"While Titus Andronicus have been able to achieve grandiosity without the bombastic self-importance that lesser artists would gravitate towards, 'An Obelisk' is easily their most digestible and contained album yet" - Consequence of Sound writes, and gives ??' B+.
Since B-Vegan is indie-rock loving, it's not your "usual metal" list. They chose German post-rock/black metal of Downfall of Gaia ("bring the punks, the metalheads, and the Explosions in the Sky fans together"), Finnish orchestral-metal collective Waste of Space Orchestra ("use rock instrumentation to create music with movements that echo classical music"), Polish black metal with […]
"The whole album sounds like they have decided to take a small break from the inside of their heads and work their bodies a little bit. There is a much appreciated directness to their production that demands the listener take notice... Plaid may have foregrounded a darker, discordant side to their production, but this has […]
"Leif’s pastel atmospheres frequently give way to deep, chest-quaking drums: layer upon layer of thrumming hand percussion, sub-bass rumble, and sampled kit" - Pitchfork says about Leif's third full length, their latest choice for Best New Music. "The mood he evokes may be blissful, wistful, or simply serene, depending upon the listener’s headspace—but the constantly […]
"He is careful and meticulous, malleable and introspective. His sound totters between drill and pop, sometimes hard, sometimes smooth. Eventually, he blurs the lines between them. All of this is on full display on his brutal, powerful debut, 'Die a Legend'" - Pitchfork says about it's latest Best New Music choice, Chicago rapper Polo G's album.
German electronic producer Robag Wruhme has a new album out 'Venq Tolep' - it covers the "area between home-listening house, ambient, and half-remembered vestiges of IDM. Sometimes it feels like an attempt to fashion a new kind of songwriting, one less dependent upon lyrics than simple human presence", Pitchfork says in a review. "The album’s […]
Where Future Unfolds started life as a solo project for Chicago musician and activist Damon Locks, who used samples from civil rights era speeches and recordings in improvised performances with a drum machine. Over the past four years he gathered a band Black Monument Ensemble, and 'Where Future Unfolds' is a live recording of The […]
"Mariee Sioux is, perhaps, one of the more underrated of the great Nevada City artists, a singer-songwriter with a voice at once like sand, wind, and waves and a knack for conjuring up emotional enchantments in her often nature-inspired lyrics" - PopMatters goes convincingly about the folk artist in general, and then delivers sweet words […]
"'Black Friday' accepts happiness as something that we’re entitled to, that everyone should feel regardless of their situation" - Stereogum says of their latest choice for Album of the Week, third album by American indie-rockers Palehound. Sonically, 'Black Friday' features "pillowy arrangements that sound like something you could fall back on to keep warm".
London alter-rock band Hey Colossus have a new album 'Four Bibles', mainstream media mostly didn't cover it, unlike alternative, who mostly like it: "To come from their Fudgetunnel-channelling inception to something this alive and expansive – and for it to somehow still make sense – is pretty unique" - Narc Magazine. "Hey Colossus cover a […]
'What Nature Gives… Nature Takes Away' is about "rooks, starlings, death, classical myth, Victorian gothic, prog, flowers, cunning women, Japanese monkeys, the North Sea, and West Lancashire", sonically, it's somewhere between prog, psych and punk - the Quietus likes UK's post-punkers The Membranes new album a lot.
"The sound is resolutely American in style and in sound... This pair inhabits these songs so joyfully and effortlessly that anyone begrudging them is to be pitied... This is a direct record to bathe in, full of vivid light and air" - Guardian says about it's latest choice for their Folk Album of the Month […]
Luke Sutherland has played with Long Fin Killie, Mogwai, Hauschka, and with his new project Rev Magnetic has a debut album out, his first new music in thirteen years. 'Versus Universe', the Quietus says, is "loud: a maximalist, stylistically-kaleidoscopic shoegaze album, leavened with trap hi-hats, 808s, vocoder, found sound, violins and trumpets... Spins the dial […]
"They are joyful in their sound and in their energy, and the sparingly but deftly used brass underscores this well. They have made a beautiful confectionary, but one made with rigour, skill, and care" - the Quietus review new album by Scottish guitar pop duo Sacred Paws.
