It’s an invigorating makeover of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s firmly entrenched sound, and thus Asunder is both a thematic and musical awakening for the band.
That they were able to put another six years of touring and botched recording sessions behind them and put out this long-gestating, bizarre little Blur album is a testament to the band’s separate creative energies, pooled back into one. The Magic Whip sounds like what these guys were always meant to do.
That's the Spirit is so content to flit away from excitement and into complacency it hurts; you almost want Bring Me the Horizon to trip up on their material, if only because then the element of excitement may come into play. It doesn't, and what we're left with is That's the Spirit, the most soundly generic rock album you'll hear this year.
Unfortunately, the album’s biggest strength also holds it back from ranking among his finest, as the overarching optimism makes the record feel slightly thin and superficial compared to his previous offerings.
It’s reductive and doesn’t help really anyone by saying the hooks just aren’t there on the level they used to be, but it’s telling that I searched the rest of Currents in vain for anything as immediate as the crashing waterfall of multitracked vocals on the chorus to “The Moment.”
Vulnicura is gruesome because of its trying structure, abandoning accessibility for labyrinthine ideas that casually stumble off-course.
It should be stressed that with the The Plague Within album, the veterans of doom and gloom are resisting decay with style, not falling off the high standards they have set over the years.
Such is the album’s richness and fluidity that one could ignore Joanna’s words and still come away enthralled, which is not a statement to be taken lightly when it concerns a piece of work as involved as this.
E MO TION isn’t a stablemate of innovation, nor does it have an elaborate, all-encompassing concept; its allure stems from its consistency, with each and every track seamlessly passing the baton to the next without any significant dip in momentum.
The growth that is present in the album is one of ideology as opposed to sound. Deerhunter are looking at the world with a refined philosophical perspective. There’s a subtle undercurrent of optimism that directs the music.
Summertime '06 is as bleak as mainstream hip-hop will allow for in 2015. It's not overtly enjoyable to experience because this is a reality that does not call for glamour.
Depression Cherry is a startlingly easy record to get lost in. Some have called this a detriment, causing the record to blur together, to which I say: isn’t that the point?
The intentionality behind Meliora's accessibility -- namely with the progressive-pop-doom hybrid that Ghost have crafted on Meliora, with the occult aesthetic running in parallel to the music -- is a resounding victory for the Swedish sextet and is assuredly the band's strongest album to date.
These little flashes of songwriting ingenuity are too numerous to count on Painted Shut, and they make each listen into something exciting.
In a sentence, that’s why In Colour is so good: it remodels slabs of wax in a way that not only acknowledges but embraces the pop potential those snippets of sound have been denied for so long.
Deciphering the message in her words relies on just how much time the listener is willing to devote to the album, but with music this brilliant, the task seems all the more alluring.
Shared with us in the most intimate of atmospheres, it’s so threadbare that you might as well be sitting in his apartment with him as he sings and plays you his life story.