This album is significantly better than I remember it being. There are no real duds on here, and the first seven cuts are phenomenal - airy vocals, jazz-rock instrumentation, and beautiful lyricism around a coming of age. I note Apple is described in one of these reviews as demonstrating an "unfocused" talent, and although I mostly agree with this sentiment, I think it works to this record's benefit more than anything else. What is Fiona Apple's trump card, after all, if not ... read more

Howls of despair against a soundscape packed with meatgrinding drones and inlaid with very sharp and very, very, *very* loud percussion. This album feels like it anticipates the worst and is absolutely beside itself with the pain and anguish of what is to come.

I spent the entire experience filled with fear, unease, and paranoia. Everything about it unsettled me, but at the same time, there was the promise of catharsis, too. All of it constantly swirling in and out. A sailboat on hell's ... read more

life of a showgirl? or panic! at open mic night? it is all the cringe of a slam poetry event, only considerably meaner and (somehow) far more self-indulgent. the writing is beyond juvenile in tone and on more than one occasion structurally the sort of thing you'd get marked down for in english class.

i remember the last time we got an overtly bitter and angry record from her, and the general consensus then was that the poses do not suit her.

this is at least sonically more tolerable ... read more

I wanted to rate this higher - it's the long-anticipated follow-up record half a decade after the solid initial single for it, after all, we were all waiting and waiting and waiting.

But this really is two or maybe even three records of wildly varying quality stitched together, with sometimes solid verses and sometimes charismatic execution and occasionally effective production but rarely all at once.

It is still a triumphant return insofar as it is a commercial smash (again, by ... read more

The highest points on this record - the opener, Beautiful Boy, Woman, and Hard Times - may all be Lennon performances, but it is undeniable to me that Ono's tete-a-tete with him and her idiosyncratic style across the LP moves this up from being simply a good album and into being an iconic one. Maybe this is a belief I have because I laboured away at Ono's "Fly", her half of the twin albums, and Two Virgins, but all the same, you develop an ear for things like "Kiss Kiss ... read more

Cheap TikTok bait, she still insists on *that* vocal style as her trademark, and the production is nothing particularly special. I could see this having earworm potential over time, but I'm not altogether impressed with any of the constituent parts here.

Enchanting rhythmic record with smoky and often stirring vocal performances and consistently compelling guitar work. Jagged and an easy glide all at once - the impulse to sway is irresistible, helped in no small part by the seamlessness of the integration of the artist's native Caribbean influences with the blues and the rock of it all.

Tres bien!

The title track has a delicious sunburst quality about it, and the main blue moon hook is entrancing and sincerely pleasant to tap along to - but the house abomination "Pretty Ugly" is structurally reprehensible, with one of the most loathsome choruses of the year.

The LP does not usually rebound much further than mediocrity beyond that point, and I'm uninterested in pretending three solid cuts (one containing a NY Pollard sample) make a particularly quality record. 5.2/10

This must be what entering a nightclub with a spotlight following you feels like. Just effortless glamour.

Sprawling, chaotic, and unyielding: It is not so much presented as the effort of a band as it is a series of string, wind, and keyboard instruments and an unwitting vocalist wound up and set off like souped-up lawnmowers into traffic.

Counterintuitively, this tells a very cohesive story. A story about what it truly even is to be human in a fundamentally inhuman space and time. What it is to long, to fear, to love, to lose, and to be painfully, agonisingly alienated from all that is happening ... read more

With this album, the Purple One would achieve and redefine what it meant to be culturally immortal. A pillar of music and art not just of the decade but of many decades preceding and following it; the deft synthesis of funk, rock, pop, and dance into a sumptuously smooth package recontextualising all its component parts forever.

I have had controversial takes on film, music, and other media in my personal life and on these sites before, but what I'm about to say scares me more than anything else: Though I cannot deny the power behind some of these riffs and the vocal performances (and on that score, "Been Down So Long" is a verifiable masterwork) some of this record is far too staid, beige, and unappetising for me to fully take to it. I found it remarkably inconsistent for an "absolute ... read more

mr lady is stressing me out bad with that coffee spill.

(EP is good enough. Get Off The Internet one of my favourites in their discography in general. Rest sort of unmemorable middling for a Kathleen Hanna project, but that only speaks to her sharp wit and magnetic intensity.more generally)

a very solemn, very affecting set of covers (of his own previously-recorded stuff, and that of others) whose collective thematic focus on death and the lamentation of life is very heavy and all the more beautiful when performed by johnny cash, whose voice was simultaneously 'not where it once was' but for that very reason probably stands as a peak in his long career.

it's an album designed to let his (and sometimes others, eg. f. apple) vocal stylings and delivery really shine, ... read more

Doesn't quite leave the same outsized crater that Pussy Whipped does, but I adore this record all the same.

Wow, you mean the woman famous for an incredibly mid-range + sometimes horny pop album would rush another one of those in a bid to milk as much out of the hype as possible?

Really? You're telling me this now, for the first time?

Anyway, yeah, pass. Nothing on here approaches special. Somehow more dated and played out than her last effort.

Nobody asked you to make it this easy for the critics.

maybe it makes him happy. maybe he's entertained and enthralled by this stuff. but i'm bored.

You know Lindsay Lohan's character in Freaky Friday? You know how she was, like, the most Disney-concept "teen rocker-rebel" ever written? Yeah, this album sounds like it was made by that caricature in 2025, I'm afraid. Maybe after a few years in drama school and a few supervised-glass-of-wine spins of her aunt's old copy of whitechocolatespaceegg.

Pass. Utterly mediocre at best.

"Jack of all trades, master of none" springs to mind when I hear more music from Mr. Gun-Kelly.

Unfortunately, he is neither a jack nor a jill of any trade. He is an incompetent hobbyist, unable to escape the half-assed dribble that has characterised everything in his discography thus far.

What he does develop here is what I will loosely term "a sense of artistic self". This feels more earnest and less like a howling cash-grab than anything he has produced in years. But I ... read more