Civilian packs a more immediate punch, and hits you with southpaw jabs in the middle of songs, shifting once you’ve bedded down.
The album is really something that’s greater than the sum of its parts, thanks to the band’s instincts and intuition.
EMA’s work is simultaneously some of the most interesting I’ve heard in years, and jaggedly alive, the furthest thing from any sort of academic exercise.
A not-entirely-minimalist record, but one that scales back every element of its songwriting enough that each note seems precious.
With a crisper, clearer production that helps it to stand out, w h o k i l l is, almost literally speaking, tUnE-yArDs’ breakthrough.
Despite its hype, its expectations, its blown up sound, and its many production flourishes, Bon Iver is nothing more than a solid placeholder album.
The noises are fitting, quietly cyclical and gently evocative of a process of ebb-and-flow, of slow—and beautiful—loss. These are the emotions of On the Water, and Future Islands create them with hands that rarely tip to show the careful craft that must have gone into building a stunner like this one.