Definitely influenced by Untrue but Ross from Friends adds his own optimistic flair. Warmth pervades through the album while still keeping the grittiness and the groove of uk garage. I agree with some other users that he could've taken the sound further and deeper, but the restraint and levity gives the album a hopeful energy. Excited for where he goes in the future!

Every moment of this album is brimming with the care of collaboration. Dessner's drums invigorate every track, while each featured artist brings their own unique energy and soul to take the record in varied, colorful, and exciting. Big Red Machine captures and encourages the joy of making art, the core of experimentation and working together. The moment that epitomizes this project is a line in Mimi (feat. Ilsey), "I say thank you, I say thank you." Gratitude, acceptance, and giving ... read more

Simple, straight country songs with some of the best and most powerful lyrics out there. Every song reads like poetry, so layered and full of allusive meanings, prosaic imagery, and complex emotions.

Great debut, opener/closer much better than the two songs in between, great minimal production... can't wait to hear more!!! Esp the drums at the end left me hanging in the air

I don't think they were really trying to go anywhere with this, just experimenting and having fun with it. Several standout songs ("Gratitude," "Forest Green," and "I Won't Run From It" being my personal faves,) but not really any cohesiveness as an album, which is okay given the nature of the project. It's really cool to see the creative process playing out, and how a lot of the same techniques were carried over to folklore/evermore. I always come back to this not ... read more

After his last three albums, this one feels the most like he's perfected all the elements of the others and comfortably settled into the most Bon Iver space possible. Ironically, though, this is also what makes the album not as rewarding as the others - it's missing the element of raw imagination, where Justin Vernon ventures into new territories, taking us along for the ride and completely stunning us in the process. I wouldn't say it's completely "safe," though; it's still a ... read more

Each of Bon Iver's albums up to this is perfect in extremely different ways, but 22, A Million is by far the most daring and just striking with its completely original electronic experimentation. Justin Vernon seems like he's trying to prove that he can do anything, and he truly can. He's not afraid to launch himself into unexplored spaces and make them his, imbuing the jagged production techniques with a pervading folksy authenticity that he never loses. Definitely his best album to nerd out ... read more

A departure from the singer-songwriter feel of For Emma and venturing into an expansive field of layered textures, while still maintaining much of the same sublime beauty from For Emma. Invokes a different type of yearning too - while Bon Iver's debut album spoke to the heart, the self-titled nourishes the spirit. Progressively takes the listener into higher and further spaces, endlessly reaching for the horizon. Almost every song is a masterpiece.

Justin Vernon's purest work, captures the essence of rawness, longing, rain. Never gets old, it immediately strips the listener down to their own deep, murky, and internal essence. The production is excellent but doesn't take away from the songs as pure songs. Just a sublime compilation of incredibly beautiful and perfectly crafted songs. There is absolutely no filler moment, the album is ruthlessly introspective, intimate, and disarming.

So random and unashamedly odd, and also so funny and relatable. (Some favorite lyrics: "In the dog park, have a discussion / Which Brita filter is the best one," "Would someone please teach me how to be a DJ?
I'd like to go out socializing but I'd rather not have anybody touch or talk to me," and of course, "What if the pills I take will stop me getting wet?") I feel like this was a release for a very particular moment in time and not really an ambitious ... read more

This album has taken care of me this year. Released by Tasha in 2018 after working with the Black Youth Project in Chicago and being at the frontline of protests, this album is ever more needed in 2020. Starting with the line, "we believers in softness here," Tasha sings to you as if she's laying next to you on the pillow, whispering intimate and loving truths. She understands love, particularly self-love, as a political and necessary act, but mediates this act in the most natural and ... read more

It just feels like my heartbeat, in the most mundane moments of life, but also the moments that comprise 95% of life. Numbingly walking on the street, thoughts drifting around aimlessly throughout the day, the minutes spent in bed after waking up but before rising, the hours spent just sitting around, mind empty. A somehow perfect mix of sedating and stimulating, but also comforting in a way - beauty not in a specific purpose or meaning, but just in existing.

Editing this review because I ... read more

Delicate, honest, beautiful. You can feel Anjimile's heart protruding through the music, a defiant assertion of one coming into fullness. Need more voices like this, taking queerness, transness, Blackness, and out of them producing a gentle and tender craft. While others are still writing about tired topics, Anjimile has lyrics like, "I'm not just a boy, I'm a man / I'm not just a man, I'm a god / I'm not just a god, I'm a maker." Imagination and creation that comes out of a place of ... read more

One of my favorite albums and definitely my favorite relatively "undiscovered" album. Genuine and warm, duendita demands to love in an unloving world, to feed and care and create connections, to forge intimate relationships with the world around her. She offers a visionary spirituality that is much needed in the modern day. Truly a direct line to the Divine.

This album is so comforting and healing while also being groovy, complex (but not too much), and engaged with politics in a very humanistic way. Humanistic is a good word to describe this album... the street sound and background conversations, the lo-fi feel of the beats, the pop-inspired melodies, the jazz instrumentation throughout... all create a rounded experience that feels like you're hanging out with a friend in a city park, or walking on a sidewalk feeling community with the other ... read more

Deserving of all the hype. Doesn't hold back, goes out of the bounds, then back in, then out again with the confidence that Fiona Apple knows she's a genius and is pushing her genius to new levels. The album feels like some sort of negation, it's anti and chaotic - her voice is somewhere between talking to shouting to singing to commanding to neighing(?) ("I Want You to Love Me,") and the arrangements are eccentric and move in unpredictable patterns. She forces us to listen and the ... read more

Jason Isbell is my favorite songwriter but this was a bit disappointing for me. It's solid as usual, but it lacks the subtlety and crypticness that makes his previous albums not corny, like much of contemporary country music. "What've I Done to Help" started the album already on a too in-your-face note for my taste, but "Dreamsicle" saved it a little. I feel like this album falls more squarely in the country genre, trying to create catchy anthems, whereas his previous albums ... read more

BRAT is a true collage - complex, multi-layered, and sometimes disjointed, but somehow still crafted with enough subtlety to make it all make sense. Eccentric and creative in the best way. I'm so excited for what NNAMDI does in the future and how far he can push the boundaries of the genres he draws from.

Saint Cloud presents Katie's bare and reckoning soul - you can feel the authenticity in a voice that speaks from a burning, feeling heart giving it all to find its place in the world. Every song gets better with each subsequent listen, like a tattered blanket or worn in shoes. I'm only giving this a 90 because I'm giving Katie room to grow; I believe she has the potential to make something more daring and even deeper, but I'm so excited that she's found her sound.

Gorgeous, rich, elegant, volatile, sublime. A "soft storm" in the words of Ocean Vuong. Mike Hadreas perfectly captures a trembling beauty that insists on surviving in a violent world. The varied instrumentation immerses the listener into all different types of interstitial spaces, a smoky bar, a stranger's bed in the middle of the night, an empty theatre flooded with stagelight. He and Moses Sumney are leading pop in an entirely new direction ushering in the coming decade. They are ... read more