album reviews
Charles Bradley
Victim of Love Dunham/Daptone
Late-blooming soul belter Charles Bradley, who released his debut album in 2011 at the age of 62, is the best kind of retro act: a fully committed one. Victim of Love, Bradley's second LP, makes no bones about the echoes it carries: James Brown, Otis Redding and other Sixties and Seventies soul heroes, evoked with crisp period-perfect production and classicistic arrangements. It's Bradley's voice that seals the deal: When he saunters through the Motown-inflected groove of "You ... | More »
Willy Moon
Here’s Willy Moon Cherrytree/Island
"Bo Diddley remixed by Swizz Beatz" is how this New Zealander describes his music, which is awesome, as an idea. His debut doesn't quite sound like that – Willy Moon's a frail flower compared with Diddley, and his beats are pedestrian next to Swizz's. But he's on to something. His songs take the ferocity of early rock & roll, add hip-hop-flavored beats, ladle on some feedback – and move on before wearing out their welcome. You know "Yeah Yeah" from an iPod ... | More »
Mad Season
Above Columbia/Legacy
The short-lived mid-Nineties grunge outfit Mad Season was as much therapy session as jam session: Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready met bassist John Baker Saunders in rehab, and recruited Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley in the hope that teaming with sober musicians might end Staley's heroin addiction. They played desultory, head-clearing heavy blues on their lone album, amended here with a live DVD and tracks from an unfinished second LP with newly recorded vocals from ex-Screaming T... | More »
DJ Koze
Amygdala Pampa
On this tour de force by Teutonic EDM don Stefan Kozalla, the root vibe is elegant techno minimalism, but that vibe is augmented with wildly eccentric detailing: ADHD hip-hop jump-cuts, sneaky melodies, oddball instrumentation, warped vocals and more. The shadow of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" floats through "Das Wort." "Marilyn Whirlwind" loops a virtual guitar jam. And on a German-language version of Rodgers and Hart's "I Could Write a Book," the old Pal Joey standard, DJ ... | More »
Ashley Monroe
Like a Rose Warner Bros.
Ashley Monroe grabbed country fans by the ears with her hard-drawlin' vocals on Hell on Heels, by the Miranda Lambert-helmed trio Pistol Annies. The riveting, beautifully sung, sharp-witted Like a Rose is even better. It comes on traditionalist, with old-fashioned production, countrypolitan ballads and punchline-packed honky-tonkers. But beneath the period garb is a modern woman who advocates "weed instead of roses" to revive a moribund sex life and drops references to Fifty Shades of Gr... | More »
Kate Nash
Girl Talk Have 10p/INgrooves
"I'm a feminist/And if that offends you, then fuck you!" barks Kate Nash over rackety garagerock guitars. Nash's 2007 debut topped the U.K. charts, but on her third LP she's moved a long way from her old twee piano-backed confessions. Or has she? The album is self-released (Nash raised money for the record on the website PledgeMusic); the sound is "indie" (she's been listening to Best Coast); the lyrics are pugnaciously "political" (lots of half-digested gender theory). Bu... | More »
Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt Don Giovanni
Alabama guitarist Katie Crutchfield sings bruising punk ballads about hanging out with other miserable young people and waiting for the fun part to begin, while starting to get the horrible suspicion this might be the fun part. Live, her band does a fantastic punked-up cover of Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" – and on her superb second album, Cerulean Salt, her songwriting lives up to that level of inspiration. Her first Waxahatchee album, 2012's American Weekend, was sol... | More »
Depeche Mode
Delta Machine Columbia
The 13th Depeche Mode album is foregrounded in blues and gospel influences that have often merely burbled beneath their synth-sad pop. "The angel of love was upon me/And, Lord, I felt so high," Dave Gahan growls on "Angel." Gahan was treated for cancer in 2009, and he and co-founder Martin Gore wrote together for the first time in their contentious 30-year plus career. Delta celebrates brooding faith and slippery solace without scrimping on Depeche's trademark blackstrobe punishment. Whe... | More »
Chvrches
Recover EP Glassnote
By posting two fantastic synthpop songs, "Lies" and then "The Mother We Share," to the Internet last year, Chvrches became blog big shots and Passion Pit's opening act. Their EP lacks those two songs, which are still easily found on the Scottish band's SoundCloud, and introduces one fantastic new synth-pop song, "Recover." Lauren Mayberry and her two beardo bandmates revisit the frosty New Wave of Yaz and early Depeche Mode while adding staccato, percussive glitches that echo but do... | More »
Wavves
Afraid of Heights Mom + Pop/Warner Bros
The fourth LP from Nathan Williams does for Nineties punk pop what his girlfriend Bethany "Best Coast" Cosentino has done for Sixties girl-group pop: rewires it for a new generation of Spotify-surfing headphone junkies. Starting with heavenly bells and tight-wound guitar slashing, his stoner minimalism gets ambition – there's even a cello! Self-loathing and suicidal tendencies swarm; Iggy Pop is evoked on the semi-unplugged sorta love song "Dog," and Jeff Mangum- and Kurt Cobain-st... | More »
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