It's been eons since far-out classics like "E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)," but Blue Öyster Cult are still enveloped in the sci-fi dream. At 79, singer and multi-instrumentalist Eric Bloom still plays video games every day. "I'm playing 'Diablo Immortal,' 'Nexus War' and 'Return of Shadow,'" he reports over Zoom, at home in Florida, with wall art of Saturnian rings and moons swirling overhead.

Later on, Bloom remembers Allen Lanier, their founding guitarist who passed in 2013, at age 67. "He was probably the brightest guy in Blue Öyster Cult intellect-wise," Bloom says of his late friend. "He always had a book." BÖC's been irresistibly brainy from the jump; they got saddled with the "heavy metal" genre tag, but that never made that style of music, nor fit that macho archetype.

So are the nuances of this cult classic rock band. If you only know the ever-spellbinding "Don't Fear the Reaper" and cowbell jokes — well, you have a lifetime of entertainment ahead of you. Happily, the band is still forging ahead at full capacity. Their last album of new material, 2020's The Symbol Remains, was excellent and one of their most consistent. (And, no, that's not graded on a legacy-act curve.)

Now, they've followed it up with Ghost Stories — an album of songs of yore whose recordings were never finished, until now. "It's for the hardcore BÖC fan," Bloom admits of this collection of tunes, which could have ended up on 1979's Mirrors or 1983's The Revölution by Night if things went in a different direction. (The limit of how much audio could fit on an LP, or cassette, was one factor.) But tracks like "Late Night Street Fight" and "So Supernatural" could make you one.

When you visit BÖC's homepage, you're greeted with an emblazoned "On Tour Forever!" — and not for nothing. In a 100+ show-per-year touring schedule that would flatten many bands half their age, Bloom and brother in arms Donald Roeser — that's Buck Dharma to you and me — carry the flame throughout the small theaters, state fairs and casino resorts of America.

Dharma's the only original member of the band, back when they were Soft White Underbelly — a paraphrasal of a Winston Churchill comment about Italy's role in World War II, by their manager, in-house poet and overall impresario, Sandy Pearlman. On Christmas Day, 1968, Bloom moved into the band house in Great Neck on Long Island, as their tour manager. The next year, he was their vocalist.

In 1971, they became Blue Öyster Cult, named from a Pearlman poem about a conspiracy of aliens taking over the world. (To get a handle on the lore, just read the lyrics to their 1988 album Imaginos, all drawn from Pearlman's bonkers poems and scripts.)  And aside from one brief breakup during a rough '80s, they've been powering ahead ever since.

"We're not dead yet," Bloom deadpans from behind wraparound shades. But they're still telling Ghost Stories.

*Eric Bloom performing with Blue Öyster Cult in 1978. Photo: Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images*

The Symbol Remains did so well that their label, Frontiers Music out of Italy, chomped at the bit for more output. However, they couldn't make a new album at that juncture; the road dogs had to be on tour. Eventually, the idea came about to return to unfinished material from 1978 to 1983, de-mix them, remix them and complete them.

As the equally boyish and soft-spoken Dharma explains, the Ghost Stories multitracks weren't recorded in a proper studio, but in a rehearsal hall to eight-track tape. They got the tapes from their original audio engineer, George Geranios, who baked the tapes and, in effect, "pre-produced" the record (Bloom says with air quotes).

Afterward, Geranios sent them to Richie Castellano's studio and still found deterioration on the vocal of the first single, "So Supernatural." BÖC leapt at the opportunity to employ cutting-edge technology to complete the music.

"We deconstructed some of them with these AI software tools to separate the individual elements of the ones that weren't multi-track," Bloom explains. Original BÖC drummer Albert Bouchard, who left the band in 1981, stepped behind the kit to complete the tunes that weren't fully tracked. Albert's brother, their former bassist Joe Bouchard, who left in '86, followed suit.

Regarding "So Supernatural," "Joe Bouchard had to come in, current day, and re-sing it. I believe that's the only song that had a vocal re-sung," Bloom says. Neither he nor Dharma had to re-sing anything; he's not sure that Dharma played anything new, but knows Castellano had to replay elements that were missing. "Some of those older tapes had holes on them where they were abandoned before rhythm guitars were put on them, things like that," he says.

Overall, "It was a nice collaborative effort with the original band members," Dharma says. Naturally, as they flip through these Ghost Stories, both Dharma and Bloom's heads fill with memories of the original sessions. Especially of one very, very critical figure in the band's history.

"Of course, Allen Lanier is gone now," Dharma says. "But to hear him play, it makes me feel good to hear him and hear the band as it was at that time period. It's like a snapshot of what it was."

Dharma can mentally place himself in the room where this music was made. "It was sort of transitional in the band's career because 'Reaper' had been a hit, and once you have a hit, the record company wants you to get another hit," he says. "There's quite a bit of pressure to sustain your level of output and quality. It's a burden."

For a white-hot streak in the '70s and early '80s, Blue Öyster Cult were as big as your ZZ Tops or Cheap Tricks. In the '80s, "The Reaper," "Burnin' For You," "Godzilla," and the like remain staples of classic rock radio.

Still, "It's not like we were hitmakers in terms of writing or performing or posing or whatever you're supposed to do to be a hit recording artist," Dharma says. "We just always thought of ourselves as an album band. And we didn't mind taking the road less traveled as far as styles and going out on limbs and stuff like that."

