They’ve acknowledged a little personal reluctance to be plugging a new album at a time when society seems determined to eat itself alive, but Blisters in the Pit of My Heart couldn’t have come at a better time. The world needs Martha, now more than ever.
Atrocity Exhibition isn't quite as breathtakingly brilliant as XXX was and will probably alienate some of the fans that Old gained him, but it's basically just a good Danny Brown album.
On Let them Eat Chaos Tempest has cemented herself as a poet/rapper of the highest order, who isn’t happy just make the masses smile, but to challenge and make them think and love too.
It’s an encapsulation of everything SVIIB were, and tragically never will be ... Despite there being so much to drag this album under, it somehow claws to the surface every time. You’ll be smiling at the end, I promise.
Whatever the degree of fictionality of the plot ... Lemonade arrives as a cohesive, masterfully crafted project that resists the ephemerality and disposability of the pop song format.
Hval’s always been a visceral storyteller, but now she really dips us into a new world, crimson-tinted and surreal, led by either her vampire self or her real artist self.
Suede have always made music that is worth taking notice of, but with Night Thoughts the band have given us their first essential album in 20 years.
It is a formidably layered, beautiful record that largely lacks big hooks or aggressive bite, and yet conspires to be endlessly satisfying on a micro level, a clutch of ballads that represent the band's most intricate musical trip.
Blonde feels like a confessional, one of naked pain, powerful acceptance and so much knowing ambiguity that the man behind these often pitch-shifted words once again keeps those rapt at arm’s length even when finally delivering.
In terms of composition and production, MY WOMAN is Olsen’s most ambitious album yet. Taking a more polished — though not straight-up glossy — approach, Olsen sounds more vulnerable for having made her vocals more central to the mix.
An extremely compelling, beautifully articulated, bonafide masterpiece.
In the canon of Bad Seeds albums Skeleton Tree is immensely difficult to pin down. With my Cave fandom hat on I cannot help but feel this is a noticeably inferior record to its immediate predecessor, and one that is less powerful on early listens than the likes of Tender Prey, The Boatman’s Call or the chronically underrated No More Shall We Part.