The album is at once a reckoning and a self-conscious pivot.
Rocket Juice & the Moon is an album full of red herrings.
Madonna pilfers the title of one of her earliest rivals’ songs during the hook of “Girl Gone Wild,” only to defang it of its feminist bent.
In some sense, Port of Morrow is the classic pop album that James Mercer has always been on the verge of making.
The latest track from Nas’s forthcoming Life Is Good won’t remind anyone of Illmatic.
While You & I loses some of the distinctive details of its predecessor, the duo pulls off “conventional” just as well as they do twisted.
Radio Music Society makes it clear that Spalding’s a fine, intuitive singer and a natural bandleader.
As the music portion of the festival, and SXSW itself, draws to a close, there’s a lot to consider.
Music is chaos, in the sense that it’s usually ruled by random chance rather than any distinct system.
Anarchy, My Dear is one of Say Anything’s strongest musical statements to date.
There’s a thudding pulse that seems to reverberate out of the city itself.
When the Men set out to bring the noise, they prove as capable as ever.
Beach House seems to have known from the beginning what they wanted their music to sound like.
The Ting Tings give the impression that they’ve set out to fail deliberately, as some kind of juvenile attempt at punk.
Bowerbirds recorded The Clearing in Justin Vernon’s Wisconsin studio, and his influence on the album is evident.
The album plays like the antithesis of the work that’s cemented Daniel Rossen and his bandmates as the foremost purveyors of intricate.
In determining exactly what went wrong here, it’s useful to compare Wrecking Ball with Neil Young’s Living with War.
Justin Townes Earle leans on the brushed drums, Hammond B3 organ fills, and horn sections that signify Memphis soul.
If “All the Rowboats” isn’t the first song to anthropomorphize the contents of a museum, then it’s at least one of the best.
The focus of the album is once again electronics, but with the cynicism at a higher pitch than usual.
As for the just-burgeoning hip-hop genre, acts like Public Enemy and De La Soul not only had a conscience—they served as ours.