"A wide-eyed, curious creature, willingly alert to the world" - Guardian says about the new album by UK folk-rock band Red River Dialect. Other critics like it a lot as well: "Thoughtful compositions that mix straightforward observation with naturalistic imagery & philosophical inquiry" – Uncut Magazine: "Beatific [but] thrillingly combustible. Morris’s earnest tones crack with loss. A […]
"The album is named after Howard’s sister, who died at 13 after being diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer. It was Jaime who first taught Brittany to write a song, and now she’s writing her most unyielding and vulnerable ones, songs about coming to terms with personal identity, guarded secrets, spiritual and social […]
Singer/rapper Sampa The Great released her first solo debut album "the breathtaking 'The Return'. On it, she manages to fuse the music and cultures of just about all the places she’s lived. There’s traditional South African folk, tribal music, and slang, along with Afrobeat, American hip hop, jazz, soul, funk, R&B, spoken word, and more"; she […]
"It’s a bold, confident new introduction to an already-established band, and it’s not everyday that you see a band drastically reshape their sound and get heavier in the process" - Brooklyn Vegan says in review of Microwave's new album. They went from indie-rock from their first two albums to alt-rock at their newest, and - "the depth […]
"His rapping remains his greatest tool. JPEG is an impish writer and an athletic vocalist. He can slither in and out of rhythms and hopscotch through the densest arrangements without losing momentum. Here, he raps in compact spurts, volleys, and streams, his words slurred, stretched, and compressed as he channels his heroes and roasts his […]
'Memory' is first Vivian Girls album in eight years, the first since the band members all moved from New York to Los Angeles, "from a city with constant motion to a city defined by static sun", and the "band is as good as they ever were, and maybe even a little better". Stereogum chose it […]
Norwegian avant-garde artist Jenny Hval has a new album out, called 'The Practice of Love', and the critics like it a lot: "If she’s often felt to have been speaking from on high, Hval has never been more purely human" - The 405; "transcendental beauty" - The Independent; "some fierce poetry and song" - Clash Music; […]
"Mike Patton and Jean-Claude Vannier have made an album enjoying a long distance bromance... They seem to have come from across the decades, and from different musical cultures and milieu", the Quietus says about 'Corpse Flower', collaborative album by Faith No More's Mike Patton and French composer Jean-Claude Vannier. But, stil, it's "a production of […]
"Tucker is blessed with a singular croon, one that manages the remarkable feat of being both deadpan and laced with emotion" - the Quietus says in it's review of 'Guild of the Asbestos Weaver', new album by English (not too) experimental musician Alexander Tucker. What stands out the most here is Tucker’s voice - it […]
"'Resonant Body', the new album by DJ and producer Octo Octa, celebrates moments... when temporary intimacy coaxes the bashful into gasping emotion" - Pitchfork says in it's review of new album by American house producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison (gave it grade 7,8 of 10). A nice text about how music binds us together: "She captures that […]
"A collection of exquisite hauntings, songs threaded together by a clawing sense of unease" - Stereogum says about 'House of Sugar', newest album by (Sandy) Alex G, a indie-rock project by American singer-songwriter Alexander Giannascoli. "'House Of Sugar' seems to be about the corrosive quality of the past, the ways addiction or naïveté or inherited trauma […]
"Gentler, but no less powerful, it's a velvet glove on an iron fist. It's fertile ground for Wolfe to rediscover... a Gaia figure of gothic folk metal" - PopMatters reviews about Wolfe's sixth album. "She takes steps away from synthwave and doom, but only in the strictest sense. [Her] creative versatility is on full and […]
This list, made for Brooklyn Vegan by the alt-rock band Microwave, is interesting since it shows how influences on one particular album can vary in terms of genre - here it goes from grunge to hip-hop - and from the almost obscure bands to the most famous ones - Fear Before the March of Flames […]
"No one puts the soul of the Sahara into music so intimately and ingeniously as Tinariwen, and 'Amadjar' is a particularly well-polished jewel" - PopMatters says in it's review of Mali's band new album (gave it 9 of 10 stars). "Their position at the forefront of a cultural movement - the globalization of a music scene often […]
"The convoluted career of Sandro Perri can be seen as an ongoing effort to... make time feel like it’s moving at just the right pace... His records are busy, vibrant, and bursting with life, but aren’t ever in a rush to get anywhere" - Pitchfork chooses nice words for new album by Toronto musician Sandro Perri. This time […]
