Red Hot Chili Peppers perform at BottleRock Napa Valley at the Napa Valley Expo on May 28 2023. Nate McKinley/STAFF. NAPA —The final day of a music festival often starts with relaxed vibes. Attendees at BottleRock on Sunday laid out blankets and took advantage of the mild weather. Many…

Ben Howard’s newest album, Collections From The Whiteout, is an outstanding collection of songs. On the London native’s fourth album, he explores both an introspective personal journey from the last few years and retells a series of absurd stories from which he drew inspiration. What results is a stunning set of minimalist…

Taylor Swift, “evermore.” Leave it to Taylor Swift to shock the music world by releasing a surprise album just a handful of months after dropping… well, a surprise album. Evermore serves as The Love Below to her own Speakerboxxx. Some of the original cast involved in crafting Swift’s spectacular folklore are back for more, with…

Esperanza Spalding performs in “Throughline: San Francisco Symphony—From Hall to Home.” Other artists highlighted include Bryce Dessner of The National and violinist Pekka Kuusisto. Courtesy: SF Symphony. After Esa-Pekka Salonen was named to fill the shoes of Michael Tilson Thomas as music director of the San Francisco Symphony in…

The painted portrait of Matt Berninger on the cover of his new solo album seems straightforward and on-brand enough for The National’s frontman. The image of him sitting quietly and alone in the corner of a gray room could easily pass for what one might imagine he does for…

Taylor Swift, “Folklore.” Taylor Swift’s rise from country star to pop icon had lows to match highs. Considering the abysmal, transparent coping mechanism that was 2017’s Reputation, all 2019’s Lover had to do was not be embarrassing. It wasn’t, but the album’s overblown pop sound felt more detached from…

Many of us know a “record nerd,” a subset of aficionados with encyclopedic knowledge of and acerbic opinions about some musical niche or other. Record nerds wax poetically on the merits of the recording console at Sunset Sound, or the natural reverb in Abbey Road’s studio two. But many…

Indie rock mainstays The National have nothing left to prove. The success of 2007’s Boxer, a post-punk revival masterpiece, made the band a critical darling. Subsequent releases grew its diverse fanbase as accolades piled up. Sleep Well Beast, the National’s 2017 release, and a slight diversion from the band’s usual…

The National performs at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on Sept. 25, 2018. Photos: Jane Hu. BERKELEY — The National frontman Matt Berninger used to be nervous on stage. He’s even talked about the awkwardness of not knowing what to do with his hands. But Tuesday at the Greek Theatre,…

I often wonder if beautiful and depressing can co-exist; then I listen to one of The National’s albums and realize there is a place for both, and when put together, they can be amazing. This is the case on the group’s latest album, Sleep Well Beast. Sleep Well Beast The National…