![stereogum's tweet photo. LA saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson has been on a prolific, inspired run for over a decade. He plays in the incredible ensembles SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, and in trios with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes and with Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño. He produced acclaimed albums by Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, served as Leon Bridges’ musical director, and collaborated with a wide range of pop and indie artists, including Harry Styles, Bright Eyes, and Hand Habits. Johnson pops up everywhere, doing a bit of everything.
‘Animative,’ out this Friday via International Anthem, is his third solo LP. Bassist Ndegeocello, violinist Macie Stewart, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine are among the performers, and the album subtly showcases Johnson’s versatility while ensuring his distinctive personality persists through the pivots, from the funky, Headhunters-esque “High Step” to the gorgeous, droning shapelessness of closing track “Upstairs 2021.”
Johnson plays almost everything on ‘Animative’ — saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, and drum synthesizer — merging electronic and acoustic sounds in revelatory yet unshowy ways. There’s a lot going on under the hood, but the tricky synthesis never overshadows the compositional prowess at the heart of the collection.
Check out our Album Of The Week review, and a list of everything else coming this Friday.
👉 https://t.co/jKU3lx63mZ
[📝: @chrisdeville, 📷: @atibaphoto]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVKqfqhXgAEiwlR.jpg)
![stereogum's tweet photo. LA saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson has been on a prolific, inspired run for over a decade. He plays in the incredible ensembles SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, and in trios with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes and with Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño. He produced acclaimed albums by Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, served as Leon Bridges’ musical director, and collaborated with a wide range of pop and indie artists, including Harry Styles, Bright Eyes, and Hand Habits. Johnson pops up everywhere, doing a bit of everything.
‘Animative,’ out this Friday via International Anthem, is his third solo LP. Bassist Ndegeocello, violinist Macie Stewart, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine are among the performers, and the album subtly showcases Johnson’s versatility while ensuring his distinctive personality persists through the pivots, from the funky, Headhunters-esque “High Step” to the gorgeous, droning shapelessness of closing track “Upstairs 2021.”
Johnson plays almost everything on ‘Animative’ — saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, and drum synthesizer — merging electronic and acoustic sounds in revelatory yet unshowy ways. There’s a lot going on under the hood, but the tricky synthesis never overshadows the compositional prowess at the heart of the collection.
Check out our Album Of The Week review, and a list of everything else coming this Friday.
👉 https://t.co/jKU3lx63mZ
[📝: @chrisdeville, 📷: @atibaphoto]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVKqfqfXkAAoc81.jpg)
![stereogum's tweet photo. LA saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson has been on a prolific, inspired run for over a decade. He plays in the incredible ensembles SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, and in trios with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes and with Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño. He produced acclaimed albums by Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, served as Leon Bridges’ musical director, and collaborated with a wide range of pop and indie artists, including Harry Styles, Bright Eyes, and Hand Habits. Johnson pops up everywhere, doing a bit of everything.
‘Animative,’ out this Friday via International Anthem, is his third solo LP. Bassist Ndegeocello, violinist Macie Stewart, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine are among the performers, and the album subtly showcases Johnson’s versatility while ensuring his distinctive personality persists through the pivots, from the funky, Headhunters-esque “High Step” to the gorgeous, droning shapelessness of closing track “Upstairs 2021.”
Johnson plays almost everything on ‘Animative’ — saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, and drum synthesizer — merging electronic and acoustic sounds in revelatory yet unshowy ways. There’s a lot going on under the hood, but the tricky synthesis never overshadows the compositional prowess at the heart of the collection.
Check out our Album Of The Week review, and a list of everything else coming this Friday.
👉 https://t.co/jKU3lx63mZ
[📝: @chrisdeville, 📷: @atibaphoto]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVKqfqbXkAAzElE.jpg)
Olivia
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Chris DeVille
@chrisdeville
Managing Editor, @stereogum
Founder, Music Nerd Football Blog
Posting indie nostalgia at @suchgr8heights
Buy my debut book SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS at the link below
Columbus
Joined March 2009
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My debut book is OUT TODAY!
'Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion' is about how indie rock changed the mainstream and the mainstream changed indie rock in the 21st century.
Buy it and let me know what you think: https://t.co/NTUo1h3Ad4
Hard to have a meaningful conversation about Dylan, The Beatles, etc now that the context they emerged from has been forgotten. There was little to nothing like Dylan's lyricism in popular music before he took off. His synthesis of influences shaped everything that followed.
Evans ended his career 😭
Ryan Day and Rod Wave 😭
Who to follow
Tom Breihan
@tombreihan
Author of 'The Number Ones', out 11/15 via Hachette Books. Senior Editor at Stereogum.
Nina Corcoran
@Nina_Corcoran
just play the song, schneebly // associate staff writer @pitchfork // words at stereogum, npr, rolling stone, vulture, wired, etc.
[email protected]
Steven Hyden
@Steven_Hyden
The Ween Of American Rock Critics. 7x author. My book on The Strokes is out now! Indiecast co-host. Writing at Evil Speakers: https://t.co/ZM47hs5NOu
everything i’ve learned about streamers has been against my will
Wrote about the 20th anniversary of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, a no-shit classic rock opus in a weird time for those, and why I couldn't quite see it for what it was at the time.
https://t.co/FbByTfdQZA
This is an insanely important development: Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are preparing to restructure the company so that Zuckerberg can pay the 5% one-time wealth tax he would owe if the billionaire tax passes in November.
