Red Ribbon is an extremely personal album that lacks reluctance with expressing the undertones of the complex feelings within dark romance, sex, and self liberation. Ambient keys, seductive vocals, and jazzy notes surround and compliment Emma’s sharp words expressing the permanence of her actions provoked by heartbreak and a slow escape from delirium.
The first thing you need to know about Chicago’s Bursting is that they are a supergroup. With members of Stress Positions, Thou, C.H.E.W., and Coliseum (among others), it’s safe to say Bursting, on paper, rip. The second thing you need to know about Bursting is you need to see them live, in real life, so quit reading this review.
Thunder Perfect Mind is a loose concept album narrating the sudden abduction of an unsuspecting pedestrian by a dark, expanding cloud. A lesser band would use this conceit as mere metaphor, but Motherhood is fully committed to the bit, creating a lyrical and sonic soundscape that feels as disorienting and exhilarating as a genuine alien encounter.
While Cowards is inspired by the grotesque literature of Haruki Murakami and Ottessa Moshfegh, it's also a clear response to a world in flames. With its charging rhythms and gorgeous melodies, it appears as the band's most impassioned work yet. A demand rather than a cry for its listeners to attempt to defeat their cowardice, and to not ignore the evil in their own lives lest they become it.
This Television Personalities collection of radio performances has a handful of wonderful and deranged nuggets that show the gifts Treacy and the band possessed even through their roughest personal and professional moments. Television Personalities were a band that should have been more recognized for their impact as their colorful songs laid the foundations for many more recognizable successors.
Genuine Dexterity is a release that might have lit the scene on fire and cemented itself as a collaboration arguably more important and revelatory than the others which raised Segal’s profile in years prior. Every song has an earnestly elliptical understanding of hip hop as a sonic and social force in a way few artists in the genre do today.
The Holy Grail: Bill Callahan’s “Smog” Dec. 10, 2001 Peel Session is a modest effort that nonetheless has much to say about both Callahan’s evolution and his consistency. This EP doesn’t rewrite history exactly, but it is revelatory about the contingent steps taken by him as an artist, more apparent in retrospect, thus amounting to a kind of rosebud explaining the move from one chapter to the next.
When Burlington singer-songwriter Greg Freeman quietly dropped I Looked Out, his first record released under his own name, there was little fanfare. Looking back at it two years later, with this new vinyl reissue and a follow-up record seemingly imminent, it stands as a showcase of an exciting songwriter who came out of the gate with a fully realized musical vision and unique lyrical style, and nowhere to go but up.
Cosmic Waves Volume 1 is sort of a compilation. That “sort of” categorization is due to a rarely applied (if done before) concept - a musical dialogue between Angel Olsen and five other artists/bands chosen by her. Side A features the label’s artists while Side B finds Olsen covering songs from their respective catalogs.
