Brian Howe
The mischievous and prolific Canadian musician—formerly of Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown—offers a tour of his idiosyncrasies on a set of rerecorded highlights from his Patreon subscription series.
3w
The ambient-country group’s latest album takes an artfully atmospheric look at the American West, drawing evocative shapes with pedal steel and synth.
1mo
Beneath its placid surface, the songwriter’s delicate, minimalist folk conveys a gossamer strength and dogged persistence.
1mo
Seldom does a mature comeback sound so much like a big-dreaming debut.
3mo
The experimental percussionist finds meaning in motion with a vibrant and beautiful new album built around the clave.
7mo
The Swedish musician’s companion album to a novel of the same name co-written with David Levithan is a sprawling romance bedazzled with vivid storytelling, absurdist humor, and ebullient flourishes.
8mo
McCombs’ songwriting is in top form on his latest LP. Beneath the effortlessly classic-sounding rock and soul, his music offers a fascinating tangle of character studies, mythic layers, and barbed humor.
9mo
David Longstreth’s first major piece for a large ensemble, a commission by the Berlin-based chamber orchestra, is nearly monotonous in its restless variety.
1y
The folksinger’s calling is as old as the hills. Channeling Appalachian fiddles, desert rock, Ornette Coleman, and Arthur Russell, the Vermont native keeps it moving forward, in his own inimitable style.
1y
Eleven years since their last album and nine since keyboardist Carey Lander’s death, the beloved Scottish indie-poppers return with an appealing balance of fond memories and fresh energy.
2y
You still never know from one song what might appear on the next, or even where the song you’re listening to might go, and it keeps the music fresh even when it’s retreading hallowed ground.
2y
An elaborate new box set explores the evolution of Justin Vernon’s early band through pivotal live sets, avant-Americana studio experiments, and a formative solo album.
2y
The Israeli singer and the Radiohead guitarist team up with artists from across the Middle East to tackle a range of Arabic love songs, in an act of concerted musical bridge-building.
3y
Perhaps the point is more about feeling good than seeming interesting, and at least the piano equivalent of cowboy chords makes sense in the Americana context. Any given moment sounds wonderful, though not much lingers beyond a deep sense of calm.
3y
The Icelandic group celebrates the 20th anniversary of its third album with an expanded edition. Sung entirely in the made-up language of Hopelandic, it sounds as sumptuous and suggestive as ever.
3y
Trumpeter jaimie branch and drummer Jason Nazary team up with producer Jeff Parker on an album of electronic jazz fusion and aqueous psychedelia.
3y
!!! were always a ray of California sunshine piercing the paranoid gloom of their dance-punk milieu. Their ninth album shows how dashingly they’ve ripened into their vintage influences.
4y
The London-based ensemble taps Hot Chip to flesh out the dimensions of its cosmopolitan blend of West African funk and electronic bass music.
4y
If Krüller is warmed by a nostalgic human past, it also bears the chill of a posthuman future where the machines grind on without us, an intimation that seeps from his music like a corrosive fluid and lends these songs a bitter, heroic weight.
4y
The ambient composer goes back to raiding his decades-deep personal archives for vintage tape to revive with new perspective and fresh feeling.
5y
The Sigur Rós frontman’s muddled attempt at a pop album is a cathedral of feelings without referents: beautiful, boring, generically uplifting, and deliberately meaningless.
5y
Music is the best way to learn about emotions, but the worst way to learn about facts. Without context, which Field Music’s medium can’t provide, you’re left perplexed by the obscure narrative perspectives and wondering why on earth these guys are singing about menstruation.
6y