Although “Spiderland” could only flow out from a specific kind of nineties teenage angst, the mystique and simmering anxiety it captures is timeless. The lyrical storytelling plays a big role in capturing this sense of horror: could the tale told during the song ‘Good Morning, Captain’ not as easily have been penned down a century earlier by a Victorian author watching the waves crash against the rocks beneath his summer home at twilight?

Yet I would be amiss not to ... read more

brat and it's a more inconsistent and less coherent but it's still a lot of fun and therefore also still brat

Electrifying, mindbending shit. "MG Ultra" isn't always the most consistent album, but it makes more than up for this fact with some of the most electric highlights of the year.

A sweet little droplet of Bon Iver to ward off the seasonal depression that creeps up on you as the nights start to grow, if only for twelve minutes.

Soul-crushingly brutal, but I wouldn't have expected any different from Chat Pile. On first listen I don't know if it's better than "God's Country", but maybe I'll change my mind once I look up the lyrics to understand what Raygun Busch is singing about half of the time.

"Moon Music" has its share of highlights, but it's a better album in theory than it is in practice. There are so many ideas here that could have panned out fantastically if not for their lackluster execution. Whether it is Chris Martin just singing "la la la" instead of writing actual lyrics, or songs trailing off before reaching some kind of climax, this latest Coldplay album is a step in the right direction but a small step at that.

The Smile's second album of the year is a little more cohesive but a little less impactful because of it. On the one hand, we get some of the band's most impactful work yet. Take "Zero Sum", for example, which feels like a 21st-century falsetto love letter to Talking Heads. At the same time, it feels like the band has settled into a distinct sound for now, and because of it, we get fewer and fewer truly experimental or forward-thinking moments. It's still ... read more

[88 -> 92]

In the face of all the world's platitudes about the sanctity of human rights and life itself ringing more and more hollow each day the genocide in Gaza is allowed to continue with the backing of American and European weaponry, how do we respond? Hundreds or thousands of miles away from the slaughter, safe in our homes even if fascism is knocking at our doors, do we sit complacent and wallow in our helplessness, or do we fight with whatever means we can muster? For Godspeed ... read more

I don't know of any better way to begin this review than this: Geordie Greep is a unique fellow, isn't he? Half of the time he sounds like he is trying to auction off a used car in his hard-to-place accent, whilst the other half of the time he croons like a young Frank Sinatra. He feels out of place and out of time, a man from 1923 stuck in 2023, yet that is what made him such a captivating frontman for black midi.

If Geordie Greep didn't prove how great of a singer-songwriter ... read more

Fucking losing my mind, this is so fucking awesome!!

Sadly, the promise of a faithful posthumous SOPHIE album has not materialized. I purposefully kept myself from listening to the singles, and now I see that might have been for the best, as I did not allow myself to get my hopes up. If there is anything to be learned from this experience, it is that a talent like SOPHIE is a rare one, and that we should treasure the work she left us with before her passing. As the record shows, it can’t be easily recreated.

[94 -> 88]

[94] Having heard little to no Xiu Xiu before listening to this album, this was a bewilderingly fun and exciting introduction. It's crisp, textured, mystifying, and only a little too pretentious.

Having heard Bright Eyes at their worst this past week, I felt it was time to hear them at their best again, and thankfully their best was still as good as I felt it was four years ago.

Conor Oberst is not a songwriter without his critics. He even acknowledges so himself on this album, claiming that he doesn't read reviews of his music because he is "not singing for you". It's easy to see where his distractors are coming from: he is not a particularly gifted singer, who ... read more

Bright Eyes will always hold a special place in my heart. Records like "Lifted" and "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" got me through my final years of secondary school, my deeply disappointing first year of university life, and through the lockdowns. I was even enthusiastic about their 2020 comeback album, and I still think of it as a fairly good look back at the band's accomplishments during the 2000s. At a certain point, however, Bright Eyes will have to come ... read more

Between Charli XCX's mainstream success with "BRAT" and Floating Points' "Cascade" being released only a week ago, 2024 has already had its diverse share of great throwback club music. With "In Waves", Jamie xx manages to contribute to this revival of sorts in a unique way, providing an album that makes up for being a little less consistent in quality by providing some ethereal and mystical House music that is as stellar as it is catchy.

Oh, the sweet irony of having a track called 'ARTIFICIAL' on this record...

I think the best way for me to approach this review is to compare "143" to what I believe to be its complete opposite: Magdalena Bay's "Imaginal Disk", the insanely replayable pop album that has already secured its place as the best album of the year for many people, myself included. It's sonically cohesive yet diverse, adventurous in its mixing of the rules of progressive rock ... read more

I find it frankly impossible to believe that anyone could listen to this album and not vibe the fuck out.

I wish I liked this just a little more, but I feel as though there are plenty of songs here with a good central idea that isn't subsequently built upon. Still, this is a very harsh opening critique for an album that I found to be generally really forward-thinking, with a unique blend of folk influences woven into its sonic fabric.

A callback to the nineties that never quite manages to get off the ground.

"Microphones in 2020" is more than Phil Elverum playing the same few chords for 44 minutes and referencing the lyrical highlights of his most acclaimed album. It is an epic autobiographic poem put to song, in which Phil looks back upon his life to discuss the struggles of being a young creative learning how to let their soul pour out through wires and chords.

"I wanted to capture eternity," he at one point says, in what might be the central thesis of this long-winded poem, ... read more