MUSIC PREMIERES
The Dropkick Murphys’ Ken Casey paused one of the band’s annual St. Patrick’s Day shows at MGM Music Hall at Boston’s Fenway Park over the weekend to call out an attendee holding up a MAGA hat.
“If you’re in a room full of people and you want to know who’s in a cult, how do you know who’s in a cult?” Casey asked the crowd on Sunday (March 16), per a video shared to social media. “They’ve been holding up a f—ing hat the whole night to represent a president.”
He then told the Donald Trump-supporting fan, “This is America, there’s no kings here,” before adding, “Anyway, if you mind, sir, we’re gonna play a song about our grandparents and people who fought Nazis in the war and s—. So if you could just shut the f— up for five minutes.”
The “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” band has been open about their contempt for Trump for years. Back in 2022, they performed at the Great Allentown Fair in Pennsylvania and Casey told Rolling Stone, “I felt like we were playing a MAGA flea market. Every other table was selling the MAGA gear and the ‘F— Joe Biden’ gear and all this stuff. I was a little overwhelmed and befuddled. It was like I was dropped into another planet.”
While onstage at the event, Casey told the crowd in a viral moment, “If you’re out there buying these f—ing hats that these swindlers are selling…then you’re part of the problem! Because you’re being duped by the greatest swindler in the history of the world…and a bunch of grifters and billionaires who don’t give a s— about you or your family!”
MUSIC PREMIERES
Lykke Li didn’t hold back when speaking about the making of her sixth studio album, ‘The Afterparty’, during a listening session in Los Angeles earlier this year. “Let’s talk about the album. It was a motherfucker to make,” she admitted to the crowd. While balancing motherhood, the chaos of modern culture shaped by Trump and AI, and her own desire to create something more “extroverted, impulsive and chaotic” than ‘EYEYE’, as she previously shared with NME, the Swedish alt pop star arrived at a headspace that “feels like it’s 4am and the sun is going to rise”. The record captures that blurry final moment before regret, exhaustion and reality settle in, which makes it even more emotional considering she has hinted this could potentially be her final album.
There is something fitting about how brief the project feels. With only nine tracks running across 24 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. Lykke immediately drops listeners into the atmosphere with opener ‘Not Gon Cry’, painting a picture of those lonely early morning hours with the line, “No angels here tonight, no dancing queens.” Alongside the shadowy pulse of ‘Happy Now’ and the twisted disco energy of ‘Lucky Now’, she revisits the emotional yet dance driven spirit of her earlier material while blending in the sharper, more confident attitude heard on ‘So Sad, So Sexy’ and the shimmering influence of her 2019 Mark Ronson collaboration ‘Late Night Feelings’.
The emotional fallout begins to settle in quickly. ‘Famous Last Words’ carries a lush orchestral sadness as Lykke reflects on lessons that only came after years of chaos and late nights, confessing, “I had to crash and burn to tell the tale.” Then comes ‘Future Fear’, a delicate acoustic track with robotic textures that stares directly into anxiety and uncertainty with the chilling question, “I’m going to a dark place, do you need anything?” Meanwhile, ‘So Happy I Could Die’ glows like sunrise after a sleepless night, holding onto fleeting moments as she sings about “slipping through the hourglass”.
Throughout the album, Lykke Li vividly captures the beauty and wreckage of reckless nights with the vulnerability that has always defined her music. On ‘Sick Of Love’, she channels heartbreak into revenge, wanting to “make you beg for it” after rejection in a way that feels spiritually connected to Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own’. One of the strongest moments arrives with ‘Knife In The Heart’, a track that fully embraces her desire to become the “rock god” and “fuck boy” she spoke about, firing back at anyone who tries to tear her down with the words “you can spit, you can walk on me” while delivering one of the catchiest songs she has created in years.
Closing track ‘Euphoria’ leaves behind the same bittersweet feeling that runs through the rest of the album. With sweeping strings, pulsing beats and emotional intensity, Lykke Li reminds listeners that nothing lasts forever as she sings, “Player play your song, waste the night away”. Like the fading energy of the perfect night out, ‘The Afterparty’ ends in a haze of beauty and uncertainty. If this truly is her farewell, she leaves with one final intoxicating statement, though it still feels like there could be another chapter waiting.
