Arcade Fire

At first glance, Kanye “Ye” West and the Arcade Fire’s lead singer Win Butler might seem to have little in common. Ye has built his increasingly deranged career on provocation and confrontation, and that has now reached its nadir in his latest single, “Heil Hitler,” in which he declares that “All my niggas Nazis, nigga Heil Hitler.” After listing the various perceived wrongs that have been done to him, Ye states, all too accurately, “So I became a Nazi, yeah bitch, I’m the villain.” Inevitably, it ends with the song sampling a Hitler speech, in which the Führer cried that, “Whether you think my work is right... if yes, then stand up for me as I stood up for you.” The song has attracted outrage, upset and genuine confusion as to Ye’s mental state.

I have lost hope in contemporary pop music. As someone who used to keep his finger on the pulse of new releases, and who went to gigs as often as I could, the absence of innovation has been one of the great disappointments of the past couple of decades. There really isn’t anything much out there, bar, of course, the sainted Taylor Swift. But ever since David Bowie’s death eight years ago (eight years...), the music industry seems to have been in a desperate downward spiral, where flair, originality and chutzpah are sorely missed. Surely it’s time that a new act could supply such things, complete with flute solos, songs sung in Albanian and an orchestral overture? No, I am not making it up.

Teresa Mull, assistant editor A Cat in the Rain by the Turnpike Troubadours The Turnpike Troubadours are back with a new album that sounds a lot like their old ones, which is why I like it so much. A Cat in the Rain has been heralded as “a triumphant comeback,” and indeed, as a fan who’s followed (or tried to, anyway) the Red Dirt band’s ongoing drama, I was surprised and delighted to welcome the return of Evan Felker’s rustic voice singing some fresh, but still familiar-feeling, songs. The lyrics have a gentler, humbler feel to them — overcoming alcoholism by laboring on a cattle ranch and rekindling with the wife you divorced to produce two kids will do that to a man, apparently.