The Things We Do is a record for anyone who’s ever felt, even for a moment, that music is what matters the most. For any hard-luck kid or nowhere bum who needs it, that escape is heaven.
Sound & Color is a daring and deliberate record, and its greatest success stems from the band’s complete defiance with its choices.
La Di Da Di is a unique listen, giving large responsibility to the listener to determine or interpret the parameters of its far-reaching sonic liberties.
On Dry Food’s eight heartbreaking observations, she teeters between aching insecurity and crushing tenderness, rarely allowing sunlight to peak through the clouds.
Rock ’n’ roll has a knack for brute force, but these songs are never less than nimble, always full of electricity and a steady barometer of unfailing good taste.
Range Anxiety is a great guitar record for people who love the guitar but not in the way that Guitar Center people love the guitar.
The 11 songs on Beautiful resonate in a deeper way by varying the sonic palette and focusing her words inward.
If you’ve been searching for your perfect summer soundtrack for 2015, you may look no further.
Most of Then Came the Morning shows a confident band stepping more fully into a compelling sound.
At its core, this follow-up to 2012’s JP is as whimsically experimental as it is steeped and reveling in its own revivalism.
Goon is mostly excellent slow songs about heartbreak, about the fear of failure, about losing your direction and hoping to find it.
Platform is still avant-garde enough to only be appreciated by some, but those who break through the surface, will understand this album for being the important, temporal work that it is.
Depression Cherry doesn’t always have the emotional heft, or melodic impact, of their 2010 breakthrough Teen Dream or its follow-up, 2012’s Bloom, but the duo’s knack for crafting thoughtful, enveloping songs makes their return more than welcome.
Isbell’s increasing skill as a storyteller, and the natural affinity he has for melody, combine to make Something More Than Free a masterful piece of work.
Every Open Eye is another album you can throw on at a party to get everyone dancing just as easily as you could pensively listen to it alone in your bedroom.
While Torres’ self-titled 2013 debut was a hushed affair—even the loud bits came in gradual, measured bursts—Sprinter crackles and explodes, with a dynamic range that’d make Steve Albini blush.
Much of b’lieve remains mellower and more cognizant than Vile’s previous works, blending organic and inorganic sounds.
It’s an artistic success as a literary exercise, and as a wrestling fan it’s hugely gratifying to see a serious artist that I’ve enjoyed for decades take wrestling seriously.
Instead of trying to make an experimental oddity for music nerds, he made an indie pop album for music fans. He went for our hearts rather than our heads.
Coming Home, however unintentionally, represents the spiritual cleansing and soulful healing we need right now. It’s the sound of an era where civil rights seemed so desperate, but progress also felt in reach.
Carrie & Lowell is a demonstration of why Stevens sings songs, of why we listen to songs: to feel less alone, to make sense of the things that are hardest to make sense of. Hopefully it proves as rewarding to the singer as it is for his audience.
Although Hop Along’s lyrical content can be heavy at times, Painted Shut’s tracks are well-balanced between catchy indie pop with an edge and more discordant fare.
By channeling her anxiety into wonderful, shaggy, relatable and supremely catchy songs, she’s made Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit one of the most compulsively listenable albums to come out so far this year.
Honeybear thrives on the knife’s edge of that enigmatic split personality, as he attempts to reconcile the love-swept optimist with the world-weary wise-ass.