album reviews
Frank Turner
Tape Deck Heart Xtra Mile/Interscope
The onetime singer of U.K. hardcore band Million Dead, Frank Turner is a grown-ass Englishman who turns out highly quotable, sometimes deliriously catchy rants about life after punk. His fifth LP blooms with crisply enunciated patter about bandmate bromances and childhood memories of cutting himself, with liberal squirts of acid: "Fuck you, Mötley Crüe, for charming us with access and with excess," he croons sweetly in "Good & Gone," a tune so pretty you can hear the dimples. St... | More »
The So So Glos
Blowout Shea Stadium/ SSG Entertainment
The So So Glos are punk-rock kids from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn – like if the Ramones really were brothers. Their second album is their gloriously high-speed manifesto, as the Glos declare war on everything boring ("I'm done ruling the world from the tip of my thumb/And tapping on my telephone for fun") and dive into the dirty big-city kicks of "Wrecking Ball" and "Son of an American." The songs on Blowout have a classicist confidence, reaching all the way back to the Clash and the Kink... | More »
Hanni El Khatib
Head in the Dirt Innovative Leisure
Like hundred-dollar sandblasted jeans, the grit and grain on Hanni El Khatib's second LP feels less like the product of time and more like careful craftsmanship. Produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, this is desert-burned blues rock boosted by punk, soul and hip-hop – music that has a retro heart but couldn't have been made before 2013. He's less convincing as a badass ("Family") than as a guy who fights desperation by partying ("Low"). The Motown-esque "Penny" i... | More »
Various Artists
The Sun Country Box Bear Family
The most revelatory of a three-volume survey of Sun Records (see also Blues Box and Rock Box), this six-CD set comes via Germany's Bear Family, which has arguably done more to preserve country-music history than any U.S. label. As detailed in the set's 148-page book, Sam Phillips launched Sun with country as well as blues. And while Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins show up here, less-famous labelmates started their own fires by rubbing blues and country together in differ... | More »
Shuggie Otis
Inspiration Information/Wings of Love Sony Legacy
Known mostly via the Brothers Johnson's smash version of his psychedelic-soul fantasia "Strawberry Letter 23," R&B renegade Shuggie Otis recorded with heavyweights like Frank Zappa as a teen but fell out of favor with the music industry by his early twenties. This reissue pairs his metaphysically funky 1974 masterpiece, Inspiration Information, with a similarly spacey unreleased LP cut between 1975 and 2000 that positions this multi-instrumentalist as a missing link between Sly, Jimi... | More »
Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge
Twelve Reasons to Die Soul Temple
This "groundbreaking concept album" (as the press release calls it) tells the story of an internecine mafia war, which erupts when Ghostface Killah's alter ego, Tony Starks, an aspiring member of the Deluca crime family, falls in love with a woman from the Delucas' circle – and I'm falling fast asleep trying to recount the ludicrous plot. Focus instead on Ghostface, whose shaggy, breathless flow remains one of pop's most transfixing sounds. Composer-producer You... | More »
Os Mutantes
Fool Metal Jack Krian Music Group
Nearly half a century since the psychedelic Brazilian Tropicália-rock tricksters' almost mythic 1968 debut, Os Mutantes are now led by only one original member, guitarist Sergio Dias. But Fool Metal Jack shows them still singularly eccentric, finding beauty and noise amid an assortment of styles. Beyond their fallback late-Beatles/bossa-nova art pop, there's organ-propelled stoner metal, lovely Middle Eastern-leaning samba, Afro-Caribbean-drummed Krishna parody, interjected c... | More »
Chance the Rapper
Acid Rap Self-released
Chance the Rapper doesn't hide his influences, or his ambitions. His rhyme flow at times baldly resembles Lil Wayne's or, at other times, Eminem's; his mainstream-but-iconoclastic posture draws inspiration from Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. But on his wildly anticipated, unshakably confident second mixtape, the Chicagoan speaks in his own distinctive and eccentric voice. It’s a voice that shifts, with jolt, between fleet rapping and rap-singing. (In "Juice," his raggedly... | More »
Vampire Weekend
Modern Vampires of the City XL
It's official: Vampire Weekend really don't give a fuck about an Oxford comma. On their third album, Ezra Koenig and the band have rid themselves, once and for all, of the precious post-collegiate references that used to be their calling card: The girls of Wellfleet have scattered, and apparently that second horchata didn't go down as smooth as the first. Koenig is now an old 29; adulthood is inescapable; a clock is ticking in his head. "Wisdom's a gift/But you'd trad... | More »
Natalie Maines
Mother Columbia
It's been a decade since Natalie Maines said a few choice words about George W. Bush and set off the biggest flame war in country-music history. Overnight, the Dixie Chicks became pariahs, and the role suited them: They broke with Nashville, hooked up with Rick Rubin and recorded their tautest, most tough-minded album, 2006's Taking the Long Way. Now, Maines returns with a solo LP – and she wants no part of country whatsoever. Mother, co-produced by Maines and Ben Harper, is a... | More »
Music Reviews
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star ratingModern Vampires of the City -
star ratingRandom Access Memories -
star ratingLSXX: Last Splash: 20th Anniversary Edition
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star ratingThe Great Gatsby: Music From Baz Luhrmann’s Film -
star ratingMother -
star ratingTime
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