album reviews
Kanye West
Yeezus
"You see it's leaders, and it's followers," Kanye West tells us. "But I'd rather be a dick than a swallower." And Yeezus, Mary and Yoseph, does he mean it. Yeezus is the darkest, most extreme music Kanye has ever cooked up, an extravagantly abrasive album full of grinding electro, pummeling minimalist hip-hop, drone-y wooz and industrial gear-grind. Every mad genius has to make a record like this at least once in his career – at its nastiest, his makes Kid A or In Utero o... | More »
Disclosure
Settle PMR
Pop fan Guy Lawrence, 21, felt dance-music nirvana when he heard Joy Orbison's 2009 dubstep head-fuck, "Hyph Mngo." With brother Howard, 18, he's heir to the tradition of the Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk: marquee EDM duos as devoted to vocal-driven songcraft as they are to beatmaking. The pair's debut is a modest masterpiece of production finesse, rooted in house but borrowing from hip-hop, dubstep and other club mutations. Listen to AlunaGeorge's warped ... | More »
Boards of Canada
Tomorrow's Harvest Warp
Before EDM, there was IDM: so-called intelligent dance music, made by laptop auteurs who wouldn't be caught dead at an Electric Daisy Carnival, if such a thing had existed yet. A lot has changed in electronic music since those days, not that you'd know it from Boards of Canada's comeback album. The publicity-averse Scottish duo pick up more or less where they left off seven years ago, orchestrating an hourlong suite of ambient creepers, downtempo chillers and other old versions... | More »
Surfer Blood
Pythons Warner Bros./Kanine
Up from the indie minors, Florida's Surfer Blood fill their second full-length with insistent jangle, Anglophile emoting and hangdog melodies that suggest collegiate mope rock might never go away. Producer Gil Norton smooths the foursome's edges while interjecting horror-comic backup yelps that marked his Pixies work decades ago; little else here would befuddle aging Cure or Weezer fans. John Paul Pitts bares girlfriend woes, most flamboyantly in the catchy opener, "Demon Dance": "C... | More »
Jimmy Eat World
Damage RCA
Jimmy Eat World were the schoolboy innocents of the mid-Nineties emo scene, plying lively, down-the-middle tunes applicable to smooching teens of any era. Twenty years later, on their first album since 2010, the Arizona guys still sound sweet. They're also hall-monitor dull – these meat and potatoes sure could use some fresh gravy. For frontman James Adkins, a kiss is never "just a kiss," pain's "buried deep," and every sentiment calls for a dark, itchy melody.The simple pleas... | More »
Gold Panda
Half of Where You Live Ghostly International/Notown
Recorded while he dog-sat for his aunt and uncle, this London producer's debut compacted the big sounds of techno, hip-hop and ambient into music so transfixing it could make a walk around the block seem like an adventure. The pace of his second LP is quicker, but the style is happily the same. Short samples of hand drums and string instruments ricochet around in the mix like pinballs; one-word vocal phrases like "Brazil" repeat till they sound like mantras. As a break from the busier tr... | More »
The Lonely Island
The Wack Album Republic
Last time out, the Lonely Island made a classic joke-rap album while somehow persuading Michael Bolton to belt, "This whole town's a pussy just waiting to get fucked!" Their third LP isn't as sublimely silly, or as consistent, but it rocks the same mix of guest stars (T-Pain, Robyn), sophisticated concepts ("Semicolon") and totally unsophisticated sex jokes ("I F****D My Aunt"). The secret weapon is musical skill: TLI are versatile MCs, and A-list producers turn jokes into pro-grade... | More »
Queens of the Stone Age
...Like Clockwork Matador
Is there a more debonair dirtball in rock than Josh Homme? The Queens of the Stone Age frontman is the high priest of grimy rock tradition, exalting in exquisitely wrought guitar scraping and wry machismo – whether with his main gig or in side bands like the Dave Grohl collaboration Them Crooked Vultures. For the Queens' sixth album, their sole continuous member has the band at full power, with Grohl drumming on five of 10 tracks, former members Nick Oliveri and Mark Lanegan pitchi... | More »
Eleanor Friedberger
Personal Record Merge
Listening to the classic-rock jigsaw puzzles Eleanor Friedberger and her brother Matthew create in the Fiery Furnaces can be difficult work. As a solo artist, she's more approachable. Her second LP is full of crisp, jangly indie pop that can suggest Harry Nilsson or a bookish early Stones, and it's packed with stories of young people too mopey and absent-minded to realize the person across the bar is hitting on them. As its title suggests, Personal Record is intimate but slyly self-... | More »
Quadron
Avalanche Vested in Culture/Epic
Producer-musician Robin Hannibal is having a killer year, in large part due to his great taste in singers. The follow-up to Rhye (his collaboration with gender-bending vocalist Mike Milosh) is the second album of new material from the project with his Danish homegirl Coco Maja Hastrup Karshøj, a.k.a. Coco O. An understated soul-pop diva whose sweetness belies her stone funkiness, she's already charmed hip-hop's new guard, including Jay-Z (who featured Coco on the Gatsby sound... | More »
Music Reviews
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star ratingYeezus -
star ratingSettle -
star ratingTomorrow's Harvest
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star ratingPythons -
star ratingDamage -
star ratingHalf of Where You Live
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