On “Tantrum,” one of the most visceral moments from Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, the 56-year-old growls, “Oh, y’all forgot I ain’t new with the pen/First hip-hop Grammy, I’ll do it again.” With an album as trite as this one, that’s hard to imagine, but that …
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A year after her powerful Eternal Sunshine, Ariana Grande still can’t let go of the lingering romantic dreams and bitter nightmares she was exploring in those songs. In her self-described “really vulnerable concept album,” she set out to make her answer to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, in a hazy psychedelic …
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Back in the 1880s, magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin used to stun his audiences with a trick he called “The Marvelous Orange Tree.” It was all very complicated, but, in the end, resulted in a lady’s handkerchief bursting out of the titular plant, held aloft by butterflies. There’s also fire involved. …
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Most bands don’t make it. When the world shut down months after Seattle indie rockers Great Grandpa released their 2019 album Four of Arrows — a big step forward from their debut that merged considered songcraft with sugary riffs — it seemed like an ominous sign for a still-rising young …
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“I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon,” Lucy Dacus confesses in “Limerence,” one of the highlights from her fourth album Forever Is a Feeling. It’s a twisted supper-club piano ballad where she’s munching popcorn with friends who smoke weed and play Grand Theft Auto. But the Virginia indie-rock troubadour …
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Here’s a toast to the happy couple. For Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, turning their love story into an album is the least they could do. I Said I Love You First is a valentine that delivers exactly what it promises — a pop icon and a superstar producer celebrating …
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My Morning Jacket have occasionally been tagged a jam band, albeit one that exists on the less slapstick-y end of the jam spectrum. But they’ve also often been at their best when compacting their rangily spiritualist 21st century Southern rock into digestible studio servings. That is definitely the case with …
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Pictoria Vark is the spoonerism alias of the young singer-songwriter Victoria Park, who turned heads with her 2022 debut album The Parts I Dread. She aims even higher on her excellent Nothing Sticks — it’s the perfect springtime road-trip indie-rock album you didn’t realize you deserved, full of soft-spoken guitar …
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Saba and No ID are two legends of Chicago hip-hop, from two different generations. Saba is the cerebral rap poet who made his name with corrosively pained classics like 2018’s Care for Me and 2022’s Few Good Things. No ID, the “Godfather of Chicago Hip-Hop,” has spent his life making …
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Forty-seven tracks into Rush 50 — a new career-spanning anthology presenting 50 songs across nearly five hours — a cool sonic Easter egg arrives. Near the beginning of “Headlong Flight,” a track from Rush’s final studio album, 2012’s Clockwork Angels, Alex Lifeson plays a slashing solo-guitar break, which Geddy Lee …
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