He has said he would leave the state. He obviously was bluffing. That's $10 billion to California's education and health system. Just from him. Jensen Huang has also said he'd stay, that's another roughly $10 billion.
To be sure, some small number of billionaires will leave California, but most won't. What this also shows if that it is done on a national level, billionaires will fight it, but will ultimately fall in line.
Sure, Anthropic may have stolen all the world's intellectual property, destroyed the education system, incited mass layoffs among the corporate class, devalued all art and destroyed social trust but somehow they also managed to lose $80 billion in the first half of 2026
“Dad, can we listen to Ray Charles?”
Remembering Taylor Swift's stint as a precocious pop-country teen and not "a benignly oppressive cultural force" really does feel like looking back on a different world. @tombreihan is right: "It's hard not to find it all a little bittersweet."
https://t.co/EvdwSwVQbw
Last night's @opencup final was the best chance at a trophy for the 2026 @ColumbusCrew. They ultimately fell to @stlCITYsc in a penalty shootout, but not before playing one of the most electric 0-0 soccer games I've ever seen.
My report for @matternews_:
https://t.co/fV3UkzrTcL
if you’re super mad about a live cover of a replacements song sounding sort of half-assed and messy, i have some very bad news for you about the replacements
LA saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson has been on a prolific, inspired run for over a decade. He plays in the incredible ensembles SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, and in trios with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes and with Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño. He produced acclaimed albums by Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, served as Leon Bridges’ musical director, and collaborated with a wide range of pop and indie artists, including Harry Styles, Bright Eyes, and Hand Habits. Johnson pops up everywhere, doing a bit of everything.
‘Animative,’ out this Friday via International Anthem, is his third solo LP. Bassist Ndegeocello, violinist Macie Stewart, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine are among the performers, and the album subtly showcases Johnson’s versatility while ensuring his distinctive personality persists through the pivots, from the funky, Headhunters-esque “High Step” to the gorgeous, droning shapelessness of closing track “Upstairs 2021.”
Johnson plays almost everything on ‘Animative’ — saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, and drum synthesizer — merging electronic and acoustic sounds in revelatory yet unshowy ways. There’s a lot going on under the hood, but the tricky synthesis never overshadows the compositional prowess at the heart of the collection.
Check out our Album Of The Week review, and a list of everything else coming this Friday.
👉 https://t.co/jKU3lx63mZ
[📝: @chrisdeville, 📷: @atibaphoto]
![stereogum's tweet photo. LA saxophonist, composer, and producer Josh Johnson has been on a prolific, inspired run for over a decade. He plays in the incredible ensembles SML and Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, and in trios with Gregory Uhlmann and Sam Wilkes and with Nate Mercereau and Carlos Niño. He produced acclaimed albums by Flea and Meshell Ndegeocello, served as Leon Bridges’ musical director, and collaborated with a wide range of pop and indie artists, including Harry Styles, Bright Eyes, and Hand Habits. Johnson pops up everywhere, doing a bit of everything.
‘Animative,’ out this Friday via International Anthem, is his third solo LP. Bassist Ndegeocello, violinist Macie Stewart, and drummer Ben Lumsdaine are among the performers, and the album subtly showcases Johnson’s versatility while ensuring his distinctive personality persists through the pivots, from the funky, Headhunters-esque “High Step” to the gorgeous, droning shapelessness of closing track “Upstairs 2021.”
Johnson plays almost everything on ‘Animative’ — saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, and drum synthesizer — merging electronic and acoustic sounds in revelatory yet unshowy ways. There’s a lot going on under the hood, but the tricky synthesis never overshadows the compositional prowess at the heart of the collection.
Check out our Album Of The Week review, and a list of everything else coming this Friday.
👉 https://t.co/jKU3lx63mZ
[📝: @chrisdeville, 📷: @atibaphoto]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVKqfqnWsAA39J8.jpg)
while I cannot ever remember anyone expressing such sentiments (or anything close), we will never know how much bigger '90's GBV would've been had they been graced w/ sticker copy that said "wow, these middle aged alcoholics really think they're The Who". I'd buy that album.
The backlash to "Jay-Z picks Jay-Z as Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner" ignores the fact that Jay-Z is a good and deserving Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner
New tv show idea:
Each week, Jayden Daniels and Dan Quinn try to get out of an escape room together
Smart piece from Margaret about a certain kind of context-free digital intimacy involving ear, Lockimara, gash, Trusselina, Melaina Kol, et al
https://t.co/aOlaMQ9BC7
@brodieconley Had to delete bc my tweet said JOHN not JOSH
Wrote about International Anthem as A24 for jazz (complimentary), the incredible wealth of music coming out of that world, and ANIMATIVE, the phenomenal new album from SML's Josh Johnson
https://t.co/6jr3yc5qY5
I gave this interview about my book SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS, indie music, and the art of music criticism to the great Tommy Britt at the airport one day some time ago. I'm glad it's finally out there for you to read! His questions are great; hopefully my answers rise to the occasion.
The University of Sydney's Cinegraphia Vol. 2 No. 1 is available now. The interview in this issue is one I conducted with my longtime friend and absolute music authority, @chrisdeville, about his fantastic book 'Such Great Heights' @suchgr8heights. Enjoy!
https://t.co/kmegIblN2f
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