Ashamed to say i was /kinda/ rooting for her with this project. We love an underdog story, even for someone who seems to deliberately ignore and misinterpret valid critiques about performance of "urban-ness" (see: "Clap Back"). Plus the pre-release singles were absolute bops. The final product, however, is just too spare, too unambitious, to really meet the comeback she's allegedly been slated for.

The "I'm my own artist now" record, especially following years of ... read more

Was reminded by Wendy Williams of all people that I need to check this lady out. Decided to start here since this was the first record she won a Grammy for (not for the full album, just the title track).

Great introductory record for anyone trying to get into bluegrass. Krauss's singing and fiddle playing is nimble as ever, and she sounds well-traveled despite still being in her teens here. I also enjoy a lot of the mixing on this record, especially the mandolin being panned hard to the ... read more

Surprised how much this flew under the radar on this site considering that we seemed to love Memories Are Now (maybe that was partially because it came out early in 2017 and could easily make it to the top of the critics and users best lists?). This thing solves MAN's biggest problem (lack of cohesion) by attaching a solid concept around the perils of motherhood. The honesty is brutal - I mean imagine being a daughter and listening to "Old Fear of Father" - but Hoop's biggest ... read more

*2,000+ word review continued in the comments. I'm back*

If you've followed Amanda Palmer's career up to this point, you're probably already well aware of her guerrilla marketing tactics and penchant for public scandal, which seemed to come to a boiling point in 2012 with the controversy-laden release of her sophomore album, Theatre is Evil. In the span of a few months, she went from Amanda Palmer the oddball musician to Amanda Palmer the villain. The woman who made $1.2 million off of a ... read more

Nice to hear hints of the Pop 2 aesthetic creeping into her proper album content but ultimately this just doesn’t sound like anything we haven’t heard from her already. Loving her finally having dramatic high-budget videos though!

A distant cousin to "messy" from his last album. Sounds a little unfinished, but his vocals remain a delicacy to my ear mouths. Also kinda nice to hear the contrast of Ty Dolla Sign's rougher vocals against his smoother.

*another shameless college-era review*

Miley Cyrus really really wants you to know that she smokes weed. “Wait, I need more marijuana” she mumbles at the start of the music video for “Dooo It!,” the first song from new album Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. “Yeah I smoke pot, yeah I love peace” goes the song’s hook, as glitter, ice-cream toppings, milk and other high-viscosity fluids stream down her face. Two things are obvious about the video, one is ... read more

*another shameless college-era review*

Youth Lagoon’s Trevor Powers is, if nothing else, great with cohesion. 2011’s homemade The Year of Hibernation was a paradigm of bedroom indie-pop which conveyed big dreamy sounds with few resources. After that was the expansive Wondrous Bughouse, which fit neatly into a canon of 2010s psych-rock revivalism alongside Tame Impala’s Lonerism, Foxygen’s We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic and even MGMT’s ... read more

I hope whoever I marry is okay with this being our wedding song.

My enjoyment of this song is slightly diminished after learning that M*ghan McC*in likes it.

Content to oscillate between emotive power pop and more hard hitting punk, this is a satisfying if somewhat whiplash-prone listen. Across twenty-five minutes, the lengths of these ten songs range from thirty-eight seconds to four and a half minutes, and there is a sense of split-personality (I guess you could market this as 'duality'?) to what's going on. Ultimately this seems more like an interstitial step album on their way to something more ambitious, but it will do for now.

The more epic, ... read more

Dead to Me started out with so much potential but kinda just becomes the poor man's Big Little Lies by the end of its ten episodes. The whole thing just becomes so soap-y and predictable despite the depth of the characters implies in the initial episodes. Christina Applegate gives one of her best performances in years, but the material just runs far too thin far too quickly.

Don't know if I'd enjoy this gleeful disregard for genre loyalty in the context of a debut record, and was also kind of hoping he'd give us a song longer than three minutes. Still, I appreciate Lil Nas X's willingness to try anything and everything, which ultimately makes this a far more rewarding listen than most Soundcloud come-ups. Even "Kick It," probably the closest to a straightforward trap song, has an intriguing melody and evolving instrumental to keep things fresh. He doesn't ... read more

Overall I enjoy this song. My biggest issue with the lyrics isn't that they're pandering or yet another kiss-off to the haters (I mean, she has a lot of them), but more that the weighting of the syllables in the verses is atrocious. Like middle school-level. "You are someboDY that I don't know," "but you're taking shots at me like it's PATron," "sunshine on the street at the PARade." Does anyone think that sounds good? Honestly reminds me of that weird Donald Trump ... read more

LMFAO = Chaotic Evil
These guys = Chaotic Good

Forever a bummer that the LGBT rappers that were running the scene circa 2013 or so have nearly completely fallen off. Zebra Katz never topped (lol) “Ima Read,” Mykki Blanco is stuck in Madonna music videos, and Le1f, who was perhaps the most poised for mainstream crossover, is still mostly known as “the rapper Macklemore probably stole Thrift Shop from.”

Cakes da Killa was my personal favorite of the bunch. Undeniably a better MC than at least two of the previously ... read more

*shamelessly reposting a review I wrote for this album in college - mostly hold the same opinions now, maybe slightly diminished*

In an interview for now-defunct talk show Q, violinist and singer Owen Pallett expressed his discomfort with the terms “confessional” and “cathartic” being applied to his records. “I just feel as if these are words that tend to apply to people who aren’t straight men,” he vented, “There’s the connotation of ... read more

To be honest, the highs of this record are incredibly high. Actually some of her best songs land on this project. Witness's biggest problem is ultimately just way too much fat. I get KP wanting to give fans a bulky product after such a long hiatus, but this could have been so much stronger as a 10-11 song album. Here's the concrete issues in bullet form:

-"Bigger Than Me" is cheap padding, easily the biggest throwaway of the album
-"Save as Draft" was DOA given the ill-will ... read more

Would have been written off as someone shamelessly indebted to Joni Mitchell with traces of Kate Bush if she hadn't preceded the latter by a good eleven years and beat out the former's golden streak (Ladies of the Canyon onward) by only about a year. Songs are occasionally meandering and border on hippy-ish sloganeering ("Save the Country"), but her music ideas and delivery mostly hold my attention. She's not afraid to muddy up a pretty song ("You Don't Love Me When I Cry") ... read more

Been listening to this a lot recently, and didn't realize how many of these songs were appearing for the first time on this album as opposed to being well-known standards. There's a discernible, introverted but perpetually in love persona for Warwick that becomes especially apparent in the closing half. She doesn't have the most powerful voice in the room, but plenty of personality and feeling across these twelve songs. Some of my favorite moments on this record are where she seems to get lost ... read more