Much of Voices also sounds like it’s slowly decomposing, even as it’s more spacious and aerated than Stott’s previous releases — filled with air the way a corpse bloats, perhaps.
The most impressive thing about Moth is the way it manages to wrap a more compact frame around Chairlift’s spiraling colors without dulling the final product.
On Coloring Book, he displays the most joyful part of his universe, and invites listeners across the globe to share in the festivities.
Slow was born of isolation and betrayal, but it’s music that was meant for concert halls Cobalt deserve to fill, music that rewards both introspection and reveling in like-minded rapture. It’s also ready to f**king kill.
★ finds Bowie and longtime producer Tony Visconti as hungry as they ever were, and with no modern context into which the artist can insert himself (including rock) he’s free to do what he likes.
Bottomless Pit is a rowdy and hypnotic 40-minute suite of alienation and controlled anger. It’s Death Grips. F**k with them.
To exorcise years of mounting bleakness is no doubt a relief, but the resulting record is one that’s compelling for the exact opposite reasons.
By the time Prydz is ready to release his sophomore album sometime around 2026, new fans with no memory of this massive moment in progressive house’s history will be grateful to have a text this authoritative to refer back to.
Her fifth album is indeed one of the most alt-friendly jazz cycles you’ve ever heard, pivoting constantly on tight, proggy arrangements.
Unpretension remains integral to Frankie Cosmos’ appeal, but true to its title, her second proper album, Next Thing, marks several steps forward.
Weakness has more guests than a typical Sand joint; no problem when they keep the pace of Shad announcing himself as the “teacher at the school of hard knocks.”
The songs on this album may well become standards for fans at a certain place in life, but they definitely raise the standards for Into It. Over It. — as well as for anyone who actually still thinks emo needs help being revived.
Where a sense of shyness helped make Pull My Hair Back so charming, Lanza’s increased confidence provides so much more color on Oh No.
Despite its nearly weightless presence, Will ultimately is a record about going places, even if it takes its sweet time. Uninterested in either Point A or Point B, Will is happy to just drift about in the in-between.
Listeners who luxuriated in Euclid’s new-age, lightly psychedelic vibe will find much to savor in Ears, where Smith refines and sharpens her songwriting significantly.
As glacially paced, mood-enhancing music, Pablo is a hypnotic slam-dunk and this reviewer will be among those first online if an all-instrumental edition finally surfaces on Vocaroo, because over the long haul ‘Ye the MC here proves as elusive as the proverbial Cheshire Cat.
untitled unmastered. can feel like the clearing of a table, rather than a feast. But in this lies its power and greatest asset: With the stakes low, Lamar can air out his demons, have some fun, bask in the afterglow of the Grammys.
While it’s refreshing that a major label, in 2016, has enough faith in a regional star to let him do what brought him to the dance in the first place, Islah also happens to be the most-balanced Kevin Gates project to date, discovering an equilibrium between his pummelers and his caressers we didn’t previously know was possible.
Any Sharon Van Etten or Angel Olsen RIYLs stemming from Dacus’ dry, triple-distilled delivery do more harm than good when she out-crunches and yes, out-funnies them anyway.
She’s the sort of artist that you couldn’t imagine ever making a bad album, and her newest is more proof.
What makes Human Performance a narrowly great record is that it bucks narrative. It’s not their most sensitive record or politically astute or least dissonant but all of these things — their most convincing performance as humans to date.
ANTI is Rihanna’s first aesthetically personal album, and throughout its disorderly roaming, it remains revelatory in a strict sense; it’s a musical step sideways but an artistic step up.
III’s messages are more direct, and they’re couched in broken Jailbreak hooks and caffeine-addled guitarmonies more teeth-chattering and addictive than anything they’ve released to date.
For a lo-fi project, Celebration is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts.
The duo’s mission statement since day one has been to find new ways to express heaviness, not to transcend it, and the excellent, new No One Deserves Happiness continues the trend.
Sweetly alienated knockouts like “Ice Cream (On My Own)” and “Sometimes Accidentally” lend a gravitas to twee as shruggily out of place in 2016 as Tallulah was in 1987 — and every bit as necessary.
Goodness is a spiritually rich listen, but none of it would matter much if it weren’t such a goddamn great rock album.
That sense of newfound freedom and exaltation surges through Potential, a rich matrix of the Range’s knack for digging up strangers’ stories and assimilating breakbeat, grime, U.K. garage, and late ’90s R&B.
One of the pleasures of Charlene is how we can now enjoy Tweet — years removed from the burden of carrying Aaliyah’s legacy — as a startlingly unique voice in her own right, a fact that we sometimes forgot during her brief reign on Top 40.
Emotional Mugger lands somewhere between all of these records, maintaining the cohesion and (relatively) streamlined arrangements of Manipulator but nodding to the scuzzy ’70s hard rock of the latter two and Segall’s trademark haywire, lo-fi garage.
Like the ’80s-skin-shedding Dubnobass, it’s an inspired record born from the desperation of years-long stagnancy.
It might not be the best batch of songs Rivers has written since the ’90s ... but its front-to-back coherence as the Third Weezer Album You Always Wanted But Long Gave Up Hoping For is simply staggering.
Paradise lands closer to technical brilliance than emotional resonance, but you can feel the band reaching.
The distinct pleasures of Forever Sounds remain those of all five preceding Wussy albums — a crack songwriting duo detailing adult life’s ambiguities with vivid language amid a terrific rhythm section’s unapologetic alt-slop.
While Young Thug’s chameleonic flow-hopping is undoubtedly a defining trait, what makes his songs glow is how you never see the seams.