The best way to approach The Singing Mailman Delivers is as a kind of shadow greatest hits.
Bad As Me is a brash return to form that finds Tom Waits still occupying his usual comfort zones.
Several years after leaving Sufjan Steven’s backing band, Shara Worden is making music that sounds more like his than ever.
The ensemble here is mostly padded out with anonymous Norwegians acting as disposable creature fodder.
The limitations that define Trans-Love Energies are just as readily apparent here as they are on any other Death in Vegas effort.
Morricone’s listlessness and Westenra’s archly dull style make for a pretty drab combination.
Forcefully traditional and sentimental, Thunder Soul benefits most from the cinematic turn of the actual events it documents.
Art History stands out as one of Joe Swanberg’s most visually and conceptually accomplished experiments.
Despite the many highs, Relax is still a debut, and at times finds the group struggling with the specifics of their sound.
The film mostly works because it doesn’t overplay the consequence of its subject.
Wild Flag’s self-titled debut may not be a Sleater-Kinney album, but it feels like an extension of that band’s hard-charging aesthetic.
Eugenio Polgovsky’s film is a mostly dialogue-free spin on Wiseman-style voyeurism.
Beautiful Imperfection is long on self-assurance and warmth, but also routinely safe and unsurprising.
Tripper is staunchly dominated by an old-school style of wanky craftsmanship.
The Rip Tide sounds like a bid for freedom from influences and trends.
The album, despite production work from the normally conspicuous Beck, scarcely strays from what’s become the Stephen Malkmus template.
The R.E.D. Album may be the most distilled expression yet of Game’s manifold insecurities.
Habermann’s storytelling is often clunky, rushed, and sappy, but it’s never overreaching or didactic.
Rowland’s third album seems doomed to elicit further comparisons between the singer and her former bandmate.
Cooking in Progress chooses mute reverence for the magisterial Ferran Adrià and his bizarre methods.