One of the delights of the prior Ratboys album, 2023’s The Window, is that I could recommend it to almost any indie rock fan. You like beautiful Americana? Ratboys. Fuzzy alternative rock? Ratboys. Pop-punk? Ratboys. Occasional noisy jams? Ratboys. It was such a fun grab-bag that I figured it couldn’t last. I assumed The Window […]
Last May, Ty Segall released Possession, a sophisticated set of psychedelic bubblegum that featured a string section, saxophone, and surprisingly sweet melodies. “Live” “at” “the” “BBC,” taped about a decade ago, may take recent fans of the L.A.-based garage rocker by surprise. Now in his late 30s, Segall’s already released 17 solo albums. The prolific […]
A move to a warmer climate didn’t push the gloom away for Blackwater Holylight. The former Portland, Oregon band may have decamped to Los Angeles in 2021 after releasing their third album Silence/Motion to escape the region’s dreary winters, but their new record Not Here Not Gone continues the band’s dark explorations. It is also […]
Lucinda Williams has made a career out of listening to other musicians. On Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the songwriter’s classic 1998 record, she sings, “We’d put on ZZ Top and turn ‘em up real loud,” as if it’s a mission statement. Williams has also made a run of six “jukebox” albums since 2021 […]
It looks like Chan Marshall gets the last laugh. Pitchfork’s oft-dismissive review of her 2006 album The Greatest doesn’t even talk about the music until its third paragraph. Instead, it begins with the artist’s mental health struggles, calling her “Beautifully Tortured.” But as we arrive at the 20th anniversary of that album’s release, Marshall will […]
It only takes 33 seconds for Jason Williamson to drop an F-bomb on “The Good Life,” the first track from The Demise of Planet X, Sleaford Mods’ first record in three years. This latest record, released January 16, isn’t much of a departure from the duo’s signature sound: Williamson furiously yelping and rapping over Andrew […]
When the Sha La Das released their 2018 debut, Love in the Wind, it was a bit like the discovery of an animal long thought extinct. A doo-wop group releasing new music in the 21st century? Sure, Frankie Valli’s still hanging on, and close-harmony crooning can be heard at civic centers, retirement homes, and casinos […]
Dry Cleaning singer Florence Shaw likes to keep some distance between her vocals and the rest of the band. Shaw’s curious confidences, spoken-word confessions, and bemused monologues appear to have only a passing relationship to the propulsive rhythms and brittle riffs that frame them. That dissonance can be striking at first, but it grows restrictive–stark […]
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 […]