For more than a decade, Melody Prochet’s songs have drifted through dream logic — language dissolving into texture, emotion refracted through haze. Unclouded, her fourth album as Melody’s Echo Chamber and third for Domino Records, doesn’t abandon that ethereal quality thanks to the arrival of the Swedish producer/songwriter Sven Wunder, best known for the lush […]
The latest Warp album from the New York composer/pianist Kelly Moran, Don’t Trust Mirrors, is the culmination of six years of work, and it sounds like a definitive career statement. In retrospect, 2024’s conventionally pretty neo-classical record Moves in the Field stands as an anomaly in her catalog. Its elegant, sprightly piano pieces diverge from […]
At a March Seattle gig, SML generated three epic improvisations of subtle groove science (the second piece even evoked the funky swagger of Average White Band’s “Schoolboy Crush”) and galvanic hypnosis. It was the best show this writer saw in 2025, and that it differed from the relative concision of the group’s records just proves […]
Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska has been getting a lot of attention lately, with the Scott Cooper-helmed biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Nebraska ‘82: Expanded Edition both released in October. In 1984, Springsteen released Born in the U.S.A., his first political album, a commentary on national identity, disillusionment, and patriotism through the eyes of Vietnam […]
I bought my first copy of Let It Be when I was 15 and it unlocked my lifelong love of the Replacements. Soon I was hunting down albums, bootlegs, zines, T-shirts—I even agreed to clean my high school biology teacher’s snake and guinea pig tanks for several weeks to borrow his VHS tape of a […]
Who knew that the Americana ambassadors the Avett Brothers and the thoroughly modern maniac Mike Patton had the same threads woven into their respective freak flags? Scott and Seth Avett have been enchanting the folk contingent for most of this century with a discography of stripped-down and heart-bursting recs. While Patton is known primarily as […]
John Darnielle has explored “soft rock” and all of its modalities on recent albums. While his lyrical obsessions (survival, breaking free, and more) have persisted since he began recording under the Mountain Goats moniker more than 30 years ago, his music has changed from the lo-fi-voice-and-guitar-to-tape beginnings to something more sonically rich. But with new […]
It seemed inevitable that Anna von Hausswolff would make an album inspired by This Mortal Coil, the 4AD collective that covered songs by Gene Clark, Alex Chilton, and more, injecting them with its gothic touch. Iconoclasts, the sixth album by the Swedish musician out October 31, may feel more like conventional music to those accustomed […]
On the surface, and let’s be honest, underneath the surface too, Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo make unlikely collaborators. The intersection of DIY noise rock and instrumental guitar soli (as John Fahey called it) has been a lonely crossroads, but somehow the Oklahoma City musicians make it look like a fruitful place to cut deals […]
Pulling back the curtain for a moment, one of the perks of reviewing albums is that when you fall in love with a new album, you have an outlet to shout about it. But sometimes it’s a double-edged sword, as writing a review also forces you to put into words why you love an album […]