"I think that's where we did our best stuff, when we just didn't give a thought about commercial success," Dharma concludes. "So, it was an odd time for us, but we persevered. And here we are. It's 2024, for crying out loud."

According to press materials, Ghost Stories "marks a fitting finale to the recording legacy of one of rock's most iconic fixtures from the past 50 years." This notion clearly irks Bloom; he denies it without reservation. "That is record label speech, and my answer to that is never say never," he says. "There's no reason why we couldn't do another project if there was a reason to."

*Buck Dharma performing with Blue Öyster Cult in 1978. Photo: Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images*

Beyond having eternal radio staples, Blue Öyster Cult have sneakily resonated with younger generations. Their catalog is vast, and full of treasures, oddities and are-they-or-aren't-they missteps to argue about; this is a band with a lot to offer to the instant-access Spotify generation.

By the way, Dharma's not buying the "Spotify is evil" line: "People bitch about the streaming and who gets the money and stuff, but actually streaming is more equitable to the artists than it ever was in the physical product days," he contends.

Rather, he puts the onus more on the predatory deals with labels: "The split is better, and the bookkeeping is much better, because every listen is logged and no one's really cheating on that. You may complain about who gets the percentage of what, but if your music is popular, you are making money now."

Everyone knows the Christopher Walken "more cowbell" skit from SNL, but BÖC heads have been found in many a writer's room; they've been referenced, and played, repeatedly on shows that burrowed into millennials' heads young, from "The Simpsons" to "That '70s Show." They've even infiltrated indie, punk and alternative: Bloom being credited as "E. Bloom" led one Dennes Dale Boon from San Pedro, California to become D. Boon.

Neither Dharma or Bloom ever met the Minutemen legend, who was tragically hurled from a van in the Arizona Desert in 1985, marking another member of rock's "27 Club." But their camps are close; Bloom has a fond memory of Mike Watt joining BÖC live to perform the blazing "The Red and the Black" — which, Watt has maintained over the years, was the first song he and Boon ever played together.

"I'm grateful for them giving a damn about Blue Öyster Cult, because I certainly appreciate what they did with it," Dharma says. And, unrelated, Bloom recently caught wind that none other than Dave Grohl's a huge fan.

"Every time our name comes up, it's always something positive," Bloom says. And whether or not Ghost Stories will mark the end of the line, Blue Öyster Cult are not apparitions to be relegated to the past. There've been ups and downs galore with this complicated, idiosyncratic, rewarding band — but as agents of fortune, Lady Luck's been with them indeed.

And to the Reaper — the main character in their greatest song, who will take us and everyone we know eventually — better luck next time.

Living Legends: Def Leppard's Phil Collen Was The Product Of A Massive Transition For Music — And He Wouldn't Change A Thing

The GRAMMY Awards and the Summer Olympics are unarguably the pinnacles of their respective fields. Indeed, most recording artists dream of making an acceptance speech for their magnum opus during the biggest night on the music industry calendar, while athletes competing in any of the Games’ 32 different disciplines are continually motivated by the lure of the podium.

But how often have the two intertwined since the first GRAMMY ceremony took place a year before Rome 1960?

Well, perhaps more than you think. Sure, the musical efforts from basketballers Shaquille O’Neal (gold at Atlanta 1996), Kobe Bryant (gold at Beijing 2008 and London 2012), and Damian Lillard (gold at Tokyo 2020) might not have registered with the Recording Academy. Likewise, those from track and field hero Carl Lewis (nine golds and one silver from four consecutive Games), light middleweight boxer Roy Jones Jr. (silver at Seoul 1988), and near-superhuman sprinter Usain Bolt (eight golds from Beijing, London, and Rio 2016).

But there are a handful of sportsmen (sadly, not yet sportswomen) who have competed for both gold medals and golden gramophones. There are also pop stars who have attempted to capture the blood, sweat, and tears of the quadrennial spectacle in musical form — whether as an official anthem, television theme, or simply a motivational tool — and been rewarded with GRAMMY recognition for their efforts.

With the Olympics’ return to Paris just around the corner (July 26-Aug.11), what better time to celebrate those occasions when the Games and the GRAMMYs align?

It seems fair to say that Gloria Estefan, the Cuban hitmaker who helped to bring Latin pop to the masses, and avant-garde eccentric Björk, wouldn't appear to have much in common. They have, however, both received GRAMMY nominations in the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance category for their respective Olympics themes.

Estefan was recognized at the 1997 ceremony for "Reach," the gospel-tinged power ballad that embodied the spirit of the previous year's Atlanta Games. Iceland's finest musical export picked up a nod for "Oceania," the swooping experimental number she co-produced with Warp label founder Mark Bell which helped to soundtrack the opening ceremony of Athens 2004. And both went home empty-handed, the former losing to Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart" and the latter to Norah Jones' "Sunrise."

The incomparable Whitney Houston might not have added to her GRAMMY haul at the 1989 ceremony — Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" prevented her from converting her sole nod, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, into a win — but she still stole the show. Houston owned opened the 31st GRAMMY Awards with a performance of "One Moment in Time," the nominated track that had defined NBC's coverage of the Seoul Games.

Co-written by Albert Hammond, produced by Narada Michael Walden and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, the UK chart-topping single certainly had a first-class pedigree. But it was Houston's lung-busting vocals that made the torch song such a sports montage favorite. The iconic diva once again stirred the emotions on the music industry's biggest night of the year with a rendition that's since become a staple of her many hits collections.

