"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; […]
“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 […]
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 […]
"Operating as Jay Som’s sole songwriter, engineer, and producer, Melina Duterte has once again come away with a diverse set of songs held together more by her own intangible presence than by stylistic similarities" - Stereogum says in review of second album by Los Angeles indie-pop singer Jay Som. Referencing her family in the album […]
"He’s able to wield the madness with ease, satisfying in many modes... At the core, he’s rapping as good as anyone, like he always has. After years of rappers trying to be the next Young Thug, there’s still only one" - Pitchfork gives a verdict on Atlanta rapper's seventh album 'So Much Fun' (grade 8,4 […]
"Lillie Mae chants and sings non-lexical notes to create an ethereal energy... Captures the fear and beauty typically associated with angelic entities" - PopMatters says about second album by Nashville alt-country singer Lillie Mae. Here's a couple more reviews: "She plays acoustic guitar and fiddle throughout, but keeps her voice front and center, floating effortlessly […]
"Sleater-Kinney is changing, but change shouldn’t be a derogatory term. Changing is growing" - CoS says in a review of Sleater Kinney's new album 'The Center Won't Hold', produced by art-rock queen Annie Clark (St. Vincent), which some fans saw as betrayal. Two leitmotifs of the album is "how danceable it is and how almost […]
Contemporary folk played by the Slovenian band is "densely written and meticulously plotted music, played live on acoustic instruments, apparently without any overdubs", the Guardian states. "The songs (some of them 15 minutes long) are episodic, dreamlike voyages – qawwali-style vocal wailing and medieval drones mutate into free-jazz freakouts; steampunk techno (played on pots, pans […]
"Relentless, almost ruthless in its melodic radiance, both a testament to the power of positive thinking and a poignant reminder of its limitations" - Pitchfork says about their latest choice for Best New Music, third album by Long Island singer-songwriter Jade Lilitri. Lilitri was in an emo band prior to Oso Oso, and you can […]
"Loud, nasty, serrated music, music built on thudding drum machines and squalling sirens and scuzz-rasp vocals and house pianos and distorted guitars" - Stereogum argues their latest AOTW choice (the man behind it, Benjamin John Power made music for the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony). "Innocent music for degraded times... heavy and emotional"; listen to […]
"YBN Cordae is one of the most interesting breakout stars of the year" - High Snobiety says in review of Maryland rapper's first official album 'The Lost Boy'. His style "switches from goofy to street smart to introspective at the drop of a hat", he is open about his emotions - "a heartfelt record", and […]
The London paper decided not to use the term "world music" anymore, since they deemed in derogative, instead all the music that isn't western popular music is "global" now. So, their latest Global album of the month is 'Parted Plains' by the American sitar player Ami Dang, and it's the chosen one for August because […]
It's not really much of a surprise Pitchfork labeled Bon Iver's soon to be published album 'i,i' Best New Music (high mark od 8,8 of 10). Let's see why: "Justin Vernon takes the Bon Iver sound and reassembles it like a cubist collage, with his voice right out front... Vernon himself sings with more texture […]
"These songs are accessible and confidently constructed, with catchy choruses and unfussy execution... The kind of songs that are powerful and uncompromising but, on some deeper level, are just as unsure and vulnerable as the rest of us... Slicing electric guitars, padded synths, and an intoxicating New Wave-adjacent swagger add up to songs that are […]
Technically, Föllakzoid is this: "bass, drums, guitar, locked into a strictly rhythmic 4/4 groove, with occasional slow burning drones and heavily distorted vocals", sonically - "all of Föllakzoid’s music swells and convulses with desert spectres and spirits, it’s music that occupies a world wherein the horizon can never fully be focused on, and all is […]
Polish industrial techno producer Zamilska returns with her third album 'Uncovered', and it's her best yet, the Quietus says. Her intention, tQ feels, is "to create a sense of suspension, to hold you within a moment of tension between outright silence and cavernous booms". Listen to the album at BandCamp.
Californian electronic producer Datach'i made his new record 'Bones' after his father died. He obviously found peace and hope, since album is "Full of gorgeous modular synth work to produce characteristically dreamy, ambient electronics and warm, soothing melodies", as PopMatters says. "A beautifully rendered IDM album with boldly expansive yet gorgeously rendered tracks that offer […]
Two years ago Clairo made a break-out success of YouTube hit 'Pretty Girl', now she has a debut album, 'Immunity' which critics mostly love. Paste Magazine says it's a "smoothly-produced pop record about queer relationships"; Sputnik Music says she's "deep in thought, full of confidence"; Stereogum is simple - "good songs"; Rolling Stone says she […]
There are: Memoriam - band built on ruins of Bolt Thrower, "hitting it right" on third album 'Shell Shock'; French band Grenouille play "brutal death metal in the unceasingly blasty and scuzzy fashion" on 'Les Vierges De Grasse'; Antigone’s Fate's 'Morgengrauen' is "an epic that goes from down and out to soaring above the clouds"; […]
Hayes (with a heroin habit and a heart condition) died at 38 in 1973 before he could distil his skills into something as single-mindedly hefty as John Coltrane, or as capriciously flighty as Ornette Coleman. But 'Grits, Beans and Greens' – made in 1969 just before Hayes’ health declined, long-lost and now finally mastered and […]
"And while the idea of Segall working without a guitar sounds akin to robbing an infant of its blanket, 'First Taste' is still quintessential Segall: shaggy, tripped out, and all over the sonic map" - Consequence of Sound really likes the 13th album the American multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter. "Segall once again makes the various ideas and […]
