Dark in Here puts The Mountain Goats on a welcome new wavelength, opening a door for future sonic possibilities. The Mountain Goats, the ever-prolific quartet led by multi-hyphenate John Darnielle, returns with another album hot on the tail of an active release cycle. Recorded near…
With Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast make a personal and social statement, proving indie rock doesn’t have to be tepid and stodgy. For the last couple of years, big Internet music press has been hellbent on selling us this notion that indie rock is still the most…
Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land isn’t MARINA’s strongest album lyrically, but sonically it’s still a fun listen. Marina (stylized as MARINA) is not the same girl you remember from her 2012 breakout album Electra Heart. Latching onto tumblr-tinged politics and the divine feminine — though Marina’s…
Home Video doesn’t have a distinct crescendo, but is still full of vulnerable gems that fans of Dacus will love. Now that Lucy Dacus has been inducted into the mainstream on the heels of two solo LPs and her boygenius supergroup with fellow wunderkinds Julien Baker and…
Though showing continued growth after his departure from Vampire Weekend, Rostam’s sophomore effort produces mixed — but still pleasant — results. Formerly of Vampire Weekend fame, Rostam returns with his sophomore solo record after a massive and successful two years producing and contributing to albums for…
Despite a few blips, Cavalcade asserts Black Midi as some of rock’s most exciting inventors. Wunderkind British rock band Black Midi has returned with the hotly anticipated follow-up to their debut album, Schlagenheim, which was a singular vision of madness. Scrapping nearly all of…
Blood will be a familiar record for Hatfield fans, but one wholly reinvigorated by the artist’s response to the recent sociopolitical landscape. Keeping her prolific streak going, Juliana Hatfield returns with the devilishly-titled Blood, a follow-up to her previous record of original content, Weird, and…
Course in Fable is Ryley Walker’s second superb effort of 2021, vastly different than his first but no less affecting. After a massively successful independent release earlier in the year, Ryley Walker returns with Course in Fable, a sprawling folk album drenched in the…
Giddens and Turrisi’s latest collab is an intimate, interior record that beautifully blurs its sonic lines. Rhiannon Giddens may not be the only musician who recorded an album during lockdown, but she may be one of the best-suited for such a project. For one…
Sweep It Into Space is more self-aware tinkering than substantial reinvention, but it affirms that the rockers suitably understand their own strengths. At this point, it’s hard to envision the version of Dinosaur Jr. that became so fractured by the end of the 1990s.…