Read more: Songbook: A Guide To Whitney Houston's Iconic Discography, From Her '80s Pop Reign To Soundtrack Smashes

Shakira fought off some interesting company to win 2001's Best Latin Pop Album GRAMMY. Alongside records from Luis Miguel and Alejandro Sanz, the category also included Christina Aguilera's first Spanish-language affair, and a bilingual effort from champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya.

The American became a national sensation overnight when he won the men's lightweight boxing gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. But despite new material from seasoned hitmaker Diane Warren and a cover of Bee Gees' classic "Run to Me," his 13-track self-titled debut didn't exactly set the charts alight. Despite the GRAMMY nod, De La Hoya hasn't entered the recording studio since.

But when it comes to GRAMMY-nominated boxers, then the man who famously floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee is undoubtedly the don. Shortly before he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, the light heavyweight gold medalist of the 1960 Rome Games was recognized for his amusing repartee in the Best Comedy Performance category. Hailed by some as a progenitor of the rap artform, I Am the Greatest lost out to a man slightly different in stature: portly parodist Allan Sherman.   

And the sporting icon also had to experience another rare defeat 13 years later when his reading of The Adventures Of Ali And His Gang Vs. Mr. Tooth Decay lost out to Hermione Gingold & Karl Böhm's Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals in 1977’s Best Recording for Children.

Legendary composer John Williams is one of the most-nominated artists in GRAMMY history having amassed 76 nods since his work on detective series "Checkmate" was recognized in Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media in 1962. Two of his wins in this remarkable tally have been Games-related.

In 1985, Williams won Best Instrumental Composition for "Olympic Fanfare and Theme," which he wrote and arranged for the Los Angeles Games the year prior. In 1989, the conductor received a nod in the same category for "Olympic Spirit," another majestic instrumental produced for NBC’s coverage of Seoul '88.

Interestingly, Wiliams isn't a particularly avid sports fan, but as he told The New York Times, he can still relate to those going for gold. "The human spirit stretching to prove itself is also typical of what musicians attempt to achieve in a symphonic effort."

Magic Johnson’s Educational Guide Wins Best Spoken Word Album  

Basketball appears to produce more aspiring musicians than any sport. Marvin Bagley III, Lonzo Ball, and Brandon Clarke are just a few of the NBA names to have released albums in the last few years. But the only time a hooper has been recognized at the GRAMMYs is for an audiobook.   

The year before guiding Team USA to the men's basketball gold at Barcelona 1992, Magic Johnson had bravely revealed that he'd contracted HIV, defying the stigma that surrounded it at the time. The year after his Olympic triumph, the iconic shooting guard was honored for joining the fight against the disease. Johnson won the Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album GRAMMY for What You Can Do To Avoid AIDS, a compassionate guide designed to educate the youth of America whose proceeds went to the sportsman's eponymous foundation.   

Based on the real-life exploits of British runners Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell at the 1924 Paris Olympics, period drama Chariots of Fire won Best Picture at the 1982 Oscars. But it’s the titular number from Vangelis' anachronistic synth-based score that remains its crowning glory.

First played as the aspiring Olympians train beachside in the slow-motion opening flashback, the instrumental not only topped the Billboard Hot 100, it also picked up a GRAMMY nod for Record of the Year. "Chariots of Fire" has since become synonymous with the more modern iteration of the Games, appearing in the BBC's coverage of Seoul '88, gracing the start of the men's 100m final at Atlanta '96, and perhaps most famously of all, being performed at London 2012's opening ceremony by none other than Rowan Atkinson's rubber-faced buffoon Mr. Bean.

Read more: 10 Essential Vangelis Albums: Remembering The Electronic Music Pioneer

Every album comes with a backstory, but not many come with two. Rakim's new project G.O.D's Network (REB7RTH), out July 26, came together in a few quick months, from signing a deal in February 2024 to completion in June. The process was spurred by one dedicated A&R person frantically combing through his network of rappers to get guest verses over beats produced by the God MC himself.

But to hear that A&R man, Matt "M80" Markoff, tell it, creating the seven-song project didn't take four months. It took four years.

"I've known [Rakim's longtime manager] Matt [Kemp] and Rakim since 2007," Markoff tells me when I get him on the phone in late June. "They're used to getting calls from me a couple of times a year just for, like, show referrals, verse referrals, things of that nature."

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, Markoff had been talking to the folks at Fat Beats, the venerable record store-turned-distributor that's a huge name in independent hip-hop. He mentioned Rakim's name to the company, and Fat Beats responded that they'd love a project from the God MC. The original pitch, Markoff remembers, was "a three or four song EP with some remixes."

Rakim quoted his price, Fat Beats agreed, and the project was underway, with the emcee meeting with producers to look for beats. But Rakim, who hasn't released a solo album since 2009's The Seventh Seal, is not one to be hurried.

"Ra was having [DJ] Premier and Pete Rock and Ninth Wonder and some of these people come to the studio," Markoff says. "Because of scheduling conflicts and stuff and, you know, normal course of life, it just wasn't right. The vibe wasn't there."

That's where Jazzy Jeff came into play. Rakim and the legendary DJ began working together and, per Markoff, it "just meshed." It seemed like, instead of a handful of songs, a full-length record was in the offing.

"As soon as they finish the first song, I walk into Fat Beats and say, ‘Hey, this is what we're doing now,'" the A&R man recalls. "Instead of Rakim with random producers, it's Rakim/Jazzy Jeff. That'll be huge."

