Nevermen
Ever since introducing himself to the world with Faith No More’s The Real Thing in 1989, Mike Patton has been defined by near-superhuman levels of vocal dexterity and a creative restlessness that borders on ADHD, trying everything from avant-garde composition to Italian opera to the surf rock-death metal hybrids of…
M:FANS / Music for a New Society
Like many musicians, John Cale tends to excel in collaboration – see the Dream Syndicate, the Velvet Underground, albums with Nico, duets with Terry Riley and Brian Eno, and production for the Stooges, the Modern Lovers and Patti Smith. Cale’s 1982 LP Music For A New Society, however, was a…
Wild Stab
When Nineties alt-rocker Juliana Hatfield started working with Paul Westerberg last year, she soon realized that much of the Replacements singer’s greatest work remained unreleased. “She brought a lot of this to life that otherwise would have just sat down in the basement and sort of rotted,” the notoriously reclusive…
The Astonishing
Subtlety and economy aren’t words that typically come to mind when pondering a new Dream Theater album, much less one that arrives in the form of a double-disc epic with 34 tracks spanning two-and-a-half hours. Yet counterintuitively, those qualities help the veteran prog-metal quintet’s 13th album, The Astonishing, live up to its…
Human Ceremony
Listening to the debut album from Brooklyn trio Sunflower Bean is a bit like flipping through some smart stoner’s impeccably refined record collection. All the correct drone-rock references are present: the Velvet Underground at their beachiest, the Autobahn liftoff of vintage Seventies Kraut-rock, the Eighties drug-punk of Spaceman 3, recent…
Anti
For much of 2015, repeated delays and a lack of solid information started to make Rihanna’s Anti feel like pop’s mythical creature. Now that we know it’s real, we can hear the singer’s eighth LP for what it is: a sprawling masterpiece of psychedelic soul that’s far more straightforward than its…
All I Need
“When I look at you, the drums all start beating,” Foxes sings on “Amazing,” just before she loses control of her wild heart and a swirl of strings, background voices and handclaps carry her skyward. There’s really no fire that Foxes thinks can’t be improved by the addition of gasoline….
Don’t You
Wet get one moment right — perfect, really — then stretch it out into an entire album on Don’t You. The Brooklyn trio’s debut draws power from a softly lurching weightlessness, the few seconds of suspended animation when the whole world falls away and you have few seconds of peace before gravity…
The Ghosts of Highway 20
With blowsy, parched vocals, languorous tempos, straggly melodies and flyaway guitar lines, Lucinda Williams’ 12th album feels a little like an alt-country picture of Dorian Gray. You could also call it a portrait of the artist as an older woman: time-scarred, unapologetic, but still potent. Yeah, it’s literary; yeah, it’s…
Wonderful Crazy Night
Elton John opens his 32nd studio album by looking back in delight. “Some things you don’t forget/Some things just take a hold,” he sings with relish in the title song, a jaunty recollection of lasting love at first sight. The music framing that glee – “Loose clothes and a cool,…
Islah
On his major-label debut, Baton Rouge rapper Kevin Gates is not afraid to be as flashy, daring and intense as he was on the five acclaimed mixtapes he’s released since 2013. He’s a rapper’s rapper, a lyrical Evel Knievel without any desire for a cloying pop crossover; it should be mentioned…
Heaven Adores You
For an artist who inspired as intense devotion, and was as prolific, as Elliott Smith, it comes as some surprise that the Portland singer-songwriter’s archive – chock-full of unreleased songs, fascinating demos and illuminating alternate takes – hasn’t been excavated more thoroughly over the years. Arriving nearly a decade after the posthumous compilation…
Majid Jordan
Majid Al Maskati and Jordan Ullman are merchants of mood. Performing together as Majid Jordan – Al Maskati sings, Ullman produces – the Toronto duo helped write and produce Drake’s 2013 hit “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” a pop confection that was really a deep house track at its core. That song…
Let Me Get By
With the Allman Brothers retired, the jam scene’s southern division needs a new top dog, and the TTB sound like it here. They’re no Xerox: Guitar hero Derek Trucks has a bit more freedom than the Allmans provided – see the dreamy raga-style acoustic coda (“Swamp Raga for Holzapfel, Lefebvre,…
Is the Is Are
As soon as one shoegaze revival ends, another one starts up. While many in the latest generation are content to pile on tons of effects to make up for bland songwriting, Brooklyn pedal-board hoarders DIIV’s second album finds them eager to prove there’s more to them than ambience. Many of…
Down to My Last Bad Habit
Vince Gill is an encyclopedia of country tradition, whether he’s reviving western swing with the Time Jumpers, producing new standard-bearer Ashley Monroe, or wrapping his Oklahoma high tenor around “Sad One Comin’ On (Song for George Jones)” – a note-perfect honky-tonk weeper about the king of honky-tonk weepers. That’s the…
Pool
“How many more of these sad songs can one boy write?” Aaron Maine asked on an early release in 2011. It was almost like he was giving himself a dare. He’s written a boatload of sad songs over the last few years (as Porches and under other aliases) – good…
Khalifa
Will Khalifa be the Wiz Khalifa album listeners make it all the way through? Perhaps, but it won’t be an especially memorable task. Even as the Pittsburgh rapper builds on the darker, trap-influenced vibe of 2014’s Blacc Hollywood, his lyrics cling to the themes that have worked for him in the past: his success and…
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