Album Reviews

It’s always fun to witness a band grow into how great they can be right in front of your eyes, and that’s exactly what happens with the second album from Rolling Blackouts Costal Fever. On their excellent 2018 debut LP, Hope Downs, these Australian guitar romantics proved themselves to be …

Twelve years have passed since Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I – IV, their brooding suite of instrumental bric-a-brac, and in that time, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have made wordless sound collages a cottage industry. They scored David Fincher’s The Social Network two years later, winning them an Oscar …

If there’s one thing country singers love to sing about, it’s country music itself, from its spiritual power to its grounding American majesty to its everlasting authenticity. In the last few years alone, there’s been “Old Country Song” by Dustin Lynch, “American Country Love Song,” by Jake Owen, and “Country …

Although it would have seemed unimaginable in the Nineties, the decade when Stone Temple Pilots rode the grunge wave to the top of the charts with Big Riffs and Scott Weiland’s Bigger Voice, the band seems to have entered an awkward “Jethro Tull phase” on their eighth album, Perdida. Yes, …

Early on Halsey’s excellent new album,Manic, she samples a bit of movie dialogue: “I’m just a fucked-up girl looking for my own piece of mind. Don’t assign me yours.” It’s from the filmEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,spoken by the manic, pixie dream-girl heroine Clementine. But she definitely speaks for …

Effortlessly cool MC Guru died more than nine years ago, but parts of the just-released seventh Gang Starr album could move a true-school rap fan today. “Word to God, if Big and ‘Pac were still here/Some of these weirdos wouldn’t act so cavalier,” he raps on “Bad Name,” “You used to support your fam …

There’s a memorable scene in the movie Elf in which Will Ferrell bursts into his dad’s office during a business meeting, twirls with glee, and proclaims, “I’m in love, I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it!” If you took this four-second clip and played it 1,160 consecutive …

One of the greatest rhythm sections to ever rub-a-dub on planet Earth, Sly and Robbie’s client roster has included Dylan, Madonna, Serge Gainsbourg, and No Doubt. But the team’s best jams are the most deeply rooted in the Jamaican music they helped invent — at the core of Peter Tosh’s …

Just when Miley was looking like the sane one, she’s back with a new EP that’s sure to irritate everyone who’d hoped her writhing, wrecking-ball days were in the past. She Is Coming is an unkempt little EP that tries to cram her wild oeuvre, from molly to Mark Ronson, …

“Well, I’ve been in this Junk Town most of my life,” singer-songwriter Ian Noe sings on his debut album, Between the Country. Noe hails from small-town Eastern Kentucky, and his first offering is a bundle of dark tales and larger-than-life characters from his beleaguered home region. “It’s a country jungle …