Then…nothing.

A few years pass, and the Rakim and Jazzy Jeff project is still unfinished. (Rakim described its status as "We have a couple records already done.") Fat Beats, which was on the auction block (it was eventually sold in March 2024), wants its money back. Rakim obliges, and everyone seems set to forget about the whole thing.

Markoff, however, was not about to give up on working with the man he calls "my favorite emcee of all time."

The revamped album started its life as not an album at all. Instead, the original conception was a model Markoff had used before: licensing beats by people not typically thought of as producers. In this case, he'd be offering aspiring rappers the chance to get beats by arguably the most influential rapper of all time. 

"He's taken people who are not necessarily known as producers and put together beat packages for them," manager Matt Kemp says of Markoff. "And then, one of the things he does is he goes out and he licenses those beats through a company that he has. If you're a European artist that wouldn't necessarily have access to things like that, you can get it."

So that, as of February of this year, was the (revamped) plan: have Rakim do six beats and one verse, and sell non-exclusive licenses, so that any rapper, anywhere in the world, who wants to use them in a song of their own could do so. This, indeed, was a vision that was followed through all the way to the finish line — you can see the end result released July 12, priced between $700-$1,050 depending on what you want to do with the beats and the rhyme, here.

But along the way to creating that package, things got significantly more complicated. As Rakim was making the beats, he found he really liked them. In some cases, he even wanted to rhyme on them himself.

"As the beats started coming together and Rakim was really in the studio and we started putting the rhymes onto them, we realized that it was bigger just than that [original vision]," Matt Kemp said.

The wheels started turning. Rakim, the God MC, as a producer? That would be a project worth sharing with the world, not just a few aspiring artists.

As it turns out, unbeknownst even to many Ra fans, the rapper has been making beats since the beginning. In fact, he produced — and played drums on — one of Eric B and Rakim's classic songs, 1992's "Juice (Know the Ledge)." So producing an entire project didn't seem like such a big stretch after all. 

"I always was attached to making beats," Rakim explains to me. "But I got to the point where I'm confident with my production now. I got the chance to produce the album and jumped at the opportunity." 

Rakim, as has been well documented over the years, comes from a musical family. His older brother Ronnie was a keyboard player of some note with his own claim on rap history, his other brother Stevie is also keyboardist who performed on some Eric B. and Rakim songs, and the rapper's aunt is the late R&B legend Ruth Brown. So when making beats, Ra will often play drums, bass, guitar, or piano. (He cops to enlisting one of his brothers if the keyboard part gets too complicated.)

He describes his production style this way: "You try to add on to the sample, and enhance certain sounds that you hear. Or you might just add a melody that you feel enhances the sample as well." 

In addition to playing instruments on the project, Rakim also plays the turntable.

"I always knew how to DJ, and I like being able to enjoy the project from a different seat," he tells me. "I enjoyed putting the music together, coming up with the scratch patterns."

So with the musical side of the equation firmly in place, what about the vocals? Rakim was inspired to add verses on a few songs, and hooks on a few more.

"It's mostly a project that I was supposed to be producing," he explains. "In the midst of that, there's certain beats that I'm playing and I'm like, ‘I gotta rhyme on this one,' or, ‘I got a rhyme that fits this one perfectly.'"

The question was, what to write about? After a decade and a half without an album, the rapper had a lot to discuss, and needed to find new ways to say it.

For the project's lead single, "BE ILL," he got in plenty of internal rhymes. And the song's tempo allowed him to come up with different rhythms.

"When tracks are at that speed, I'm able to manipulate time and space to come up with different rhythms because I have so much time and space to deal with," he says. "It was one of them songs I loved rhyming to. Just having fun with words and phrases, and at the same time having so much on my mind to say."

"I'm trying to say a lot of things," Ra admits when discussing his writing on the album. "It's hard to just come back and say a verse when you've been gone so long. So I tried to be very specific and cautious with the words that I chose, and try to be entertaining at the same time. So it was a little nerve wracking."

Even with Rakim's vocal contributions (he ends up with either verses or hooks on six of the project's seven tracks), more was needed to complete the songs. That's where Markoff really got going.

"Literally, I didn't waste a single day," he remembers. "I was calling the artists in my network. I reached out to each artist one by one, and let each artist go through the folder [of beats] with me and make their picks."

Among the artists Markoff reached out to were several members of the Wu-Tang Clan. He has a long relationship with the crew, having worked with them on several projects including the well-regarded 2005 album Wu-Tang Meet the Indie Culture.

Markoff recalls the exact moment when he lined up Wu member Masta Killa for his appearance on what became "BE ILL."

"I was at the first ever Wu-Tang Clan residency in Vegas, and I told Masta Killa, ‘Dude, I just got these Rakim beats 10 minutes ago.' I played 10 seconds of the second beat, which was the beat for ‘BE ILL.' And he was like, ‘That's the one.'" 

A different Wu-Tang show was responsible for one of the album's other notable guest appearances, Cash Money stalwart B.G. The two met at the concert, and the Louisiana rapper was in the studio "48 hours later," Markoff recalls.

For a handful of artists he had good long-term relationships with, Markoff let them choose which of Rakim's beats they wanted to rap over. In addition to Masta Killa, he names Chino XL, Hus Kingpin, 38 Spesh, and TriState as being on that short list. After that, he says, it was all his decision. 

