Unfortunately for some, Painted Shut signals the end of Hop Along’s tenure as a little-known buzz band. For everyone else, it’s the sound of being welcomed to the party.
Star Wars sounds simultaneously cohesive and chaotic: If anything, the collection feels more akin to Wilco’s roughhewn concerts, which have always blasted the studio polish off the band’s songs.
His sixth album, B’lieve I’m Goin Down…, finds Vile at his most loose and bleary-eyed, with a hazy, vertiginous feel on the darkest and most spontaneous collection of songs he’s released to date.
In the best sense, The Agent Intellect takes what made its predecessors good and builds on it.
Building on the best tendencies of her earlier songs, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit finds Barnett deftly connecting the foreground to the background, the surface to the undercurrent.
Adapting nearly every trend in indie-rock for her own needs, Crutchfield crafts a record that runs the range of human emotion without settling into any one lane.
Fortunately, the masterful I Love You, Honeybear proves that Misty the character doesn’t overpower Tillman the musician.
It’s tricky territory to navigate in these cynical times, and hardened hearts and ears might find it off-putting. But meet Carrie & Lowell on its terms and it’s revelatory.
It’s an exploration of success, of age, and of the group’s journey. And while some of the album’s sounds might not be especially revolutionary ... they’re madly solid and compelling all the same.
Where Good Kid was a linear story, To Pimp A Butterfly is an 80-minute pileup of loose ends, unfinished thoughts, and contradictions. Lamar will hint at a conclusion, then refute it; point fingers, then redirect them.