Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

Quirky, catchy melodies have always been Pixies‘ calling card and on Beneath the Eyrie, their third post-reunion album, the alt-rock icons indulge everything from jaunty, old-timey Kurt Weill oom-pah rhythms to 10-foot waves of surf guitar. Frontman and chief songwriter Black Francis has said that the group embraced their most …

At 18 songs in under an hour, Vampire Weekend‘s first album in six years sounds at first like a manic effort to make up lost time. Singer-guitarist Ezra Koenig, the band’s composer-lyricist and a co-producer on virtually every track, has stuffed his hooks and bridges with so many change-ups in …

California’s High Desert is heavy with rock history. It’swhere country-rock icon Gram Parsons had his corpse cremated by friends; wherean Irish band found a name and cover image for a great LP; where Jim Morrison dropped acid andmade a movie. Now The Mekons — those zany, erudite and beloved British …

Of all the Eighties bands that took hardcore punk as their launching pad, no one got further (or weirder) faster than guitar-twisting stoner gods the Meat Puppets. Even when the Arizona trio was recording for Black Flag’s record label and thrashing out one-minute songs at atomic speed, their music always …

When the Specials’ Jerry Dammers’ launched the 2 Tone label in Britain in 1979, his group was more than just a ska revival band with good taste in covers — they were a multi-racial spearhead of a post-punk movement combatting skinhead racism (fueled by far-right groups like the National Front) …

The 2010s haven’t been kind to Terius Nash, who releases music as The-Dream. He was once a first-call writer-producer entrusted with artists’ lead singles, thanks to his work on major hits for J. Holiday and Beyoncé; now he’s an album-cut guy. And after an initially successful solo career, Nash hasn’t …

Emanon, a full-length graphic novel co-written by Wayne Shorter and included with his new album of the same name, tells the story of a “rogue philosopher” who travels between worlds, spreading a message of truth and empowerment. For much of his 60-plus-year career, Shorter has been on an analogous mission. …

After making it through the rough time that surrounded Death Cab for Cutie’s last record, Kintsugi – made after frontman Ben Gibbard’s divorce and just before the departure of founding member Chris Walla – the band sounds rejuvenated on Thank You for Today. They’ve added two new members, guitarist Dave …

Since her debut single in 2013, Scottish sound sculptor Sophie has emerged as quite possibly the most important, boundary-destroying producer of the last decade. Early singles like “Bipp,” “Lemonade” and her co-production on QT’s “Hey QT” were packaged as “pop” songs, but were actually exercises in anonymous avant-garde cartoon chipmunk …

Since her 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me, Kelela has been one of R&B’s most buzzed-about up-and-comers, an enigmatic presence who melds her strong yet acrobatic voice and bottomless fascination with music’s potential into hooky, forthright post-millennial soul. Kelela has, in the last year, dueted with Solange on A Seat at …