The end result is a list of some of the top rappers in his Rolodex: Kool G. Rap, Method Man, Kurupt, Canibus, KXNG Crooked, Skyzoo, Joell Ortiz, and many more — including an outro from Snoop Dogg. But one of the most surprising things on the tracklist is that a number of the guests aren't alive anymore.

Nipsey Hussle, Prodigy, DMX, and Fred the Godson have verses on the record. All of them were people Markoff had worked with in some capacity over the course of his career. He says that all of the verses were "in my stash or under my ownership." So when he was looking for material for the Rakim project, they were a perfect fit.

The Nipsey Hussle contribution in particular stood out so much that the entire song, "Love Is the Message," was designed around it. The project's engineer placed Neighborhood Nip's verse first, and everyone else listened to that when recording.

"We kind of glorified who he is, and came up with the title ‘Love Is the Message' to put everything in perspective," Rakim tells me. "So everybody vibed off of that and everything that we implemented had to have that feel or had to be in that direction." 

One thing Rakim noticed as he was listening to the contributions coming in? Many of them were paying tribute to him. In particular, B.G. says in his verse that he's "on a song with the greatest." 

"To hear things like that from my peers is a beautiful thing," says Rakim, who also admits to tearing up when hearing Snoop Dogg praise him on the outro of one of the album's songs. "Hip-hop is one of the more, I guess, feisty genres. It's hard to get that love from your peers. So it's a real blessing to hear it from people like that, to hear what they think of you and to say that on records. A lot of people might think that of you, but would never say it on a record."

For Markoff, B.G.'s tribute was particularly meaningful because of the rapper's history. He began his career in a duo, and later a quartet, with another rapper sometimes considered the greatest of all time, Lil Wayne.

"For B.G. to have that history, but acknowledge Rakim — I was speechless," Markoff confides. "It was really cool to see. It's like, ‘I'm not just going to say my partner, my friend, my confidant Lil Wayne's the best because we grew up together.'"

Finally, after all the guest verses came in, the project was ready. Seven songs, entirely produced by Rakim, with raps by him and a broad cross-section of artists. The question, then: what exactly is this project? An album? An EP? Rakim's big comeback? A teaser for his eventual full-length return?

To Markoff, none of these labels are important. He's not concerned about fans being disappointed that a project under Rakim's name features only a handful of the rapper's verses.

 "The fan is going to look at it however they want to look at it," he says. "The negative people will stay negative. It wouldn't matter if it was the greatest album of all time. The positive people that are so grateful that I stepped up to the plate to help bring new Rakim music to the world are going to love it."

After all, he continues, "The whole point originally when we started making it was letting his peers shine on Rakim beats. The fact that this project morphed into something that Rakim literally is on 95% of, I couldn't have asked for more of a blessing."

So Matt Markoff, the boy who fell in love with Rakim's music at 12 is now, three decades later, putting out music from his hero.

"Dream fulfilled," he says right before we hang up. "Now I gotta figure out what I'm going to do for the rest of my life." 

At the end of 2019, Dr. Dog decided they'd had enough of the touring grind. After all, the many-hued, many-styled psychedelic band had been going hard for two decades.

"It just got tiresome, and the other guys in the band had kids," Eric Slick, their drummer since 2019, tells GRAMMY.com. "I think there was just this conscious decision to be like, 'Maybe we need to take a breath.'"

This amounted to a fork in the road for Dr. Dog, who have always occupied a funny space in the indie-verse. In a revealing 2016 Talkhouse essay titled "The Counting Crows Taught Me Not To Give A F— About the Critics," Slick acknowledged that music press has written "unspeakable reviews" over the years, unfairly characterizing them as safe, repetitive and wary to take risks.

One spin of Dr. Dog's new self-titled album — which arrived July 19, their first in six years — should disabuse you of this notion. Sure, it's a continuation of their gently trippy melodic soul aesthetic, but it also shows how they've subtly developed on it.

"It's not like a typical Dr. Dog record where I go in the studio and I'm just bashing the crap out of the drums, and hoping that whoever's mixing it knows what to do," he explains. "We all had to play really sensitively to each other, because there's no headphone mix, and we allowed any kind of bleed through the microphones to become part of the ambient noise of the record."

Dr. Dog arrives during a critical year for Slick. An active solo artist on top of Dr. Dog, session work and other group efforts, he released an eccentric new album, New Age Rage, back in April. Naturally, working with Dr. Dog has incontrovertibly influenced his solo work.

Plus, Dr. Dog's last show at press time — a sold-out Colorado amphitheater gig — was a watershed for Slick, as the historically timid singer got to sing his first-ever lead vocal on a Dr. Dog album — the lovely "Tell Your Friends" — live onstage for the first time, the crowd singing every word.

Read on for Slick's account of that special moment, as well as all things Dr. Dog.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

You've written about not being able to catch a break from the critics, but Dr. Dog just performed a sold-out show at Red Rocks. What does that tell you about music critics' authority — or lack thereof?

I mean, with Dr. Dog, I feel like our fan base has gotten riled up by the fact that critics don't tend to like us. Even when they do like us, there's usually some sort of backhanded compliment or there's some issue that is taken with the band's reluctance to change, or at least what it seems like on the surface.

I think the constant criticism that we get is that our albums don't tend to show a lot of growth. Maybe if you're not paying attention that might seem true, but I feel like we put a lot of emphasis on trying new things. It's just like we sound the way that we sound.

