Old Maybe - "Piggity Pink" | Album Review
Bad History Month - "Dead And Loving It: An Introductory Exploration of Pessimysticism" | Album Review
It holds both a singular vision and an array of contradictions, which build to create a sprawling record that is easily the band’s most polished. I’m not sure if there’s a way to classify Dead and Loving It within any narrative-- as either nihilistic or hopeful, as triumphant or a downer -- a complication which ultimately gives weight and grace to the band’s first full-length in four years.
Dark Mtns - "Dark Mtns II" | Album Review
Pope - "True Talent Champion" | Album Review
True Talent Champion, Pope’s overdue follow-up to Fiction, presents the bleak, fractured narrative currently facing the contemporary rock band. In addition to Skalany and Seferian coordinating individually-penned songs, the duo—with Atticus Lopez on drums—overcome the variabilities inherent in balancing songwriting and touring as members of an additional band as well as their respective solo projects
Treadles - "Bees Are Thieves Too" | Album Review
Heaters - "Matterhorn" | Album Review
The Effects - "Eyes to the Light" | Album Review
Sleater-Kinney - "Live In Paris" | Album Review
Weaves - "Wide Open" | Album Review
Wide Open dims the manic lights of the rambunctious Weaves the world knew only a year ago, and this restraint proves necessary. A main theme of the album is the need for change; discussing its hardline, vital subject matter over arrangements as cartoonish as those on Weaves might have undermined Burke’s points.
St. Vincent - "Masseduction" | Album Review
Zula - "6 Passes" | Album Review
It’s a respectable challenge to describe Zula’s songs with anything other than abstractions: swirling, enveloping, trippy, blissful. 6 Passes feels somewhat more tangible, thanks primarily to a slight uptick in production quality; at their root, though, these are still loose journeys towards some higher state.
Ty Segall Band - "Slaughterhouse" (Reissue) | Album Review
Ada Babar & Kasra Kurt - "Nino Tomorrow" | Album Review
Splits can do many things for the artists who collaborate on them. They can give the chance to complement each other’s sound, highlight each other’s differences, or collectively explore a particular direction. On Ada Babar (Faun and a Pan Flute) and Kasra Kurt’s (Palm) Nino Tomorrow, we find two prolific musicians somehow doing all three simultaneously.
The North Country - "In Defense of Cosmic Altruism" | Album Review
Impalers - "Cellar Dweller" | Album Review
Melkbelly - "Nothing Valley" | Album Review
Sports / Plush - "Split" | Album Review
Radiator Hospital - "Play The Songs You Like" | Album Review
Radiator Hospital’s delightful and vital new album Play The Songs You Like, like many of the best records, functions as a companion for aging amidst the current malaise. Beyond being an exceptional rock album, it is a deeply sentimental look at what happens in any life, from a band that has always excelled on such a minutely grandiose level.
