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…
Even the simple moments of Bruno Pernadas’ latest release are treated with care and originality, leading to an album that constantly surprises. On his fourth album, Private Reasons, Portuguese songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Bruno Pernadas reunites with collaborators old and new to craft an audacious psychedelic pop…
Squid’s debut LP is an unhinged, dancey slice of punk that suggests still further untapped talent for the group. Following in the country’s decades-long tradition and its contemporary nationalistic shift, something oft, probably incorrectly, labeled post-punk is clearly having a moment in England. Squid,…
Menneskekollektivet is a heady, carefully-calibrated study of and gorgeous exercise in the act of creation. “In the beginning, there is no word, and no ‘I’ / In the beginning, there is sound / In the beginning, we create with our mouths” prolific Norwegian singer…
For the time time is a singular, thrilling (re)birth for Black Country, New Road. Duh-dum, go the bass and the drums, starting in unison on “Instrumental” — the opening track off Black Country, New Road’s debut album, For the first time — and so, in…
Róisín Machine is both a reflective and future-facing album of pure electro-pop, dance-party dynamism. “I feel my story’s still untold, but I’ll make my own happy ending,” Róisín Murphy begins, sexily, huskily speaking against strings on “Simulation.” It’s a striking, honest statement from an…
DISCO is a breezy, light album that revels in the familiar, sticky hooks that have made Kylie’s career. Kylie Minogue, a trusted spokesperson of the dance floor, heard the disco call and answered it — again. After her divisive foray into country-pop with 2018’s Golden,…
Cruelly and ironically, 2020 marked a grand return of disco: legends, Kylie and Róisín, and newcomers, Dua and Jessie, all donned their diva regalia in a best effort to get us on the dance floor. Only Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? really makes much…
Phil Elverum continues to write his sonic autobiography with Microphones in 2020, a delicate, Proustian journey through his memories. The unfolding biography of Phil Elverum’s life — which he has for years been telling under his Mount Eerie moniker, most exceptionally in a trilogy…
Inner Song reflects a continued evolution for Owens and a further distillation of a sound that’s becoming recognizably her own. Kelly Lee Owens wears a lot of hats on her stylish, sleek second album Inner Song, an inviting tech house-pop record connected by a vibe:…
