First Listen: Vince Staples, ‘Summertime ’06’
The Long Beach rapper can be that villain you root for, but he’s even better at showing us the complex, varied pieces that make up a real man.
Category: Music Reviews
Review: Joy Williams, ‘VENUS’
VENUS is the chronicle and result of Williams breaking free of her past projects. Formerly half of The Civil Wars, Williams explores a more adventurous pop sound on her first solo album.
Review: Bully, ‘Feels Like’
Sweet and fizzy, barbed and aggressive, these are speeding-with-the-windows-down songs. But they also feel true to the life of the charismatic ball of nerves at their core.
Review: Desaparecidos, ‘Payola’
Conor Oberst’s agitated, political punk band returns with its first album in 13 years — just in time to respond to a new generation of outrage-inducing headlines.
Review: Meg Baird, ‘Don’t Weigh Down The Light’
The Philly singer, once of the psych-folk band Espers, makes Sunday-morning music that sets her celestial voice against dreamy electric guitar.
Review: Wolf Alice, ‘My Love Is Cool’
Five years and three EPs after its inception, Wolf Alice’s origin story is starting to look less like whimsy and more like self-fulfilling prophecy.
First Listen: Alpine, ‘Yuck’
On the Australian band’s charming second album, a sweetly blithe sound can’t quite mask the doubt and hesitation at the heart of the songs.
First Listen: Richard Thompson, ‘Still’
When the great guitarist takes a solo, it’s a swerving, cathartic, edge-of-the-seat experience. When he doesn’t, the bliss persists, but in highly concentrated doses.
First Listen: Walk Off The Earth, ‘Sing It All Away’
The Canadian pop band’s second album is an impeccable distillation of pop music in 2015: big and bright and cheerful, and expanded rather than confined by everything that came before it.
First Listen: High On Fire, ‘Luminiferous’
Now 17 years and seven albums into its existence, Luminiferous reaffirms High On Fire’s consistent mastery of heavy metal.
First Listen: Heartless Bastards, ‘Restless Ones’
The roots-rock band’s fifth album doesn’t deviate wildly from Heartless Bastards’ wheelhouse, but it does give Erika Wennerstrom and company more room to roam.
First Listen: The Deslondes, ‘The Deslondes’
Singer-songwriters Sam Doores and Riley Downing teamed up for a country album inspired by both Woody Guthrie and the Big Easy’s live music scene.
First Listen: FFS, ‘FFS’
U.K. dance-rockers Franz Ferdinand team up with power-pop brainiacs Sparks for an album more than 10 years in the making.
First Listen: Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard, ‘Django And Jimmie’
More than three decades after Pancho & Lefty, the country titans pair up again, this time for an album that puts eclecticism front and center.
First Listen: Algiers, ‘Algiers’
The gospel-punk band’s self-titled debut couches its invective in feedback, guitar noise, bruising drum machines and Franklin James Fisher’s guttural howls.
First Listen: Dawes, ‘All Your Favorite Bands’
On its fourth album, Dawes calls from deep inside the feedback loop of love’s aftermath. Throughout All Your Favorite Bands, singer Taylor Goldsmith takes full advantage of the dramatic possibilities.
First Listen: SOAK, ‘Before We Forgot How To Dream’
The Irish singer recorded her debut at 18, so it makes sense that it would chronicle youthful uncertainty. Throughout the album, her songs command attention by burrowing deep under the skin.
First Listen: Daughn Gibson, ‘Carnation’
On his surprising, complex third album, Gibson outlines dark and alluring tales of horror and despair, human struggle and eternal regret.
First Listen: Joshua Redman & The Bad Plus, ‘The Bad Plus Joshua Redman’
The rangy, prolific jazz trio teams up with the tenor-sax great for a journey into the murky, terrifying, thrilling unknown.
First Listen: Los Hijos De La Montaña, ‘Los Hijos De La Montaña’
Y La Bamba’s lead singer teams up with the head of the thrilling neo-mambo band Sergio Mendoza Y La Orkesta. The result is somehow even greater than the sum of its parts.