It’s all dope-boy come-up stories, subliminal shit-talk, and luxury at a level only possible to convey via fine-art name-dropping and whatever the fuck a “caviar facial” is. For the first time since going solo, it all feels of a piece.
Upon first listen, The Beths’ debut album, Future Me Hates Me, bleeds together too much, the songs slipping imperceptibly from one to the next. But soon enough, the bubble-grunge riffs and Motown-backup-singer “whoa-ohs” start to distinguish themselves.
Painstakingly constructed alone in his home, And Nothing Hurt is arguably the purest and most sentimental music J. Spaceman, a.k.a. Jason Pierce, has crafted as Spiritualized since the swooning zeniths of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space.
There’s no prescribed narrative, but Singularity still tells a grand story—a synesthetic evocation of how it feels to be alive.
On Dirty Computer, the erstwhile Electric Lady loses the metal and circuitry, but none of her power or artistry, cementing her status alongside Prince in the hall of hyper-talented, gender-fluid icons who love and promote blackness.
The cleaned-up production does highlight the eccentric, even incomplete, nature of some of her compositions—Mitski’s only ever written songs with traditional verse-chorus-verse structure when she’s felt like it—but as far as problems go, wishing that all of the songs on Be The Cowboy were three-minute pop masterpieces instead of just some of them is a good one to have.
The result is compulsively listenable stuff, and Knock Knock may be his best work yet, a sonic snapshot of a day spent in a permanent magic-hour paradise.
The video-game melancholia and digital ephemera of I Don’t Like Shit showed how purposeful the blown-out sonics of the SoundCloud era can be when paired with a generational talent, but Some Rap Songs places Earl’s aesthetic within a longer timeline, reaching back to the atmospheric, bomb-shelter style of turn-of-the-millennium backpack rap, as well as the early-’90s golden age to which that nodded.
More than just grafting on its politics and themes of liberation, Hunter embodies them by capturing a freer, more complex—and queerer—view of its creator.
There’s an introspective urgency to Saba’s songs, like they’re the only thing keeping the 23-year-old from succumbing to the systemic and social madness that surrounds him on Chicago’s West Side, and that rawness has only expanded on sophomore effort Care For Me.
7 is the band’s darkest, messiest, and most varied album to date.