To make it easier to navigate their expansive archives, Pitchfork has created the Reviews Explorer, an interactive tool designed to help you discover new albums, rediscover old ones. Type an artist’s name into the search bar, select that artist from the dropdown menu, and see their reviews, plus reviews of similar artists, arranged by rating in a graphic interface. You can also filter the results to show which album recommendations are designated as “Best New Music” releases, and sort reviews by date.

"Far from impenetrable, the record carries listeners along on sandstorms of driving, infectious rock and roll" - RIFF Magazine reviews the new album by the Touareg guitarist (gave it 9 of 10 stars). Pitchfork branded it Best new music (grade 8.4), arguing it "captures the group’s easy chemistry and explosive energy". Rolling Stone goes idealistic in its review: "This is how free rock & roll should sound". Uncut is equally enthusiastic: "An exhilarating band set that mixes electric and acoustic instrumentation, it’s at once fiercely modern and as ancient as the Niger river". DJ Mag chose it as their Album of the month.

"Their elaborate and very loud efforts to build tension, achieve overwhelming catharsis, and write their most memorable melodies yet feels more like a conversation with a medium they love. It doesn’t hurt that their newfound transparency makes the music feel refreshingly human and relatable" - Pitchfork reviews the new album by the elusive hipster-hardcore band The Armed (tagged it Best New Music, grade 8.2). 'Ultrapop' is also Stereogum's Album of the Week, described as "punishing, bombastic, catchy, genuinely surprising collection of songs... It sounds like everything hitting at once. It rules so hard". Treblezine appreciates the album's "juxtaposition of delicate dream pop and metal".

"The band’s debut album arrives fully formed, ready to evacuate the contents of your brain and replace them with the odd images, bizarre obsessions, vivid sense memories, and banal judgements that live rent-free in the mind of another" - Pitchfork writes in its review of Dry Cleaning's 'New Long Leg'. Guardian deems it a "work of a terrifically focused group... a debut to be excited about". Exclaim like the paradox of it - "record that absorbs and spits back the unending noise of the world and asks that you take a second look, every common thing somehow made brand new".

"It is a statement about the beauty of slowing down, of not worrying about what you say and instead focusing on how you feel" - Pitchfork writes Lost Girls' 'Menneskekollektivet’, the debut LP from the Norvegian duo Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden. Sonically, it's "a dance record, a heady cocktail of muted drum machines and hypertrophied synthesizers", while its "inherently unfinished quality makes it feel naturalistic, deeply human". Beats Per Minute argues 'Menneskekollektivet' is "a fun time; an unorthodox album that borders on a million genres and commits to none".

'Promises' is a collaborative project by producer Floating Points, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra, but the one holding it together is - "Sanders, his warm tone and fluid technique undiminished even at 80 years old, listening to his surroundings and finding brilliant patterns to stitch the work together and thus elevate it", as Pitchfork hears it (tagged it Best new music also). The New York Times appreciates the unity of it: "When [Sanders] plays his final notes of the album... he does not so much disappear as become one with Shepherd’s web of humming synthesizers".

'Ignorance' is bliss
February 08, 2021

Critics really like new Weather Station

Rave reviews of new album 'Ignorance' by The Weather Station who made a u-turn from indie-rock singer-songwriter to alter synth-pop. Pitchfork tagged it Best New Music (9.0) due to "unforgettable moments of calm and beauty". Guardian gave it perfect 5 stars - "quietly revolutionises an old, familiar trope – the pop album about heartbreak, co-starring piano and strings – and makes it a rallying cry for our time". Brooklyn Vegan says "she's explicitly making the case that ignorance is not bliss, not anymore, but musically, artistically, 'Ignorance' is a thoughtful, transportive and genuinely moving call to action".

Microphones released their first new album in 17 years, 'Microphones in 2020', today, comprised of one, 44-minute song, that comes with a beautiful one-shot still video. It is a slide-show of 800 printed photos of band's leader Phil Elverum's childhood and touring years, accompanied by the lyrics to the songs (watch/listen to it here). Critics like the album a lot: Stereogum branded it their Album of the Week because "he weaves together vast metaphysical explorations and minute personal memories"; Pitchfork branded it Best new music (grade 8.5) for exploration of "artmaking, self-mythologizing, and what it means to bear witness to one’s own existence and transformations"; Exclaim goes philosophical and poetical on us: "This is Elverum's indelible stamp of style, distilled into a single track that flows like waves in the ocean or hills on the mountainside".

"It’s Haim as we haven’t quite heard them before: not just eminently proficient musicians, entertainers, and 'women in music', but full of flaws and contradictions, becoming something much greater" - Pitchfork argues in favor of the third album by the three California sisters. Other critics like it as much: "Haim take us through a dark place and they do it frankly. But they never let the momentum dip. And they never lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel" - Independent; "Experimental, soothing and vulnerable; it’s a thing of great beauty" - NME; "Richly searching, explosively produced third album" - Guardian.

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