Yves Tumor at Cornell Homecoming

Yves Tumor played the 2023 Cornell Homecoming Concert this Sunday at Barton Hall for an extremely excited crowd of several hundred students and alumni. 

Tumor, born Sean Lee Bowie in Miami, is an American musician with a cult following who has been releasing music under the Yves Tumor name since 2015. According to Dazed, Tumor began experimenting with music as a way of escaping the “dull, conservative surroundings” of Knoxville, Tennessee, where they grew up. The desire to break boundaries and escape traditional norms is evident in their music. Tumor’s discography covers a wide variety of genres, to the point that the only link between some of their songs is the fact that they sound nothing like anything you’ve heard before. However, Tumor is best described as a modern rock artist with experimental roots, blending the classic genre with electronic and psychedelic influences. 

Tumor’s individuality is also displayed in the wide range of artists, engineers and producers they work with.

Looking Past War: Understanding Israel Through Music

There is a very small chance that you are not aware of the crisis currently unfolding in Israel. Pictures of destruction fill our screens, and headlines continue to announce death tolls and count the missing. Many members of the Cornell community attended a memorial held by Cornell Hillel on October 11, and President Pollack has sent two emails about these events.  

Unfortunately, the news often has a dehumanizing effect — instead of being thought of as real people, the dead and missing are reduced to numbers, and a country becomes only its actions. Sides arise, and issues become polarized; many forget that these are real people and real lives being destroyed, not simply pawns in a political game. The lack of understanding and empathy for Israel is nothing new.

Olivia Rodrigo Is Not “The Next Taylor Swift”

Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo often make headlines, but now more than ever, the two of them seem to be a major topic of conversation. Taylor Swift’s burgeoning relationship with Travis Kelce has been talked about non-stop in the media, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is already reaching record-breaking ticket sales and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is set to be released at the end of this month. Olivia Rodrigo has largely been talked about in regards to the release of her sophomore album, GUTS, and the announcement of the accompanying world tour.

‘1989 Taylor’s Version’ Collaborator Predictions

With the highly anticipated release of 1989 Taylor’s Version only a little over a month away, countless theories about potential featured artists have been circulating. Unlike  previous albums, 1989 TV has an air of mystery surrounding the featured singers. For Red TV, Ed Sheeran and Gary Lightbody were obvious choices (although Phoebe Bridgers and Chris Stapleton were also included), and even for Speak Now TV, many fans were able to predict Hayley Williams and Fallout Boy. However, Taylor has recently been seen interacting with so many prominent artists that it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the signal from the noise. For a while, fans speculated that Swift’s most recent ex, Matty Healey, would be featured, but Swift’s representatives have since shut this theory down, much to the relief of most of her following.

XU | What it Sounds Like When Men in Their Forties Pine

I am super excited for Sufjan Stevens’ new album Javelin, scheduled to come out on Oct. 6. The New York City-based artist has an aesthetic that fits with the lush waterfalls of upstate New York; Stevens did, in fact, relocate to the Catskills for a period of time in the middle of the pandemic. Based on an interview with Vanity Fair, the move did him a lot of good in terms of creating, living and thriving. The first single from Javelin, “So You Are Tired” came out in August, followed by a second, “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” released two weeks ago.

Album Review: Olivia Rodrigo Wears Her GUTS on Her Sleeve

The first thing to notice about this album is that Rodrigo sounds really great. Her voice is strong and always enjoyable, even when she screams. More than that, Rodrigo is an actress, and she really commits to her songs’ theatrical elements by yelling, stomping and emoting. An album with so many shouting elements would not be pleasant to listen to with a lesser performance. Rodrigo’s singing also varies among GUTS’s ballads and helps differentiate them in style and tone. 

Travelog: In Search of Deeper Meaning (or Olivia Rodrigo in Dublin) 

Dublin is filled with 21+ clubs. 

I say this not just to pettily express my annoyance at deliberately studying in a country with an 18+ drinking age only to discover that clubs enforce a higher standard. In fact, I’m as interested as I am miffed: Why are they doing this? Culture shock for me has come in the form of that question and its relative unanswerability. After all, I don’t know why the drinking age in the U.S. is 21 exactly, nor do I know why we drive on the right side of the street, don’t need to hail buses, play a different brand of football than either Gaelic Football or Rugby or refuse to install air conditioning in brand new boiling brick buildings. Many of those would take a Google search or more, but the little differences pile on faster than I can or care to research… Hence, culture shock. 

Wanting to integrate into my host country’s culture means trying to attain a sense of what culture means.

Feelings and Americana in Zach Bryan’s Zach Bryan

I’m a recent convert to country music. At one point, I might have given the usual line that I listen to “anything but country” — now, if you see me driving around campus with my windows down, you’ll probably hear me blasting my hours-long “country era” playlist. This week, the country album of choice has been Zach Bryan’s new self-titled album, a raw 54 minutes of poetry, folk and Americana. 

On August 25, Bryan released his fourth full-length album since his debut DeAnn (2019). In the last four years, Bryan has amassed over 16 million monthly listeners on Spotify and sold out shows nationwide. Yet, despite his quickly-earned success, Zach Bryan does not pose as anything other than Zach Bryan.

XU | Long Way Without Friends: A Moment in 90s Rock

As someone born after the year 2000, could I genuinely be nostalgic for the 90s? Or anything that came before? I think about that every time I listen to my dad’s music, downloaded into his thick iPod classic. I can almost recite the lineup: Alan Tam, Jacky Cheung, Dave Wong, Chyi Chin. A rock band named Black Panthers (unrelated to the party, sadly) spearheaded by Faye Wong’s ex-husband, Dou Wei.