Every Open Eye is lean, keenly focused, an immense growth from their debut that keeps their foundations intact.
It might not succeed as well as select predecessors; but, as an album, Why Make Sense? allows for the band to be interesting, to be relevant and – perhaps the most important of them all – to be them.
The result is dense, and keenly focused; instead of pin balling between ideas Foals seem to have settled on a solid aesthetic. These songs are rich, at times highly emotive, and constantly simmering.
_ I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside_ doesn’t stand out for advancement for Sweatshirt or the rap genre, but offers something the other releases lacked – a human relatability.
Deerhunter always find a lot to exploit in the intersection of Cox’s gloomy visions and the band’s gravity-defying pop vistas, and for the most part Fading Frontier is a rewarding immersion in diverse layers of melody and meaning. But there’s still a nagging spottiness that keeps it from reaching its full potential.
If you need something to keep you company while you lick your wounds, Range Anxiety will do very nicely indeed.
The expectation was there for a good return to form from a band that always followed their muse no matter how much it threatened to derail their commercial potential. The reality is they’ve far exceeded that with Sol Invictus, an album that in its finest moments matches the best of their golden years.
b’lieve i’m goin down… is a winding hour of self-reflection that can drift by without much impact. But its textured arrangements and Vile’s sneaky wit very much reward close listening.
Short Movie plays very much like an album of seeking rather than settling down, of picking away curiously at life choices rather than committing to one.
Prass’s winsome coo is a beautiful instrument, and the way her melodies dance and soar can be sublime, but the lyrics fall just a little short of the level that everything else on the record achieves effortlessly.
Melbourne, Florida is a mature, confident record, taking the band out of the old neighbourhood and into the world.
We have arrived at a notable highpoint for both Nielson and the rest of the Orchestra. Multi-Love marks their best LP yet.
It’s up there with Blur’s best albums, and a reminder of just how well the band reconcile their divergent ideas.
There’s something that feels tangibly joyful on Art Angels that we didn’t hear on Visions.
An intimately close-to-the-bone emotional exploration that not only fulfills his potential that was glimpsed three years ago, but trumps the folk masterpieces of his old outfit through sheer conviction.
You won’t walk away humming the tunes, but Carrie and Lowell will stay with you. Sufjan has prettier albums, and sweeter albums, but none has the impact of Carrie and Lowell.
There’s so much of the band’s past in here, from their spikiest hostility to their sleekest accessibility, but they also seem to be rewriting the rules as they go, which makes this album just fine for newcomers too.
To Pimp A Butterfly is like a modernist novel, one that rewards re-reading, comes with unreliable narrators, has lengthy interior monologues, and embraces a grand narrative.