Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

“We watch our lives just fade away,” John Mellencamp sings on Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, his 25th studio album. The grim honesty of the sentiment is striking, almost as striking as the forbiddingly rugged croak of his voice, which now approaches Bob Dylan and Tom Waits territory in its rangy, …

For a certain strain of rap fan, Earl Sweatshirt’s elite lyricism has made him a god among men. But rather than coast on that deification, the California rapper (whose real name is Thebe Kgositsile) has spent his career defying expectations. His response to listeners seeking replays of his 2010 mixtape …

In some ways, a horror-themed album seems like the farthest thing you might expect from the Glasgow band Chvrches, known for iridescent synths and lead singer Lauren Mayberry ’s practically elfin, perennially chipper voice. But on their fourth LP, Screen Violence, Mayberry and band members Iain Cook and Martin Doherty …

Fleet Foxes’ rustic neo-folk music and skybound harmonies loomed large over indie-ish rock in the early 2010s, not unlike the way Arcade Fire touched the mid-2000s or Pavement shaped the Nineties. Their last album, 2017’s correctly titled Crack-Up, was a stranger listen than usual for them, proggily ambitious and often …

With every successful cultural movement, you’re bound to have bandwagon jumpers. As a plurality of reggaetoneros, traperos, and pop singers from across Latin America enjoy unprecedented albeit overdue global success, tourists like DJ Khaled, DJ Snake, and Tyga have inevitably glommed onto their sound, with varying degrees of success. None …

In 2016, Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest cemented his status as an indie rock hero with the superb Teens of Denial. He followed that breakthrough in 2018 with an excellent remake (and slight revision) of Car Seat’s already beloved 2011 album Twin Fantasy, and then last year, dropped a …

After months of buzz and colorful, evocative singles unspooling diasporic disillusionment and the burdens of womanhood, Polaris Prize-winning artist Lido Pimienta has finally unleashed her long-awaited third full-length, Miss Colombia. Describing the album as a series of cynical love letters to her native Colombia, the Toronto-based singer-songwriter contrasts her somber …

Climate change has never been one singular enemy. But the ability to fully comprehend the threat of the climate crisis has become nearly impossible as it grows exponentially worse. You can’t just chalk it up to oil spills or plastic bags (not that you ever could) — the climate crisis …

Kanye West never stopped talking about God. From his breakout “Jesus Walks” to last year’s ye, religion has always been, if not a fixation, than a thematic concern, something to pick at and analyze, to mythologize and aid in his own self-mythologization. While his ninth album, Jesus Is King, is …