[Founding member] Scott McMicken is kind of a musical genius, isn't he?

Scott is extremely prolific, and I used to live with him back in West Philadelphia in, like, 2010. I would go to bed, and then there'd be a CD slipped underneath my door of the 12 songs he wrote that night.

He's just one of those people. He's kind of like Robert Pollard in that way. He has no filter, and he's so prolific, and loves to record. He loves to record on his Portastudio. It's his life, and he's so good at it, and he's so good at tricking himself into creating new context for his art, and it's really inspiring to be around.

I could tell certain directions he was pulling things from. Like, some deep Stax Records vibes…

Oh, yes, yes, big time. He's been really into Stax and also Sun Records the last couple of years. He's just been diving into the production values on that stuff. He also loves all the Studio One stuff, too, like super into dub and the late '60s, early '70s era of Jamaican music. He's way, way into it.

[Bassist and co-founder] Toby Leaman is so good, too. For those less familiar with the band: how would you describe their push and pull as writers?

Scott, I think, always gets sort of pegged as freewheeling — lots of colorful chords and production. It's more kaleidoscopic. And Toby's songs are sort of classic — very open-chorded, "you can hear them in a big space" kind of songs. And I think Toby has also gotten really good at designing songs for the road — for big sing-alongs.

I think they're just so talented at what they do. I used to say that Scott's songs were kind of like a rocket taking off. They would start really small, and then by the end they're huge. And with Toby it's like a big emotion for the whole thing, if that makes sense.

And maybe Toby's songs are a little bit more even-keeled in how they're put together, and how they're structured, but that emotion is really felt throughout the whole thing — whereas Scott's more of the story guy.

Where would you say Dr. Dog fits into that "class of 2009" milieu — whatever you want to call it? How has everything shaken out as per the band's role in the landscape?

A lot of the bands that we toured with are not really around anymore, and that's kind of an interesting thing. How have we endured, but a lot of other great bands aren't still around? I think about that a lot.

I also think about — because we didn't have any kind of critical acclaim — maybe we went unscathed a little bit. In regards to something like Pitchfork, there were some do or die moments for bands, and there were some bands that we're friends with that had their careers completely killed by a certain review.

And for whatever reason, because we didn't bring any attention to [our music]it, and we didn't say anything on social media about it back in the day, we just kind of accepted it for what it was.

I heard there was All Songs Considered about our new record that came out the other day, and they were kind of placing us in the same category as the Mumford era. I never really saw that comparison, but…when you're so in it, it's hard to know.

"Tell Your Friends" is so beautiful. What led to your sneaky George Harrison role in the band?

Well, I also wanted to respect the fact that we already have a two-songwriter band.

Everybody in the band writes songs. It's already enough if you've got one, but if you've got two great songwriters in the band, how do you approach them — the classic trope of Phil Collins coming forward during rehearsal ready to sing now, or whatever it is.

I had that song left over from the New Age Rage sessions, and obviously it didn't fit on that record at all, and I was like, What if I just send it to the guys? And I did, and I was super nervous about it, but then everyone immediately was like, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's try it." 

So, by the time we got to the cabin in Forksville, Pennsylvania, where we made the record, everybody was really enthusiastic about the song. And then it kind of dawned on me that this song sort of encapsulates how we're all feeling about our relationships with each other. So, it feels like a nice little bow on the sentiment for the record.

You had posted on Instagram about the powerful moment of singing "Tell Your Friends" to that sold-out audience, and hearing the audience sing along. I know you've had a lot of insecurity and baggage with singing over the years, even hiring vocal teachers. Can you talk about your journey on that front?

I had a teacher growing up through the School of Rock program that actively discouraged me from writing songs and singing. So, I kind of feel like this whole racket of me writing songs is kind of like a spite store. [Laughs.]

I think I started doing it just to prove a point, and then it's turned into this whole other thing. I'm in love with the process and I love doing it, and I think it was there all along, and I was just kind of stuffing it down.

I started putting out songs for real in 2014, and still had years and years of stuff to work through with that, and also I just started doing it, because I had this impulse to do it, and it became clear pretty much right off the bat that I needed to start taking vocal lessons and take it seriously, because I was blowing out my voice every night.

So, eventually I started taking lessons with a teacher in Nashville who's like a gospel/CCM teacher, and the first lesson, I walked in there and she was like, "If you could sing anybody in the world, who would you sing like?" And I was like, "I don't know, Stevie Wonder or Prince." She's like, "Great, we're going to sing 'Purple Rain' right now."

And I was like, "Wait, what? I have to sing 'Purple Rain' in front of you right now?" And she's like, "Yes, so let's go." I was just like, "Holy s—, I'm not ready to sing 'Purple Rain.' I don't know the words to the song, really."

She really kicked my butt, and it led to me strengthening my chords, and it honestly gave me the confidence to come to Dr. Dog with this song, and then to be able to perform it.

The first time performing it in front of 10,000 people was pretty intense, and I think as it was happening, the beta blockers kicked in.

It was just really special and meaningful, and it just felt like the culmination of these 10 years of just really putting in the work, and taking lessons seriously.

It's the fulfillment of this thing that has been gnawing at me my whole life — which is to be able to write songs, to be able to perform them, and now I get to do that within the context of these people that I care about so much.

Over the past 15 years, Cults have captivated audiences with their atmospheric, layered compositions that pack a pop-friendly punch. Now, on the brink of releasing their fifth album, To The Ghosts, on July 26, Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion reflect on their journey and new creative freedom. 

