Throughout, John O’Regan reworks grand, organic melodies with unassuming warmth.
Like most rural, Ben Gibbard-esque, Arcadian-folk singer-songwriters, Dave Beck has a fair share of girl problems.
Sugar still sounds like a cover band that lucked out into a label deal.
This review isn’t about the business side of things. It’s about the music.
The album is titanic in scope, filled with offbeat wordplay, and entangled instruments.
The closest It’ll Be Better comes to succeeding is the title track, and unsurprisingly, it’s also the album’s simplest song.
The album is bad in a predictable, sluggish way, with no hint of better work on the horizon.
On American Slang, the Gaslight Anthem has grown up a bit, and their topics of interest are more muddied.
In accordance with their frolicsome demeanor, they crank up all of their instruments to a near skull-invading level.
What’s most impressive about Sad Sour Future is how much of a piece it sounds despite its cobbled-together origins.
The album certainly does wear its influences on its sleeve.
Male Bonding is definitely not the first band to crank out waterlogged surf-garage jams in minute-and-a-half morsels.
The biggest problem with Dark Side is just how little of a Flaming Lips album it is.
As long as Mark E. Smith keeps that up, he’ll continue to challenge the idea of what a band as old as the Fall is supposed to sound like.
At some point, Craig Finn will have to grow up.
Coachella is a truly beautiful realm where long-absent bands and air-conditioned dance floors exist within walking distance.
Thankfully, the conscientious songwriting throughout Weathervanes overcomes the schmaltz with ease.
It inhabits the colorless world that has doomed the majority of mainstream R&B over the last decade.
The Pet Shop Boys live experience has always approached Broadway musical status in terms of complexity, and this one is no different.
Planet Anthem cuts out the extraneous glut that has always dominated the Disco Biscuit’s catalogue to deliver a more concise, accessible package.