Review: Walter Martin, ‘Arts & Leisure’
The former Walkmen multi-instrumentalist has made a solo album marked by its playful, loosely ambling, front-porch friendliness.
Category: Music
The Complete List: NPR Music’s Favorite Songs Of 2015
More than 400 of the best songs of 2015, selected by NPR Music’s dedicated listeners and crossing more than a dozen genres. And you can listen to every single one.
A Bunch Of Baltimore Bands Covered Sisqó’s ‘Thong Song’
The 15th anniversary of Sisqó’s monster single “Thong Song” could have wafted past like the scent of coconut body oil…
Review: ‘Seth Avett & Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith’
Each of Smith’s records contains an abundance of small, perfectly formed gems. There are too many to pick from, but just about any would shine anew under this type of respectful reinterpretation.
First Listen: Omar Sosa, ‘Ile’
Sosa’s songs are saturated with the beauty and power of West African music dedicated to Yoruba deities. And yet an unmistakable reverence for jazz pervades every note.
First Listen: Purity Ring, ‘Another Eternity’
The Edmonton band mines the built-in tension between its many sources of effervescence and the darker shading in its words and backgrounds.
First Listen: Andrew Combs, ‘All These Dreams’
A 28-year-old Nashville singer-songwriter with a reticent demeanor and a fondness for offhand revelations, Combs sings subtly, without a lot of fuss.
First Listen: Of Montreal, ‘Aureate Gloom’
New ideas permeate the band’s 13th album, on which every song finds a way to surprise. Mastermind Kevin Barnes mixes a love of rock, funk and disco with unexpected ways to expand the brain.
First Listen: Moon Duo, ‘Shadow Of The Sun’
Visceral yet dreamy, the band’s third album plumbs ever deeper into droning psychedelia. Moon Duo’s influences are easy to spot, but the music feels like part of a continuum rather than a pastiche.
First Listen: Tom Brosseau, ‘Perfect Abandon’
Recording around a single microphone, the North Dakota singer sounds as if he’s performing in your living room. For these wonderfully honest stories, the fit is perfect.
First Listen: Tuxedo, ‘Tuxedo’
Detroit DJ, producer and singer-songwriter Mayer Hawthorne links up with Seattle boom-bap specialist Jake One to form the group Tuxedo, on a mission to push the funk back to the forefront.
First Listen: Swervedriver, ‘I Wasn’t Born To Lose You’
The British shoegaze band’s first album in 17 years sounds dreamy, subtle and winning. It mostly eschews the rocking of Swervedriver’s early years, but it compensates with disarming beauty.
First Listen: Dan Deacon, ‘Gliss Riffer’
Even when built around familiar pop-song structures, Deacon’s music is juxtapositional and wonderful — a pursuit of the ecstatic that obliterates genre distinctions.
First Listen: The Pop Group, ‘Citizen Zombie’
Recording a reunion album after 35 years, the defiant and inventive British band meets the modern era head-on, tempering its dystopias with the rhythms required to move bodies and open minds.
First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting, ‘The Race For Space’
Using samples from vintage news broadcasts and in-flight NASA chatter, a British duo tells the story of the Space Age’s first 15 years.
First Listen: The Mavericks, ‘Mono’
After more than 25 years, the band’s weapons are still consummate skill, the clarion charisma of singer Raul Malo, and the wisdom to know that fun is what wins in the end.
First Listen: José González, ‘Vestiges & Claws’
González’s songs are slight little creations, with minimal words encapsulating big ideas and breezy pop melodies disguising weighty notions about life’s endlessly refracting illusions.
First Listen: A Place To Bury Strangers, ‘Transfixiation’
There’s a new-found tightness in the band’s attack that’s as refreshing as it is menacing. Destructive and dreamy, Transfixiation is the sound of APTBS turning its demolitionist tactics on itself.
First Listen: Paperhaus, ‘Paperhaus’
The D.C. guitar band’s music can be jarring and jagged, as its members channel Krautrock and psychedelic blues. But it’s also dreamy, with lilt and grit.
First Listen: Quarterbacks, ‘Quarterbacks’
With 19 songs in just 22 minutes, Quarterbacks offers pop melodies at punk speed and a reminder that love and hurt needn’t always be rendered at epic scale.