Becoming an adult ultimately means accepting one's imperfections, unimportance, and mortality, but that doesn't mean we stop striving for the ideal, a search that's so at the center of our very being that our greatest works of art celebrate it, and often amplify it....
After a long break from making Tame Impala music, during which time Kevin Parker produced other people's albums and played in side projects, 2015's Currents shows that much has changed with the project...
A convincing argument that rock & roll doesn't need reinvention in order to revive itself, Courtney Barnett's full-length debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. falls into a long, storied rock tradition but never feels beholden to it...
On 2012's Fear Fun, Josh Tillman introduced audiences to Father John Misty, a jaded and erudite, faux-bohemian retro-pop confectioner with a strong surrealist bent and an aptitude for capturing the American zeitgeist via wry couplets concerning the culturally and morally ambiguous wasteland of southern California...
Nothing truly prepares anyone for the loss of a parent. No matter how aware one may be about the realities of disease and death, no matter what their attitude about their mother or father, experiencing the passing of the person who brought them into this world hits hard and deep, and the survivors are left to come to terms with their pain in their own ways...
Compared to Jamie xx's impact on music, it's easy to forget that he hasn't released much on his own. The distinctive yet surprisingly versatile blend of indie, R&B, and dance in his work with the xx, Gil Scott-Heron, and his remixes helped shape the sound of the late 2000s and 2010s, but his solo discography was limited to a handful of singles, many of which appear on his first full-length, In Colour...
Perhaps it was inevitable that Sleater-Kinney would reunite. They parted ways in 2006 claiming that it was a hiatus, not a dissolution, thereby leaving the door open for a comeback -- a comeback that arrived nearly ten years after the group faded away. Smartly, Sleater-Kinney don't pick up the threads left hanging by the knotty, roiling The Woods...
Kurt Vile scored a genuine word-of-mouth hit with his fifth album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, its elongated rambles conjuring hazy half-memories of Laurel Canyon while feeling uniquely situated to modern confines. B'lieve I'm Goin Down..., released two years after that 2013 breakthrough, whittles away some of the excesses while retaining eccentricity, trading ten-minute sprawls with six-strings for woozy five-minute vamps on a piano...
Blowing the promise of his Hell Can Wait EP into an extraordinary double LP, Summertime '06 finds rapper Vince Staples with all the pieces in place. His delivery is still sneering and steady with a slight sway that suggests he's stoned, but like pop gangstas Chief Keef or Future, he can craft a memorable melody out of chopped-up nonsense...
Blur dissolved slowly so it follows that their reunion was protracted -- a halting reconvening that produced understated singles and excellent concerts spread out over a period of six years....
Never one to do things timidly, with Vulnicura Björk delivers a breakup album that doesn't just express sadness -- it immerses listeners in the total devastation of heartbreak...
After a typically busy and fascinating 2014, Drake's 2015 started off much the same way. His chart-topping "album" If You're Reading This It's Too Late started off life as a free mixtape, but his label Cash Money stepped in at the last minute and changed it to a full-priced release...
After drawing on Greek tragedies and MGM musicals for her earlier albums, it would be hard for Julia Holter to find loftier sources of inspiration...
The one-eighty Questlove promised back in 2012, when the drummer and producer persuaded D'Angelo to perform for the first time in a dozen years, turns out to be closer to a ten...
Perhaps it was the threat of Young Thug beginning to rise, but whatever the reason, 2015 was the year when Future leapt forward artistically, captivating the mixtape circuit with three releases (56 Nights, Beast Mode, and Monster) that all pushed the envelope...
Though Shamir's Northtown EP made him one to watch, it was his single "On the Regular," a witty, charismatic, and almost unclassifiable mix of pop, dance, and hip-hop that truly put him on the map...
Just as Holly Herndon's debut album Movement had abundant layers in its title alone, its follow-up Platform is just as nuanced in how it combines political, technological, and structural and ideological concepts into a single word...
For Music Complete, New Order's ninth album and first in a decade, the band signed to new label Mute and welcomed keyboardist Gillian Gilbert back for her first recordings with them since 2001...
The Epic is saxophonist Kamasi Washington's aptly titled, triple-length, 172-minute debut album for Brainfeeder...
Surf begins like the Beach Boys and ends with the loping pop melody of a lost 1970s AM radio record...
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