Katherine Paul identifies as a radical indigenous queer feminist, and on her second album as Black Belt Eagle Scout, this remarkable one-woman band delivers a stirring, low-key version of garage rock/pop folk. 'At the Party with My Brown Friends', as Consequence of Sound says in it's review, is "almost exclusively, sometimes uncomfortably, intimate, probing private places of […]
Chicago chamber pop band the Safes "has grown more sophisticated and nuanced with this collection" swelling from 3 to 19 players for the ride, Pop Matters says. Now they "more often recall the Zombies, the Kinks, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles rather than the Clash or the Jam. What remains intact is the tendency […]
"...Sings exquisitely of freedom and transformation and the wreckage of being alive. It establishes her as one of America’s greatest living songwriters" - Pitchfork chooses American singer's fifth album for their "Best New Music" segment. She's better than ever, P. says - "Lana’s pillars are intact before you even hit play: glamour, eccentricity, the absurd, […]
"A neon-lit, cinematic love letter to Los Angeles, to romance itself, to the sounds of our youth — that is, the sounds that shaped us" - Stereogum writes about Bat For Lashes' fifth album, 'Lost Girls', inspired by Los Angeles, her ’80s childhood, vampire movies and kids movies. "It is not an aggressively retro-sounding album; […]
Critics don't use the word "exciting" describing Tool's new album, for a reason, and, in general, it comes down to 'Fear Inoculum' being just really good music. So: "This is the most intricate and densely-layered album Tool have yet made" - Kerrang; "a languid and blissful work – one that will richly reward future listens" […]
Invisible Oranges made a selection of metal releases for this week, and what really stands out is new album 'No Rising Sun' by Californian atmospheric tech-metal band WRVTH. "With cleaner breakdowns and grander interstellar harmonic odysseys, 'No Rising Sun' represents a stunning maturation of WRVTH’s sound" - IO says, with Sputnik Music saying - "It is an […]
“Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere" - Tropical Fuck Storm guitarist Gareth Liddiard says about band's new album 'Braindrops'. Brooklyn Vegas says they sound "like planet earth 2019 - larger than than life, totally surreal and […]
Brooklyn Vegan says everybody should give a chance to Philly indie rockers Queen of Jeans with their second album 'If you’re not afraid, I’m not afraid': "These songs have still got a modest indie rock backdrop, which sounds sharper than ever thanks to help from go-to punk producer Will Yip, but there’s nothing modest about […]
"The best way to hear 'Like The River Loves The Sea' [is] as the musical complement to the dear friends and the wine, or as the thing that might make us feel a little better while everything comes apart" - Stereogum says about their latest choice for Album of the Week. It's "an album about private rooms […]
California based producer and vocalist Debbie Friday, continues in tradition of merciless industrial-rap experimentalists, and, as Pitchfork puts it, on her new "terrifyingly seductive 'Death Drive' EP, Friday continues to entangle polar Freudian concepts, underscoring the similarities between brutality and desire, love and carnality". Listen to the EP here, and watch the video for 'Fatal' below.
Los Angeles based guitarist and composer Alexander Noice assembled a band of skilled musicians to publish his new album 'Noice', a rich and a demanding listen. PopMatters gave it 9 stars (of 10): "There's Reich-inspired minimalism, highly disciplined math rock, jazz of both the free and fusion types, and art rock that falls somewhere between […]
American rapper Rapsody just released her third album 'Eve', with each song dedicated to one of her heroes -Michelle Obama, Oprah, Egyptian queen Hatshepsut etc. (there's no 'Eve' on the album). Guardian really likes her lyricism and skill - "With a delivery cut from the same cloth as Jay-Z or Lauryn Hill, she’s a storyteller, and counterbalances […]
Compton artist Channel Tres dropped his debut EP, sonically "somewhere between underground dance beats and a totally warped vision of hip hop", with his voice "somewhere between rapping, singing, and speaking, and it’s as bass-y and subdued as the production". His lyrics are "powerful", and "tackle race and sexuality and challenge stereotypes and the status […]
"Trends come and go in the music world, but then there are enduring pioneers who become icons due to their influential style and timeless tunes. The Sun Ra Arkestra is such an outfit, bringing their futuristic sounds to Planet Earth since the 1950s" - PopMatters writes after band's four-night run at the SFJazz Center. "The […]
Jim Marshall was an American photographer, who created iconic images of rock 'n' roll stars, jazz greats, and civil rights leaders. Published nearly ten years after his death, new book 'Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture' is a career-spanning volume that showcases hundreds of photographs: intimate portraits, heady crowd scenes, and haunting street shots evoking […]