Singer-songwriter Nils Lofgren is a Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young collaborator, and his latest album is partly made off songs he co-wrote with Lou Reed. So, it's relaxing in an old-school rock'n'roll way, middle-of-the-road kind of music. PopMatters says "the album serves not only as a fitting tribute to his late friend and collaborator but […]
NME likes Australian pub-punkers' Amyl and The Sniffers debut album - "Loud and aggressive, for sure, but it’s singer Amy Taylor’s insightful yet chant-worthy lyrics that make this more than just a ear-bleeding exercising... It’s not big, it’s not clever, but it’s a bloody hoot". Atwood Magazine likes it even more - "A ridiculously flawless […]
Beast Coast is the largest collective of New York rappers, taking three members of Flatbush Zombies, all two members of The Underachievers, and Pro Era’s Joey Bada$$, Kirk Knight, Nyck Caution, CJ Fly, and Powers Pleasant, and this week they released their long awaited debut album 'Escape From New York'. All Hip Hop says it's […]
His grandfather was from Bolivia, and his parents liked early jazz and Motown, he looks like an accountant, but instead he sings heartfelt, smooth soul music. He's got a debut album out, 'This Love', and a new video, 'Lonely Girl', with a - girl, mostly naked, getting out of focus. Listen to his album at […]
"For a band who did so well to combine heavy metal thunder with academic minimalism, who would have thought they could produce something so lovely? Every note sounds thoroughly gorgeous" - the Quietus reviews 'Full Upon Her Moving Lips', new album by drone metal pioneers Earth. Listen to the album at BandCamp.
"Faye Webster’s understated, self-deprecating persona almost dares you not to take her seriously... Flanked by mellow electric piano and silky horns and drowsy steel guitar, she applies her gently pleading voice to tales of soul-wrenching pain" - Consequence of Sounds reviews 'Atlanta Millionaires Club' by Atlanta indie-folk singer-songwriter. Paste Magazine talked to her about how […]
"The sound of the band is a clearly defined one, characterized by a flair for using subtle, minimalist electronics and delicate organic instrumentation to frame soft... A wonderfully accomplished and understated album which sees the band furthering their own, distinctive sound" - PopMatters gives 8 points (od 10), to Drinker's debut album 'Fragments'. The band […]
"It’s music for a nightclub in a moon colony. It’s music for a retro-futuristic recreation of an Eastern Europe metropolis that never quite existed. It’s music for an encroaching dystopia... It bursts forth with confidence, dancing between strange textural details and bold melodies effortlessly" - Stereogum writes about their latest choice for Album of the […]
"In the midst of a golden age of female indie rockers whose lyrics cut you to the quick as you’re cutting a rug, Lahey stands out for her versatility. With buoyant wit, she rolls with the changes and delivers a lucid, omnivorous perspective that’s all her own" - Consequence of Sound reviews second album by […]
"A seven-piece band from Soweto, they have shaken up the South African music scene by mixing the ancient and modern with a real sense of danger, matching bass and percussion against furious, chanting Zulu vocals" - the Guardian reviews new album by BCUC, 'The Healing'. There are only three tracks on the album, listen to […]
"The band’s blend of technical death metal feels as ruthless as it is calculated, making for a fascinating record. As we are entering the halfway point of 2019, 'Sociopathic Constructs' can surely be considered one of the heaviest records of the year thus far. One way to think of the album is as a work of well-crafted […]
"With an arsenal of synthesizers, drum machine, sparse electric guitar, and a skeptic’s pen, he builds a plodding dystopian story of living death stoked by internet anti-reality, big pharma conspiracy, and environmental apocalypse" - Pitchfork reviews new album by minimalist folk singer-songwriter A.A. Bondy. 'Enderness' is his first in eight years, and PopMatters discusses the […]
Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan died last year, in the middle of making of band's new album, leaving all her taped vocals on a disc drive. 'In The End' is out now, and Consequence of Sound says it's a "lovely final statement, one that honors their shared legacy as unlikely alternative rock giants". The Skinny calls […]
"Electronic music can echo genuine emotional experiences - often by combining the organic and the synthetic. In the case of Model Man, their heartfelt, often profoundly beautiful electronic music, features the piano as its beating heart with all the arterial electronics and ventricular beats coursing from it" - PopMatters reviews new album by UK band. […]
"The album is a perfectly curated, succinct, and poignant picture of being a woman, and its effectiveness is a result of the full three years she took to perfect it" Consequence of Sound reviews third album by American r'n'b singer Lizzo. 'Cuz I Love You' is "purposefully compact, genre-blending, unifying, reaffirming, devoid of corniness... Lizzo […]
"'Oh My God' is an album of seeking and discovering, of affirming and negating, loss and redemption, of musical and spiritual exploration, tribute and invention, and often of running to stand still in an act of extended meditation. This ambition is both exhilarating and enervating and not everything works, but it is impossible not to […]
