All Things Must Pass. (“I t

hink that s the Les Paul from ‘Gently Weeps’,” he muses.) Talking about the part, he u ses the word “riff,” but it sits wrong—a “riff” is generally flashy, hard-angled, designed

to snag your attention. The line on “I d Have You Anytime”, with its hesitant dips and quavers and sudden, weightless leaps, rarely rises above a murmur. Like a lo t of Harrison’s most lyrical playing, it feels more like a product of breath than hands. This is not an accident. “When my dad was growing up, a lot of the pop music he lo ved had all these horn parts—Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis,” notes Dhani. “A lot of the great solos that he heard growing up were actually played on horns, and you can hear some of that turn up in his playing. As he got better and better, you s tarted to hear less fret noise, and there was almost this laser-light quality to his sound—the pick disappeared.” It is this liquid quality that is hardest to pinpoint. The tone evokes a zither, a clarinet—something more delicate, nuanced, and lyrical than an . His style was so careful it was nearly self-annihilating—appropriate for someone so concerned with Eastern concepts of self. He was, after all, the Beatle who fa mously sat with Ravi Shankar and attempted to master the sitar, and although he failed to become a professional (or even passable) player—"I should have started a t least [15] years earlier,” he lamented in I, Me, Mine—the study led him to new pos sibilities on the guitar neck. The precise string-bending on “My Sweet Lord”—that famo us swan-necked swoop of a melody—would have been impossible if he hadn’t sat for thr ee years, trying to master the “diri diri da ra da” of Shankar’s exercises. “As far as w riting strange melodies and also rhythmically it was the best assistance I could have had,” he wrote. I ask Dhani how he knows, within seconds, if a player has been directly influenc ed by his father. “There’s two ways,” he answers. “Not to sound like an asshole, but the re’s the cheap, easy imitation, and then there’s the person who is genuinely influen ced. Anyone can try and replicate that slide sound; I’ve heard it in records befor e and just thought, ‘God, we have to sue those guys.’ But then you’ll hear someone lik

e Blake Mills, or—and this is a bit of an off-the-wall one—Josh Homme. I don t know if he’d be offended by my saying that”—he laughs—“but I mean it as the highest compliment.” Ultimately, it is a kind of restraint, a way of seeing, that distinguishes Harri son’s playing. His ear was drawn to the smallest possible units of motion, his “quie t Beatle” stillness allowing for a heightened form of listening. “I’m really quite sim ple,” Harrison told Derek Taylor in I, Me, Mine. “I plant flowers and watch them gro w...I stay at home and watch the river flow.” He was mocked, sometimes, for the se lf-seriousness of these statements, but this attention radiates from the center of his music. “It’s not suppression, it’s just discipline,” says Dhani. “He’s the reason no one can really cover the Beatles faithfully. The songs and the harmonies are one thing, and you can kind of work those out, but at some point there’s going to be a George Harrison solo, and that solo is usually perfect. So what do you do? If you start changing it, thinking you’re going to do something better, it’s not going

to work out for you. It s hard to go in and start replacing things in those song s, because that’s the way that they are.” Overtones is a column by Jayson Greene that examines how certain sounds linger i n our minds and lives. Artists: The Beatles, George Harrison « Previous Feature Turn Down for What Looking beyond , why is the overall sound of a song like Ariana Grande

s "Break Free" so good at turning off our brains, while something like Sam Smit h s "Stay With Me" or FKA twigs "Two Weeks" is more conducive to contemplation? Turn Down for What Most Read Features 7 Days 30 Days 90 Days Interviews The Proverbial Wisdom of Earl Sweatshirt April 2, 2015 Interviews True Myth: A Conversation With Sufjan Stevens February 16, 2015 Articles

Pull the Thread and Unravel Me: Waxahatchee s Katie Crutchfield April 1, 2015 Update Perennially Contentious: The Return of Faith No More March 26, 2015 Update

Fix the Future: Holly Herndon s Collective Vision March 31, 2015 Articles

Into the Black: Johnny Jewel s Dark Disco Empire March 24, 2015 Articles Tired and Hungry and Alive: 36 Hours with Courtney Barnett March 16, 2015 Photo Galleries Pitchfork SXSW Parties 2015 March 23, 2015 Articles

Views From the 6: Inside Drake s Toronto March 5, 2015 Interviews Passion Pit’s Path Through the Darkness March 18, 2015 «»•••••••••• Staff Lists 2014 Albums | Tracks 2010-2014 Albums | Tracks 2013 Albums | Tracks 2012 Albums | Tracks 2011 Albums | Tracks 2010 Albums | Tracks 2009 Albums | Tracks 2008 Albums | Tracks 2007 Albums | Tracks 2006 Albums | Tracks 2005 Albums | Singles 2004 Albums | Singles 2003 Albums | Singles 2002 Albums 2001 Albums 2000 Albums

The People s List: Top Albums 1996-2011 P2K: The Decade in Music 2000-04 Albums | Singles 1990s Albums | Tracks 1980s Albums 1970s Albums 1960s Tracks Related Latest Trending News The Flaming Lips and Julianna Barwick Cover the Beatles and at Tibet House Benefit Plus an all-star jam led by Patti Smith By Evan Minsker on March 7, 2015 at 3:27 p.m. EST

Real Estate Cover the Beatles "And I Love Her", Matt Mondanile Covers N eil Young The band also perform the rare track "Snow Days" By Evan Minsker on January 6, 2015 at 7:02 p.m. EST Paul McCartney Is a Hologram in the Video for "Hope for the Future", His Song for the Destiny Videogame McCartney also scored the game By Jeremy Gordon on December 8, 2014 at 1:06 p.m. EST Features Staff Lists Staff Lists: Holiday Gift Guide 2014 This year, our annual list of musical gift ideas includes the ultimate B eatles box set, remarkably potent, rapper-endorsed alcohol, a rumble pack geared to put bass into your body, coffee made from unicorn blood, a Morrissey sweater , and more. News Stream Paul McCartney Tribute Album Featuring the Cure, Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, More The Art of McCartney also features Smokey Robinson, Perry Farrell ... By Jeremy Gordon on November 12, 2014 at 4:01 p.m. EST The Flaming Lips Perform "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds", "With a Little Help From My Friends" on "Kimmel" With Morgan Delt and Grace Potter in Wizard of Oz ... By Evan Minsker on November 1, 2014 at 11:17 a.m. EDT Pitchfork © 2015 Pitchfork Media Inc. All rights reserved. Reviews Albums Tracks Pitchfork.tv Pitchfork.tv News Interviews Photos New Releases Tours Audio Video WTF Echo Chamber Features Interviews Articles Guest Lists Staff Lists Columns Soundplay Soundplay. Best New Music Best New Albums Best New Tracks Best New Reissues 8.0+ Reviews Festivals Chicago Paris Artists Pitchfork Artist Index More Info RSS Privacy Policy Terms of Use Jobs Advertising Staff Contact Google+