I am not a fan of prog rock, ultimately. I think there were some very worthwhile lessons to be learned and i'm glad the experimentation occurred such that other bands could learn and condense the lessons. But Frances the Mute really is a full celebration of excess, in its ridiculous melodramatic storyline, the extravagant and frankly astonishing exercises in songwriting (tell me the next time you hear a 31/16 groove as solid as the one in Cygnus) - that also remembers to include pop moments ... read more

The music of the revolution of the oppressed made flesh, Algiers nail it first try. While I love both The Underside of Power and There Is No Year for what they want to do, the former is slightly underwritten and the latter a bit dour and not fully playing to the group's strengths. Here, they wield their firebrand instruments (and Fisher's stunning voice) to startling effect. If the revolution ever takes hold in America, Algiers would provide the perfect soundtrack. Also these melodies are great ... read more

see my review. as beautiful, achingly sincere, and bold as the game it came from. they say shakespeare's oeuvre contains every emotion known to man; in less than half an hour david housden did the same.

i used to think that totbl was the best that the post-punk revival movement had to show for itself until i realised that i never come back to that and that there are literally always 4 or 5 songs from this in my recent circulation. it made a identity for itself in a movement concerned solely with the past, and it is worthy of applause.

there's never really a dull track, it's just... the tiniest bit too long? idk, there's something about it that keeps it from perfection. maybe pecknold could have made some of these songs a bit more intense delivery wise, because that point on the shrine is just beautiful and i would like a bit more angst like that. but again. nitpicking.

edit: nvm lmao this is fuckin perfection

peak metal. both incredibly hard and incredibly catchy. chino moreno has such a strange sense of melody compared to his peers that makes these songs so much more haunting, and the structure is perfect (even street carp has grown on me, because it's only short and chino carries the song). also i heard a version of passenger with hayley williams and the power that exuded was so immense i couldn't handle it.

a collection of insanely good country songs, taking the best of the game across the 2010s, pairing them with the most important man in nashville and a legendary studio, reviving a 40-year-old concept album's ambitions, and crafting the most country thing to ever exist. the stories here are so touching and intricate with little details connecting song to song perfectly (god is a working man into down home, as well as how can you come over plays based on the rest of the tracks), and some of the ... read more

Another entry in the genre of "music you could have made at 18 if you knew how", this is just a bunch of kids who were so entrenched in a scene that they got bored and decided to write all of what happens after that scene. Because that's pretty much what happened. The stories are surreal and lend themselves to the sort of small-town atmosphere that these bare-bones rock songs (to say there was production here seems like an overstatement) a neil gaiman-like understated horror. also my ... read more

oh look some old jazz with distinctly memorable motifs and a strange structure

This album is so very... complete. It feels like a chamber work and is as conceptual as a lot of 20th-century music. It is a masterclass in telling stories with no words; the first part follows little droplets of water amidst a larger storm, after which we sink under into a lake and feed into the mighty power of the untamed ocean before everything winds down and the world has been flooded. The melodies are instantly memorable, the playing and recording is absolutely superb, and not a minute is ... read more

lcd soundsystem suffer from one problem: they put too many songs on their albums and they become slogs, especially the shorter tracks which aren't great (sos title track, drunk girls, etc.) the boys over here skip that and offer 6 of the best ever dance cuts, with two excellent covers to boot. left to my own devices has one of the greatest pop chord progressions ever, and the synth work is delectable in how... primal it is. this is what pop was always meant to be in its dance era.

The best rock album of the 2010s save maybe Science Fiction depending on my mood, an all-star congregation destined to go down in history.

Pop goodness with a genuinely weird and off-kilter bent to it. Featuring Jon Higgs's best vocals so far, some of the bounciest rhythm sections and most colourful melodies in 2010s pop, and sharply written lyrics with a fierce political bent to them, this is just so easy to like. EE were alongside Gorillaz as one of those bands that blatantly show the power of pop music at its best.

were it not for the intense nostalgia i get from a thousand suns, this would be my favourite album of all time. and frankly, i can admit in contexts outside of mine that this is just superior.

I go back and forth forever on whether I prefer this or Plastic Beach, but I think DD was a lot more transgressive and tapped into a punk side that hit a nerve that I can't get from PB. Danger Mouse's production is exactly what was needed for the flash these songs give, Damon balances himself perfectly ... read more

Banger Fucking Central, a gleaming example of what hip-hop in the mainstream could be (don't tell me that Oh My Darling or Lie, Cheat, Steal couldn't have snuck their way onto the radio back in 2014 when trap still leant into more thick aggressive tones as opposed to the dreamier emerging side). El and Mike are consistently killing it with quotable lines aplenty and perfectly used guest appearances. It took RTJ to get a performance out of Zack De La Rocha that I liked, and if they did that, ... read more

i already wrote like 8,000 words about this record man i'm not writing any more it's completely fuckin perfect

Great in much the same way as Love Ire & Song, only with a higher concept and a more varied tracklist. Frank's writing here isn't quite on par, but the instrumentals themselves are almost universally better.

edit: ok the writing is way better because it's so..... interconnected, it feels like variations on a lofty theme

also this has to be the closest a white man with an acoustic guitar has gotten to making an album with an almost post-colonial arc right? i can't be the only one who sees ... read more

there really isn't much new to say about tpab. it is every bit as good as all the hype would make it out to be.

It's rare that an album so fully nails the feelings of growing up from being an innocent child to a disillusioned adult with as much raw tenderness as Arcade Fire did. There's an instability to a lot of these songs that adds tension alongside a sublime atmosphere that comes from both the slightly lo-fi recording and the build-up of these lengthier compositions. Win's voice beckons the listener in, and Regine's pixie-like cooing is a marvel, most obviously on In The Back Seat, one of the most ... read more

my favorite record ever.

someday i will finish my thesis-long analysis of why this album is so important to me, but i'll say this: it's the best record about war ever composed, and a decade later i am still thinking about the shades of meaning it holds.