Jon Putnam

It’s Real accomplishes the one thing anyone would have questioned of Ex Hex after their debut – could they and would they expand their palette on their next outing, if there would even be a next outing.

Very often Hippo Lite feels like wandering into Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley’s tossed off living room recording session.

Ultimately, at minimum, The Lookout treats us to exactly what we’d expect from Laura Veirs in well-crafted and thoughtful songs delivered with a warm and reassuring familiarity.

As impressive as No Burden was on its own merits, independent of and regardless of its creator’s youth, inexperience, and slapdash conception, Historian is a monolith of American songwriting. Lucy Dacus strikes peerlessly at the core of our emotions at once with wit and gravity, loftiness and plain-spokenness.

Where similarly grandiose songwriters like Chris Martin and Bono flail at balancing the huge and intimate, the personal and mass appeal, Anderson strikes the perfect balance on Night Thoughts.

There simply is no contemporary songwriter that speaks so plainly, yet so devastatingly, to the darker matters of the heart as Sharon Van Etten.

Mourn is a hearty, eye-popping reminder just how far we have swayed from rock music’s embryo nowadays and how awfully contrived the revivalist stabs have been.

EP II fulfills its promise in smoothing out its predecessor’s rough edges, at the same time endowing her work with more depth, emotionally and sonically, and still retain her artistic hallmarks.

Despite Daughter of Everything’s brief runtime, its sheer number of tracks and subgenre bending lend it a sprawling quality, not unlike Robert Pollard.

Nadler ushers us by the wrist to survey her scorched Earth; splaying her demons out before us like never before, she decimates the narrative wall between her and us.