Review: Bill Fay, ‘Who Is The Sender?’
Now on a tear after a decades-long hiatus, the cult songwriter mixes plain, uncomplicated humanist charm with a more questing cosmic aim.
Category: Music Reviews
Review: Paul De Jong, ‘IF’
The cellist and audio collagist unabashedly embraces and refines The Books’ sound on his solo debut, which contains some of the most resonant and beautiful music of his career.
First Listen: Braids, ‘Deep In The Iris’
Where the band’s last album used prickly electronics and cavernous arrangements to hold humanity at arm’s length, Deep In The Iris turns those elements into lulling hymns to cleansing and redemption.
First Listen: Mew, ‘+-‘
Six years after its last full-length album, the Danish progressive-pop band has morphed again, this time into a more streamlined, potent, startlingly evolved version of itself.
Review: Villagers, ‘Darling Arithmetic’
Once a bandleader with a flair for complex orchestration, Conor O’Brien sings and plays every instrument on Darling Arithmetic himself, for an album that feels surprisingly muted.
Review: Calexico, ‘Edge Of The Sun’
Though the scenery of the American Southwest remains largely unchanged, the band’s sense and understanding of it continues to deepen and grow.
First Listen: Waxahatchee, ‘Ivy Tripp’
On her band’s new album, Katie Crutchfield sounds nervier and more confident than ever before, while remaining true to her role as an analytical but artful chronicler of youthful uncertainty.
Review: Jessie Baylin, ‘Dark Place’
The singer-songwriter reconvenes with her longtime co-writer and producer, Richard Swift, to craft 11 seductively seclusive pop songs about motherhood, exile, insecurity and devotion.
Review: Drenge, ‘Undertow’
On its second album, the British rock duo moves smoothly from tantrum to anthem, crafting songs with singalong hooks and buckets of sweaty, cathartic rage.
Review: Toro Y Moi, ‘What For?’
In recent years, Chaz Bundick’s sound has traveled down some unexpected side roads. But What For? takes a U-turn back to feel-tingly guitar-pop, with winsome results.
Review: Royal Thunder, ‘Crooked Doors’
Writing a breakup album is one thing. Writing a breakup album with your ex is another. A stunning hard-rock record, Crooked Doors grapples with what it means to live with your own history.
Review: Say Lou Lou, ‘Lucid Dreaming’
Though the twin sisters in Say Lou Lou don’t plumb the depths of human understanding with these 11 songs, they clearly and keenly feel the weight of all that glitters.
Review: Ryley Walker, ‘Primrose Green’
Walker has developed into a thoughtful singer-songwriter who follows a tangled thread, evoking the ’70s, when unplugged music could pick the body electric.
Review: The Soft Moon, ‘Deeper’
Amid the clipped one-word titles and ominous synthesizers, there’s a desperation to connect — and a soundtrack for dancing.
First Listen: Lower Dens, ‘Escape From Evil’
Navigating the complicated circuitry of modern love, singer Jana Hunter echoes both ’80s synthpop greats and the biggest Greek goddess of all.
‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ Aspires To Be Music’s Great American Novel
Kendrick Lamar’s long-awaited new album dropped late Sunday night, nine days early. On it, the rapper wades into our current moment of peril around race, inequality and brutality.
Review: Liturgy, ‘The Ark Work’
The metal band embraces classical music, glitchy IDM and even rap on its new album. The deeper into it you delve, the more its audacity and imagination start to bloom.
Review: Laura Marling, ‘Short Movie’
The singer’s new album shakes up her rumbling acoustic arrangements with an influx of electric sounds, in the process giving her a greater arsenal with which to brood, search, seethe and menace.
Review: The Go! Team, ‘The Scene Between’
With the aid of mostly unknown guest vocalists, the group’s proven formula receives a fresh shot of youth, enthusiasm and pure pop fierceness.
Review: Twin Shadow, ‘Eclipse’
In songs that go big and hit home, referencing the biggest sounds from the ’80s and beyond, Twin Shadow sets his musical register to “epic” and only looks upward from there.