reviews
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On her sophomore album, Chelsea Wolfe brings together ten pieces of straight up darkness. But what makes the dreary, depressing feelings on this album so palatable is that Wolfe attacks this darkness from multiple angles with noise rock guitars, doom metal riffs, ambient soundscapes, smooth beats, and blood-curdling snarls. While
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On the first track to drop from Feist’s upcoming album, Metals, the instrumentation hits a light groove as the lyrics detail a story about finding a love that was once there. However, all efforts seem to be doomed from the start. The music doesn’t come on hard. It
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On Rival Sons’ sophomore album, the California quartet makes the classic sounds of hard rock and blues rock kind of exciting again. While these dudes are nowhere near as flashy as some of the bands that influence them, they do pull together some really great sounds on this LP. Pressure
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New York’s Cerebral Ballzy have a lot of energy and rage, but I still don’t know what exactly is causing all of it. It’s just my opinion, but I didn’t find much to get enraged over in the lyrics on this album. Being told where to
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This compilation features 15 cuts from a time span of several years in Nigeria’s musical history. It was a time when Phonodisk, a record label looking to engineer hits, started promoting Nigerian bands playing with some sounds that were big in the West at the time: disco and funk.
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While Hudson Mohawke’s new EP isn’t flashy, detailed, or technically impressive, I still have a lot of fun listening to it. For lack of a better word, I think what actually attracts me to the instrumentals on this thing is that they sound, well, dorky! WATCH THE VIDEO
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s debut full-length surprised me in some places, but underwhelmed in others. I love how effortlessly these guys pull together a fun and bouncy salute to the world of 60s rock and pop. It sounds as fresh as it does retro. Where this album really ended up
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Though Blackenedwhite isn’t perfect, it’s definitely a likeable release from this OFWGKTA-affiliated duo. With Hodgy Beats on the mic and Left Brain building the beats, the tracks here offer up a series of fantasy raps about girls, weed, and guns. This is by no means an mind-blower of
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If the rock history books stay accurate, Brooklyn’s They Might Be Giants will go down as being one of the most idiosyncratic bands of all-time–even if that idiosyncrasy seems to wane a little bit on Join Us. This record isn’t completely devoid of fun or flavor. The
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From the forthcoming M83 album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, the track “Midnight City” is a super-sized pop song with synthetic mountains majesty. It’s structured simply, but that doesn’t stop the sounds and energy on this thing from becoming overwhelming. So overwhelming, that dancing must occur. Dance. Please.
