Regardless of his collaborators or how he chooses to approach his songs, The Life of the World to Come is further proof of Darnielle's ability, evident since long before he traded a boombox for a studio, to imbue his imagery, his sentiments, and his many characters with astounding weight and power.
Nobody who has ever had some semblance of an interest in this band should ignore Journal For Plague Lovers, which is simply far more awesome than anyone had a right to expect.
The Crying Light may prove to be too precarious to hold up on its own in the future, but for now Antony & the Johnsons have provided a perfect gateway to their music.
If Woke On A Whaleheart (2007) was the cuckoo clock, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle‘s Callahan’s triumphant Renaissance.
Embryonic works so staggeringly well because it's so unafraid to place itself in the lineage of unapologetically over-the-top rock albums.
Monoliths & Dimensions feels like a testament from a deep pit of despair with nowhere to look but up. They might never get out but the hope is in the fact that everyone involved is in the exact same spot.
What makes Actor an honest-to-God good record—not just a dreamy one—is the way that Clark can use such a simple formula to get such an engaging range of textures.
Blue Record is, in sound and spirit, satisfying metal painted with broad strokes and big gestures.
So the truth is as this record is: that inspiration is not known but felt, that its speech is breath and its words actions, that it lasts only a moment but that moment is reincarnated throughout time. I wanna go pluck the shit out of a begena.
The xx’s penchant for concision lends this material some seriously refreshing clarity, but it’d be a mistake to confuse their relative minimalism for some kind of aesthetic singularity.
The real nuggets of the album ... lie in the moments when the inherent melancholy behind Hart’s doe-eyed mysticism comes out.
As relatively good as most of Bitte Orca is, ['Stillness Is The Move'] alone gives us reason enough to be optimistic: should Longstreth pursue his newfound fascination with mainstream music further, it's proof that the Dirty Projectors are capable of evolving into a far better pop band than their experimental selves ever let on.
Micachu’s album has all the markers of quirky chic—an unusual voice, a fairly well-known producer, and a distinctive approach centered around pastiche
Dragonslayer is a shockingly good record, but it’s no surprise that things ended up this way.
It’s a sophisticated work, delicately and meticulously crafted, and its effete pleasantness lends itself as well to Late Night performances as New Yorker coverage.
Nowhere is this idea of acceptance clearer than on An Imaginary Country. In a sense the album evokes nothing so much as Hecker himself, diligently and intuitively molding his sounds through synthesizer, guitar and laptop, and as a result may be the most symbiotic album of the year.
If Merriweather Post Pavilion represents its progenitors’ conscious choice to replicate the live experience—or at least craft something monumental and loud enough to be worthy of an outdoor festival—on record, then this is an album which, like any good concert, must be felt.
It’s an approximation of what [perfection] might mean, which is: precise, lean, deliberate. There’s not a wasted moment here, and not one moment overstays it’s welcome, which from a bunch of aristocrats (I get) is pretty frickin’ rich.
Raekwon has not made a valid sequel to that classic—but he has quite validly added a couple hundred new bars to that performance.