While their previous albums required the duo to stick to deadlines precariously organized between tours, the pandemic provided new circumstances. Freed of distractions and obligations, Follin and Oblivion traveled to Los Angeles in 2022 to join up with their longtime producer Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells) to craft an album that looks back on their past while pushing their sound ahead.

"We don't have the sales pitch for the album down yet, but there's no other band that sounds like us," says Oblivion. "We're digging into our thing, and if you're into anything we've done before, you'll love this one."

Adds Follin, "We're like no other."

The album title is addressed to the ghosts of both Oblivion and Follin's past selves. As Oblivion explains, their four prior albums were time capsules that reflected the period in which each album was written and recorded. This release is something different.

To The Ghosts is a personal landmark for Follin, particularly. In 2020, upon the release of Cults' fourth album Host, she admitted that she'd been too shy to bring her own songwriting and demos to the table for the band's first three albums. It was Stoneback's encouragement that altered the creative process for the duo, resulting in their most collaborative album to date, and significantly more reliance upon live instrumentals in the studio.

"We spent a month in an AirBnB then a week in the studio with Shane," explains Follin.

"It was a mad dash to replace all the midi instruments with real ones, so we were running around playing vibraphones, organs, and guitars and all these things we'd recorded in demos and laying it all back down in one week."

It may have been a mad rush at the end, but over the years the duo have refined their formula for making albums. They're no longer the giddy art students and lovers making DIY music with no plans for world domination.

In 2010, Follin and Oblivion founded Cults and released their debut EP "Cults 7", followed by their debut self-titled album in 2011, which was similarly lauded. By the time their sophomore album "Static" arrived in 2013, the pair had freshly broken up and the themes of being creatively and emotionally stagnated resonated in dramatic, spacious orchestral compositions. They followed up with "Offering" in 2017, which was the first of the duo's albums to lean into optimism and a sense of embracing a more pop-friendly path.

That optimistic pop thread is picked up once more in "Crybaby", the first of 10 tracks that kicks off the new album. It launches with a lush, reverb-rich guitar hook and shuddering church bells, then shifts into a calypso beat and Follin's dreamy ode to escaping the modern malaise ("dry your eyes / turn off the screen"). Like the other catchy, bittersweet synth-pop numbers on To The Ghosts, "Crybaby" wraps up in close to three minutes. 

The lengthy outliers are "You're In Love With Yourself" and the closing track "Hung The Moon," which runs over five minutes. Ending an album with an epic power ballad is their signature style and "Hung The Moon" bathes in drama, love, loss and redemption. "In a storytelling way, that's the only ending that makes sense to us, a melancholy resolution," Oblivion says.

To The Ghosts captures everything fans adore about Cults and they'll have ample opportunity to catch them performing live this year. The duo are set to return to Lollapalooza opening for Vampire Weekend on Aug. 4, followed by their own headlining U.S. tour the same month. 

Ahead of their intensive touring schedule, the duo joined GRAMMY.com on a group video chat from their respective homes in New York’s East Village one evening, to discuss their upcoming release.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You began working on this album during the pandemic. Tell me where you wrote and recorded material, and whether you did that together or separately?

Madeline Follin: We were writing and recording in Brian's spare room. Can you see him?

Brian Oblivion: This tiny room! [directs the camera around a room not much bigger than 7 x 10 feet].

Follin: I sat on that couch right there, and we spent a lot of time in that little room [laughs]. For the most part we were together for the entire thing.

**Madeline, you revealed that before making your fourth album Host, you were too shy to show your own music to Brian and producer Shane Stoneback. What broke that barrier down for you to fully participate in the creative process?**

It was really hard to get it out of me. I had really strong imposter syndrome. Even though Brian was just starting out, he had taken a few recording classes in college, so he knew a lot more of the recording lingo and ways of communicating technically. I didn't know, so I felt so nervous to even communicate what I wanted. Shane helped with that a lot in terms of translating what I wanted into the language of studio speak. Shane is unlike any other producer we've worked with. He heard me out.

Tell me about working with Shane Stoneback in terms of what you came into the conversation with, and what he contributed to shaping this album.

Follin: We thought that we were not going to work with Shane again because he'd largely gotten out of the business. During [the] pandemic he switched careers and began working in the movie business. So, we started working with a few other people, we were feeling it out, and it just wasn't working. We reached out to [Shane], and he randomly happened to have 30 days off and said if we can finish it in 30 days, we can do it. We said, "we're coming out tomorrow."

What were the creative decisions you made in the earliest stages, and how much did you change your mind or allow outside ideas in as you were working on this album?

Oblivion: It took us a really long time. We definitely wrote over 100 songs. I put it all on an iTunes playlist and it was over 6 hours of music. This time we got a lot of confidence from some of our older songs being popular with young people. We thought, maybe the time has come around where we can do exactly what we do, and that's kinda 'new' again. Once we went through all the permutations and landed on "Crybaby," which was the first song on the record, we just thought "this just feels like us, so let's lean into what makes us unique." The messing around period was just trying out new tricks and trying to expand our possibilities.

John Congleton has a real knack for guitar sounds and finding a rawness to live instruments. How did he come to mix this album?

