Uptown Special assembles a seemingly disparate group of collaborators to create a cohesive homage to vintage soul and funk.
1989 displays Swift’s willingness to venture outside her comfort zone without much of a safety net.
The title of Mary Lambert’s debut, Heart on My Sleeve, reads like a concise manifesto.
Sia mines the territory between fragility and strength throughout 1000 Forms of Fear.
Upside Down Mountain attempts to accommodate both antic creepiness and transcendent uplift.
The majority of Wye Oak’s set did focus on songs their upcoming album Shriek.
SXSW 2014: The Hold Steady, Phantogram, Black Lips, Hurray for the Riff Raff, & More
If you passed him on the street, you might mistake the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn for a stressed-out dad or high school chemistry teacher.
There’s undoubtedly something a little weird about seeing rock music in a strangely lit, tackily carpeted convention center ballroom.
It’s hard to call to mind another contemporary artist who so deftly employs sheer balls-out guitar skill as St. Vincent.
Day one of the music portion of SXSW marks the exodus of tech geeks and hustling entrepreneurs from the fest.
Bad Self Portraits provides fire-hose-level torrents of energy and hip-swaying modulations of tone, rhythm, and instrumentation.
Reflektor coheres into a sustained meditation on the fragility of human connection.
HAIM’s debut, Days Are Gone, is an impeccably crafted fusion of late-’80s and ’90s pop influences.
Ski Mask occasionally reminds us that Islands haven’t lost their ability to get weird.
Pura Vida Conspiracy seems geared toward evoking how a rich community can be fostered out of dissimilar groups.
Rowland gets closer to carving a niche for herself on Talk a Good Game than she has been on prior efforts.
The album proves there isn’t anyone out there who executes this strain of musical comedy with as much satirical precision as the Lonely Island.
Laura Marling just might be an angel, or the closest thing that contemporary music has to one.
Annie Up walks the line between rebellion and conformity in ways that are both troubling and provocative.
You haven’t truly lived until you’ve seen Vampire Weekend via telecast in the anodyne confines of a conference room.