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Underscores Wallsocket Review: Electrifyingly Unpredictable Tales of American...
April Harper Grey, a.k.a. Underscores, puts a bratty, intentionally jarring spin on hyperpop, with funk basslines, dubstep wobbles, and trap beats that at times feel like eclecticism for its own sake....
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Hannah Diamond Perfect Picture Review: The Woman Inside the Machine
Over the past decade, A. G. Cook’s hyperpop label PC Music has helped change the face of pop. And yet, one of the company’s final new releases, British singer Hannah Diamond’s Perfect Picture, is...
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Poppy Zig Review: A Clever Gimmick That’s Slipping into Predictability
Genre-shifting YouTube star turned pop singer Poppy’s fifth studio album, Zig, merges darkwave and industrial metal, a concoction that relies far more on electronics than guitars. The first half of the...
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Aesop Rock Integrated Tech Solutions Review: An Album That Finds Its Own Beat
Aesop Rock’s Integrated Tech Solutions may be a sci-fi concept album, beginning with an opening interlude about a company promising “lifestyle and industry-specific explanations designed to curate a...
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Peter Gabriel i/o Review: A Heartfelt Album Muted by a Splintered Presentation
The concept behind Peter Gabriel’s first album of original material in 21 years, i/o, feels strikingly contemporary. Over the last year, the veteran singer-songwriter has dropped a new song each month,...
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Future Islands People Who Aren’t There Anymore Review: Bombastic Synth-Pop...
Like the National’s Matt Berninger, Future Islands frontman Samuel F. Herring sounded jaded and long in the tooth years before he actually was. Part of the appeal of songs like the Baltimore band’s...
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Angry Blackmen The Legend of ABM Review: Uneasy Listening
“When I blow up, I’m gonna go nuts,” Quentin Branch declares on “Stanley Kubrick,” a track from Angry Blackmen’s The Legend of ABM. The Chicago-based experimental hip-hop duo’s beats are distorted and...
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Chelsea Wolfe She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She Review: Gothic Sturm...
Chelsea Wolfe’s music is heavy. Whether it’s the neofolk of her early releases or the doom metal of 2017’s Hiss Spun, the singer-songwriter’s work is always immersed in gothic touches. Wolfe’s seventh...
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Mary Timony Untame the Tiger Review: Wildly Direct and Single-Minded Rock
Mary Timony’s Untame the Tiger is notable for its layered and decisively foregrounded acoustic and electric guitars. The classically trained singer-songwriter made her name in the 1990s as part of the...
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Gouge Away Deep Sage Review: Short of a Gut Punch
With its breakneck pace, 90-second songs, and rants against animal testing, Gouge Away’s 2016 debut, Dies, placed the band’s sound squarely within the hardcore template. But the band’s range of...
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Empress Of For Your Consideration Review: An Artist Finds Her Voice
Empress Of’s For Your Consideration is a celebration of Lorely Rodriguez’s voice as both an artist and vocalist. Where a similar artist might use synth pads as musical accompaniment, Rodriguez inserts...
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Couch Slut You Could Do It Tonight Review: Letting the Blood Flow
Couch Slut’s aesthetic was firmly established on their debut album, My Life as a Woman, the cover of which featured a black-and-white drawing of a man ejaculating onto a woman’s face. Leandro De...
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Fat White Family Forgiveness Is Yours Review: Shock Rock with a Side of...
Fat White Family are arguably best known for their on-stage nudity and confrontational use of Nazi imagery in their work. Their 2019 album Serfs Up!, however, found the South London provocateurs...
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Camera Obscura Look to the East, Look to the West Review: Making Small Steps
Camera Obscura’s sound has rarely ventured beyond small variations on twee, reverb-soaked indie pop, and Look to the East, Look to the West—the Scottish band’s first studio album since 2013’s Desire...
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Orville Peck Stampede: Vol. 1 Review: A Slip of the Mask
Following the postponement of his 2023 tour for health-related reasons and his departure from Columbia Records, Orville Peck attempts something of a reset with Stampede: Vol. 1. A seemingly...
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Vince Staples Dark Times Review: A Hip-Hop Memoir Haunted by the Past
“Fans say they want 2015 Vince,” Vince Staples says on “Etouffée,” a track from his sixth studio album, Dark Times. While the SoCal rapper’s career is an undeniable success story, far removed from his...
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$uicideboy$ ‘New World Depression’ Review: A Hard Pill to Swallow
Rappers $crim and Ruby da Cherry, the duo known as $uicideboy$, are both recovering opioid addicts, and they treat their battles with drugs, depression, and suicidal ideation as a flex. Not to put too...
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Loma ‘How Will I Live Without a Body?’ Review: Living in a Corporeal World
Austin trio Loma has never really sounded like a live band, often reliant on overdubbing multiple instruments to create their singular sound. Nor have they limited themselves to standard rock...
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Review: As Johnny Blue Skies, Sturgill Simpson Takes a ‘Passage du Desir’
Sturgill Simpson has always chafed at the boundaries of neotraditional country, from covering Nirvana on 2016’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth to delving headlong into ZZ Top-style blues-rock on 2019’s...
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Review: With ‘King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2,’ Denzel Curry Lets Loose
Denzel Curry’s King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 serves as a sequel to the Miami rapper’s 2012 mixtape, which he recorded as a teen when he was part of the proto-SoundCloud-rap collective Raider...
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