Songs for Our Daughter is another in a run of lyrically-precise, sonically-varied Laura Marling efforts. Songs for Our Daughter, Laura Marling’s seventh LP, finds the folk songwriter continuing to explore her femininity, as she did on 2017’s Semper Femina — but here, Marling approaches the…
Petals for Amor finds Hayley Williams at her most vulnerable as a lyricist and most experimental as a musician. If Hayley Williams intended to hide her anxieties behind the primary colors of Paramore’s After Laughter, it yielded the opposite (but nevertheless incredible pop) results. The…
After writing the early blueprint for ’90s R&B, Mary J. Blige laid out her own musical foundations on 1994’s My Life. The influence of hip-hop began to seep into R&B by the end of the ’80s — a period that soon saw Bell Biv…
On Lost Girls, Natasha Khan sounds more free than she has since she completely lay her trust in the arms of another on “Daniel,” the lead single off her 2009 album Two Suns. Interim Bat for Lashes releases have found Khan growing more wary…
Love songs come second nature to Kiki Vivi Lily on her debut full-length, Vivid. Thinking about black coffee leads to the sweet dedication “Caffeine Holic,” addressed to a specific crush who inspired a habit the narrator can’t quite shake: “It’s too late, I’m addicted to…
Tricot pack a lot of musical ideas into a single song — and they unwind or abruptly pause their guitar playing, all based on a sense of intuition. However, the band also prizes economy on their latest five-track EP, a set that’s tightly sequenced…
An interest in outer space has informed both the visual aesthetic and music of Dempagumi.inc over the past year. While the group first appeared as ‘space explorers’ in an even earlier video (for “Girametasu Dempa Stars”), their sixth full-length, Ware Ware Wa Dempagumi.inc Da, re-introduce…
As a title, Hell Like Heaven serves to explain the clashing contradictions that bring about the joys in The Peggies’ music. The Japanese trio’s buzzing, jagged alt-rock riffs are virtually hot to the touch, while their lyrics deal with the soft, almost cheesy expressions…
One baffling segment in BNK48: Girls Don’t Cry sees the Thai version of Japanese girl group AKB48’s “Koisuru Fortune Cookie” — one of the most popular J-pop singles released this decade — being regarded as a potential flop by some members of BNK48, the Thai branch of…
The first taste of the ever-cocky DaBoii’s latest solo project — outside his group, SOB x RBE — came back in May, with “Onna Gang,” a track showcasing an unmistakable Bay Area slap, and one on which the rapper boasts, “90s baby, middle-fingers to the new school.”…
