I know "BRAT" was sort of built on the premise that Charli XCX was both a deeply vacuous coke-hound party-fiend *and* a sensitive soul with philosophical breadth and a glazed eye on self-awareness, but hearing her try to earnestly pull off that second one without the first only really exposes her as an artist more interested in saying something substantial than she is in thinking it up.

The production is also painfully limp and uninteresting. If Abrams is the unseasoned Swift, then ... read more

You don't get it, guys. This is, like, ironic. A joke. Satire. She's making art, but like, cool-girl, side-eye, unserious art. She's literally only messing. It's all a laugh. Her tongue? In her cheek, because again, she's not serious.

This is, like, a daring, semi-edgy statement with some of the most boring indie-rock plastic-riffs you've ever heard in your life with some stutter thrown in, but have you like, realised that I'm smart enough to get that this is ... read more

this, to me, sounds like the one album that would convince dennis prager or jack chick that rap isn't crap.

beyond that, all i can really say is that it breaks my heart to hear all the life drained from this woman. not only is this a wanky "god is good god is great" record, but it is also clearly an "album i had to make because i guess i should" type deal.

at least kanye *wanted* to make whatever he was making.

In a nutshell, this is why I can't get behind Katseye. They're like a fictional girl-group in some late noughties teen sitcom - it's all presentation and image, with all semblance of lyrical or musical quality stripped out or chemically suppressed.

This is all they seem to be, and all they seem to do. Like many before them, their existence as a music group is secondary to the plastic visuals and tatty merchandising. An unblinking shell, the purpose of which is to occasionally ... read more

this is energised, unashamed, messy, sleazy club-land for the gays who don't (or can't; there's something essentially teenaged about this record) go to the clubs, for the most part powered by strong singles.

it is, for the most part, perfectly serviceable. an earth-shatterer, it is not - indeed, i found this noticeably inferior versus the more precise, glossy, pseudo-trampy "starfucker", whose shine came from the sense that it felt assured enough to not try too ... read more

she's got certain chops more than her minor-key sonic sisters - more depth than abrams, more compelling than swift, a more softly "pleasant" voice than Lorde, more dimensions than carpenter - but this is seriously lacking any attention-grabbers or any emotively substantial resonance. maybe this 80s gloopy schtick will start to feel fresh again one day, but in a world where it isn't, this is always going to sit at the bottom of the freezer, overlooked.

Between her relationship w/ Biggie and her then-unfortunate role as a woman who thought she could go as hard as the men, there were a lot of oldheads who were pouring misogynistic scorn on this the way they still do whenever our contemporary female MCs wax lyrical about how much they want to "throw lips to the shit". Some things never change. But the fact is, there are very few records with the kind of echo this one has.

pop sound is the best thing she's ever done, cha-cha is godawful, and the other two are mostly fine (though cortisa star is made excellent use of on "get some")

73!

This is no "The Collective", but that was always a tall order. What we get instead is an effort that trades musical precision for experimental breadth. The result doesn't always hit the ear the way you'd like - the title track, for instance, has a gorgeous beat to it that is sometimes punctured with moments that evoke a scratchy CD in a manner that I would hope is not deliberate - but there's a rigidly social focus throughout that Gordon is able to put forward ... read more

Yes, this is classic Peaches - a manifesto for total liberation drenched in the gamut of, uh, gooes - chanty and bawdy, sometimes revelling, sometimes inflamed with other passions. Catchy, charismatic, and campy as all hell. She does her thang and she does it with aplomb.

But I think my big takeaway, as much as this is clearly a capital-P Political album, is actually that I got the most out of her meditations on her age, career, time, and all those other vulnerabilities. There's ... read more

Every so often you see a gay teenager forcibly wedge Madison Beer into the "main pop girlie" canon and every so often Madison Beer releases an album proving that she just doesn't have the sauce for it.

Granted, a lot of them don't do quality, but few of them regularly produce content (and it is, basically, content) as dry and dusty as this is.

As ever, their whole thing is smug cosplay music trying to bottle up Laddish Disaffection so they can claim their stolen Valor from people who buy Richard Osman crime novels and follow Rory Stewart on Bluesky. There's no element here to be enjoyed if you aren't that sort of person - it flows poorly, there isn't much cleverness beneath the surface, and the production is barely tolerable.

But we knew this was coming. It's Sleaford Mods. This is the fourth time that ... read more

i see what the music press like about it, and i don't even really hate the florence classic mo-no-tone against any and every kind of production as much as most normal people do, even though it seems to be all she knows. but really the problem here is that save for rocks and maybe the title track this is boring as shite salvaged only by its tolerable technical features and the fact that i haven't gotten completely sick of the deadpan yet. i am very close to it though.

if i said this album was almost too blandly indistinct to make it as wwe main menu soundtracking would you be mad at me?

if this is your self-titled - you know, the big declaration of your artistic identity or whatever - then you might be in shite. just saying.

Proof that Kim Gordon really can do whatever she wants.

Afterglow, in the sense that it takes you from residual adrenaline and acceptance that this was the last time, in "Love Crimes", into the lonely post-coitus cigarette of "Stereo Boy", having heard the door slam. With all the emotional peaks and valleys that lie between.

Considerably better than "Eusexua".

I actually think Pitchfork were not harsh enough with this one. This is shrink-wrapped over-sweetened garbage for people who either see trip-hop and insist that constitutes quality, or worse still: 20 year olds who insist this touches something because they've been desperately trying to be a part of the Y2K Aesthetic Nostalgia that nobody can presently escape.

There are three categories.

First, the genuinely very good ones. These are usually her solo tracks, with a couple of the collabs just about passing the bar. Of note is 1-800 Heartbreak, where the switch-up between Walker's very pretty melodiousness and Paak's conversational flow and underlying film-noir instrumental makes a reasonable use of everyone and everything involved. Overall, tracks of this quality are just over a quarter of the record.

Second, the bad ones. These are ... read more

finally got around to giving this a spin when i saw ms swizzle was hocking signed "life of a slowgirl" cds in britain to try and lock in her uk #1 spot over this fucking insanely beautiful art pop record that (as i have now discovered) is significantly better than basically anything The World's Biggest Popstar has ever made.

just so brilliant. lush. transcendent. vocally awe-striking. i adore this record. it hit me like a rocket-powered bus with an orchestra on the top floor.

Having a bridge in a boring song does not make it good. Raise your bars a little bit, yeah?