Still warm from the afterglow of Boat Songs and that moonlit Neil reverie, we drift into Florry’s world — looser, louder, and lit like a backyard hang that turned into a recording session. They’re a Philadelphia crew that comes across less like a band and more like a chosen family, bonded by late nights, shared […]
Category: Common Chords
Posted inColumns, Common Chords, Megan Anderson
Neil Young turns a bank-branded pavilion into church, skips the sermon (and the new album)
Neil Young is one of the very few people on earth who can make a corporate-branded amphitheater feel like a cathedral. Not because he tries to — he doesn’t — but because the gravitational pull of his career, and the stubborn refusal to sand down its jagged edges, turns even a place named after a […]
Posted inColumns
MJ Lenderman channels slacker wisdom and Southern burnout on the brilliant ‘Boat Songs’
Coming off “On the Beach,” we now present to you the closest thing Gen Z has to a modern-day Neil: a slacker poet with a fuzz pedal, a fondness for heartbreak, and a voice that sounds like it’s thinking out loud. MJ Lenderman might not be running from the mainstream, but he sure as hell isn’t […]
Posted inColumns, Common Chords, Megan Anderson
Neil Young’s ‘On the Beach’ still haunts the American Dream half a century later
First, a quick word about what this column is all about. The big idea here at Common Chords is simple: All music is connected. Over the course of this series, we’re going to try to prove it — not with charts or genre tags, but with vibes, guitar tones, and emotional through-lines that make sense if […]