Oblivion: I've been a fan of John's going back to Xiu Xiu and my high school days. He's a master of distortion, him and Dave Fridmann, that's their thing. They can make things really fuzzy and interesting, but also fit it all in the speakers in a way that's like a weird magic trick. We have kind of a vintage sound, and he gets that but he's also smart at highlighting things that are new. He mixed our last record too and from the first conversation, in which he said he thinks like a musician and wants to do something strange, we knew we wanted him.

Follin: We'd mixed with other people before but when we got a mix back from John, he was bringing out parts of the song that we hadn't even recalled leaving in there. He makes our songs sound new to us again. We have a lot of trust and respect in him, and we were trying for so long to get our schedules lined up.

Oblivion: We work on our music for so long that by the time it's ready for the mix, we really want to hear something new. It's refreshing for us that John hears something new in us.

Tell me about "Crybaby," the first single. What were you going for in terms of the music, the mood and the message?

Follin: We'd been working on that song as part of the 100 songs that didn't make it. Brian started working on that song and I had never heard anything like that come out of his computer before, and I was shocked. It's funny because people say it's so "Cults sounding", but I thought it was unlike anything we'd done before. It's got a '60s vibe, an island vibe, to me and I thought we needed to zone in on it.

Oblivion: That was at the point where we decided "let's see if we can still make Cults songs that hark back to the earliest record." I love the lyrics, they're simple and there's no hidden meaning, which is great. A lot of the music that we love and that inspired the start of our band, is really obvious but also really weird in terms of lyrics. "Crybaby" is a fun, whacky diss track.

Let's talk about what inspires you musically.

Oblivion: What gets me excited is spending a lot of time sharpening my Spotify algorithm, so every Monday I get a collection of weirdo emotional love songs about heartbreak, these obscure, catchy B-sides, and whenever I find a song like that, I'm so inspired. Something that has kitsch, gravitas, and a bit of humour, that John waters, David Lynch combination lights me up.

Follin: Right now, I'm really into a lot of Fontaines D.C. I felt a 'Cults' vibe from them even though they probably have no idea who we are. It's been a while since I've put on a song, and then I want to put it on again right away.   

"Left My Keys" is an anthem for growing up. Tell me about your experience growing up in this band.

Oblivion: What makes this record different is that historically, we'd do all the music together over a span of two years, then Maddy would squirrel away to take a month or two to write all the lyrics, and that made the records very reflective of that moment, that time. For this record, because we had a protracted work schedule with nothing else to do, we took the time to slow down and look back. "Left My Keys'' is about being a teenager, and "Crybaby" is about things that happened a long time ago. Growing up is being comfortable enough to address your own past and realizing everything turned out okay so far. It's the first album where we're looking backwards and processing stuff from the last 15 years and before.

This album feels brighter than 'Host.' What happened between 'Host' and 'To the Ghosts' that explains the transition?

Oblivion: There's a lot of stuff we got out of our system. Host and Offering were both dark records, to me. It's wild to see that young people have picked up on "Gilded Lily" and that was such a crazy, cathartic song for us, so now it is crazy and cathartic for them. Most of my favorite bands are dark, sad bands, but that's not the totality of who we are. Being able to explore both sides of who we are was refreshing for us.

Follin: Personally, we were both feeling a lot better in our lives. We worked through a lot of anxiety, and because of the pandemic there was less partying, clubs, and bars. We had time to get healthier.

Oblivion: In a lot of ways our band is defined by our limitations. We have made music for 15 years, just the two of us with the same producer. But every time we make something new and interesting and all the things we think of as roadblocks help to provide a framework for what we do.

You released 'Host B-Sides & Remixes' in 2022, two years after 'Host.' Are there outtakes, or planned remixes, that are planned for this album too?

Follin: Definitely. 100 percent, we will be having something, but I'm not saying.

Oblivion: It's been really fun with the last few albums to put out songs that showed what would have happened if we went in a different direction. Sharing that part of the process with listeners has been fun.

You have a huge schedule of touring. Tell me about the plans and how you mentally and physically endure all the travel and performances. Does it get easier the more you do it?

Follin: No. Every single night, even if we're in the middle of nowhere, whether there's 15 people or 1000, I almost have a heart attack before walking on stage each night. You're crammed in a box with 7 people every night, there's a lot of emotions…

Oblivion: …and something is always breaking at soundcheck, it's like arghhhh! It's really hard, but when we put out Host and we didn't get to tour for two years, we missed that connection. The feeling of sharing your music with people allows us to move past it and get into something new. It's a big part of our personal growth and experience. We love touring.

Follin: In normal daily life, we hang out together. We hang out on weekends. It's not a forced thing. It feels so good to meet fans every single night, too, and hearing stories of how you affected somebody's life.

Most of the tracks on this album fall at around the three minute mark, and many end quite abruptly without fading out or dwindling down. Was that a deliberate strategy, and then why did "Hung The Moon" require that extended time as the finale?

Oblivion: It's verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus and you're done in three minutes!

Follin: Brian is very concerned about time, and I don't think it matters. I like shorter, he likes longer. We're compromising.

Oblivion: "Hung The Moon" is the big epic ballad that ends the record. We have had one on every record, it always ends with a big power ballad. In a storytelling way, that's the only ending that makes sense to us, a melancholy resolution. I love that song because it starts off as a sweet love song then it gets tense and spooky towards the end, but the lyrics stay really loving. It's that transition between the rush of an initial relationship and then the long game, where it's sweet and delicate, but it's also real life, so you're afraid that you'll lose things and you're trying to hold on to that original thing. So, the album ends on a bittersweet note.