Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

For much of the past decade, Brooklyn rapper billy woods — he stylizes his name in lowercase letters — has reigned as an unlikely hero of left-of-center hip-hop. A protégé of influential Cannibal Ox rapper Vordul Mega, he emerged just as the subterranean New York scene centered around critically lionized …

The third album from British composer-singer-producer Labrinth only clocks in at about 28 minutes, but it’s a megadose of mood. The LP’s darkly hued tracks about love and loneliness come wracked with so much tension it often seems as if like they—and Labrinth himself— fall apart at any moment. Labrinth’s …

Across his two blockbuster albums, Jack Harlow had all the elements of pop-rap superstardom on full display — the chameleonic swagger, the everydude sincerity evidenced by his affinity for namechecking chain restaurants, the puppydog hearththrob confessions, and the phone numbers of the most famous guest rappers in existence. He had …

The National have been so good at producing National songs for so long that it’s been easy to take them for granted. Whenever the Brooklyn indie-rock institution passed a career point at which a lesser band might start breaking down — albums five, six, seven — they just got stronger, …

Jessie Ware’s 2020 release What’s Your Pleasure was one of the early pandemic’s great revelations — a pop album that successfully brought the movement, yearning, and euphoria of the dance club into everyone’s homes. It was a perfect setting for the British singer and songwriter’s voice, luxurious and sophisticated but …

Who would have guessed? Everything But The Girl have returned in one of the year’s most surprising—and welcome—comebacks. The married London duo of Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt quit making music together in 2000, taking time to raise their family while working separately. Fuse is their first collaboration since 1999’s …

Heavy music’s post-lockdown resurgence launched groups like Turnstile and Knocked Loose from VFW halls and church basements into major festivals and arenas. Jesus Piece is next up to make that leap with their new LP, …So Unknown. The group has been busy in the years since the release of their …

Rae Sremmurd are party starters first and foremost. Their 2015 debut, SremmLife, burned bright with blockbuster singles like “No Flex Zone,” “This Could Be Us,” and “No Type,” still club staples to this day thanks to the Tupelo, Mississippi, brothers’ exuberant charisma and Mike WiLL Made-It’s slick production. They were …

Last year, Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday put out a collection of cover songs called Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘em Up. Not only was it the best lawn-care referencing release by a North Carolina band since Superchunk’s classic 1992 single “Mower,” it also served as a killer distillation of …

Yellow and black are the colors of caution signs, fallout shelters, and “Baby on Board” placards — warnings of imminent menace and catastrophe if you don’t get your shit together. So it’s fitting that Metallica would adopt the color scheme for the cover of 72 Seasons, their meditation of sorts …