singer-songwriter
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Birth of Violence‘s stripped back presentation, despite its bewitchingly dark vibe, mostly exacerbates the relatively weak songwriting.
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House of Sugar is sprinkled with some brilliant and beautiful ideas, but is on the whole marred by an unsatisfying flow, dodgy songwriting, and faint lead vocals.
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Lana Del Rey improves as a songwriter by leaps and bounds on NFR.
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David Berman’s wryly depressive (or depressively wry) songwriting seems to have only gotten sharper during his decade away from music.
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Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a wonderfully charming singer-songwriter project held back by a somewhat bloated tracklist.
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In League with Dragons is missing just about everything that has made past Mountain Goats albums so great.
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Mac DeMarco pares his songwriting down to something more minimal on Here Comes the Cowboy, losing a lot of personality along the way.
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Though it occasionally suffers from overambition, the jazzy I Also Want to Die in New Orleans is another helping of admirable personal and social commentary from Mark Kozelek.
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Quiet Signs is a meager helping of Jessica Pratt’s pretty and subtly psychedelic style of folk songwriting.
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Panda Bear’s latest solo outing sees his psychedelic brand of surreal folk submerged under an ocean of cascading delays and nautical vibes.
