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:…
Ungodly Hour is a bawdy, welcomingly weird, and fitting breakout for the immensely talented Chloe x Halle. Sisters and R&B chanteuses, Chloe and Halle Bailey have kept it lowkey despite their entanglements with the Beyonce, ABC, and Disney brand (Oh, how these have all amalgamated…
While most of us have turned inward this year, Fleet Foxes have opened back up. Shore, the follow-up to their impenetrable, depressive third album, the long-awaited Crack-Up, cut the incubation period in half and delivered the most drastic departure from the trajectory of their…
During their ten-year stint as a recording band, Pavement showcased a talent for evolutionary steps with markedly small adjustments. On paper, there are a lot of commonalities between Slanted & Enchanted — their lo-fi, noisy 1992 debut album, plenty canon-worthy in its own right —…
America has a sickness, and Upright Comedy Brigade alumni Dawn Luebbe and Jocelyn DeBoer have contracted and spread the disease with their absurdist suburbia horror-satire Greener Grass. The feature adaptation of the SXSW award-winning short of the same name sees Luebbe and DeBoer donning…
It often seems like we’ve let Lana Del Rey down at every turn. But she’s always been patient enough to wait for us to come around to her side of things — and kind enough to not hold a grudge against those who don’t…
Noise can be cathartic. For Kristin Hayter, noise can even be a form of salvation. Caligula, Hayter’s latest album — released under the name Lingua Ignota — serves as a punishing retribution. To listen to this cacophonous symphony is to be indoctrinated into a…
