The singer has teased a new release date for the set and announced a companion album to boot.
On each successive album, the New Pornographers have become less off-the-cuff and more cerebral.
The album’s length and wide stylistic breadth give the packed-in feel of a career-spanning collection.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about Hounds is how it fits into the narrative arc of Robison and Maguire’s career.
The album is cool by way of its out-of-touch bravado, and, in too-brief moments, graced by a tongue-in-cheek bittersweetness.
At some point, Craig Finn will have to grow up.
Less a musician than a kind of gonzo multi-specialty clearinghouse, Mike Patton has ensured career stability by turning himself into a commodity.
Romain Gavras’s apocalyptically brutal music video for M.I.A.’s “Born Free” has disturbed a lot of people.
Malin’s solo career has always shown promise, but this album finally makes good on it.
Victorian America is an immaculately dusky exploration of Americana tropes.
The track should pique expectations for the new record simply by proving that M.I.A.’s bag of studio tricks is as inexhaustible as her attitude.
Coachella is a truly beautiful realm where long-absent bands and air-conditioned dance floors exist within walking distance.
Mary Chapin Carpenter has more or less been rewriting and rerecording the same album of introspective NPR and AAA playlist-ready songs with uneven results.
Gogol Bordello continues to churn out records whose rampant energy belies an increasing sense of atrophying decay.
Nobody’s Daughter is less interesting than America’s Sweetheart, in a rubbernecking kind of way, but it’s infinitely better constructed.
Cypress Hill stubbornly sticks to their tired ganja-and-guns formula on their latest effort, Rise Up.
I Am What I Am an honest reflection of who Merle Haggard has become in his twilight years.
The tacky use of a repurposed instructional audio sample is the warning sign.
Ozomatli has always distinguished themselves from their peers by working a hefty dose of politics into their party mix.
Swim’s songs are fully evocative of the stylistic struggles that the band has come to represent.
It seems poised to fall into a formulaic rut of middling expectations, wrenching cathartic redemption songs from decades of anguish.