Matt Stieb

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Rihanna Might Be the Closest Thing Pop Music Has to an Actual Human Being

By Matt Stieb
Mar 8, 2016

Rihanna's success has never been bound to language or a cohesive set of lyrics. Cast her effortless chic on the beat du jour and all you need is a few syllables on the hook to create joints like "Disturbia" and "Umbrella," two of the best-selling digital singles of all time...
XXYYXX Isn't Just Good for His Age — He's Just Good

By Matt Stieb
Feb 25, 2016

Genre names in electronic music have lost their way. Meant to be a map through music’s winding progress, electronic genres are now an inside game, in which the young and hip toss out jargon to prove their up-to-date status on the latest SoundCloud movements. If someone corners you in a...
Paquito D'Rivera on the Future of Cuba's Musicians

By Matt Stieb
Feb 4, 2016

If you've never felt the endorphin rush of Irakere, call in sick, clear some room in your schedule for dancing, and stream up the Cuban band's self-titled debut record. At home, I can't help but dance and spaz out to the horn of Arturo Sandoval and punching sax of Paquito...
Shannon and the Clams' Nostalgia Makes for Heartbreaking Garage Rock

By Matt Stieb
Jan 22, 2016

Traced back to their forebears, Shannon and the Clams come from a wild ménage a trois of Nuggets garage, Bay Area punk, and '50s pop groups. For a lesser band, that inspiration would have fizzled like a drink from the soda jerk — sweet and bubbly one moment, flat the...
Pulitzer-Winning Writer Elizabeth Kolbert: "There's No Such Thing As a Plan" for Sea-Level Rise in Miami

By Matt Stieb
Dec 22, 2015

This month in the New Yorker, writer Elizabeth Kolbert makes it painfully clear that the city has essentially no battle plan to combat rising sea levels in South Florida. Between Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s wholesale denial of the problem and civic figures waiting on the savior of innovation, very little...

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