Album Reviews
Viagra Boys Churn Out More Scuzzy Salvos on Sophomore Welfare Jazz: Review
The Lowdown: If you find a political message in the music of Sweden’s Viagra Boys, it wasn’t necessarily put there on purpose. At least, that’s the party line from singer and lyricist Sebastian Murphy, whose deadpan baritone and satirical send-up of hyper-macho posturing made the post-punk band’s debut, Street Worms, essential listening in 2018. In a 2019 interview with Australia’s Happy Mag, Murphy laid out his thoughts in full: “In a way, making music in itself is a political statement,” the singer said. “If the right-wing had their way, we wouldn’t be making music at all. They hate all this stuff, and they hate this kind of culture. We’re being political just by being ourselves – and in my opinion, that’s enough. You don’t need to dive any deeper than that.” Of course, plenty of people ...
Kamaiyah Opens Up on Her Own Terms with No Explanations: Review
The Lowdown: Since 2016’s A Good Night in the Ghetto and her inclusion in the coveted 2017 XXL Freshman Class, Kamaiyah has been one of rap’s most consistent and exciting players. The Oakland-born and -raised rapper has hyphy written all over her music as part of the Bay Area’s highly influential scene, one that has birthed some of the most iconic gangster rap and party anthems. Kamaiyah exists in between the “hard” and the hyphy, taking the infectious, cocky grooves of Mac Dre and Too $hort into a new age for a wider audience without yielding to current trends. After departing from Interscope Records due to release disputes, the Bay Area star used 2020 to release multiple projects, No Explanations being the third. Despite a quiet release, due in part to the end of the year lull, Kamaiyah ...
Taylor Swift’s evermore Continues the Personal Fable Begun on folklore: Review
The Lowdown: Once again, Taylor Swift was lying when she told us there was “not a lot going on at the moment.” Once again, she’s dropped a carefully curated collection of songs unraveling both her extremely public exterior and deeply personal interior life. And once again, it’s an album that acts as a remarkable exercise in lyricism. It’s not just a worthy follow-up to July’s folklore; it’s a mirror, a companion, and a bookend. Taylor had a few more things to say. The fable wasn’t finished yet. Like folklore, evermore was announced hours before release, framed as a “sister” project to the summer album that gave us the latest reinvention of Taylor Swift and successfully cemented her, even in many previously unconvinced eyes, as one of the strongest songwriters working today. evermore picks ...
The Avalanches Transport the Listener on We Will Always Love You: Review
The Lowdown: In a recent interview with the BBC, founding member of The Avalanches, Robbie Chater, said of We Will Always Love You, “We were thinking a lot about signal transmission and how every radio broadcast from the last hundred years is still floating out there in space … It’s a beautiful thought to me that all these broadcasts are still out there, surrounding us.” It’s easy to feel this focus in the album, an expansive cosmic compendium that finds its tracks crackling and churning into one another. The context of the album’s production — how the band was inspired by the idea that sampling old records is like summoning old spirits and by the recording of Ann Druyan’s heartbeat for the Golden Record just after Carl Sagan proposed to her — helps, but it isn’t strictly necessary. This a...
Rico Nasty Expands Her Repertoire on Debut Nightmare Vacation: Review
The Lowdown: Rico Nasty has always been a powerhouse, existing on the edge of Soundcloud rap in the mid-2010s while still finishing high school. Her infectious, aggressive-yet-bubbly style made waves on the Internet early on, attracting the attention of Lil Yachty in 2016 to remix her song “Hey Arnold” and being featured in the hit HBO series insecure in 2017. Combining her eclectic fashion sense with spitfire raps that effortlessly bounce between sex and violence makes her one of the biggest pieces in the growing mosaic of this new era of female rappers. Her long-awaited debut album, Nightmare Vacation, takes a fine-tooth comb through the style that has made her one of the most influential rappers of the past few years. With seven mixtapes under her belt, Rico sounds like a seasoned veter...
Miley Cyrus’ Plastic Hearts Lovingly Mashes Up Rawk Influences: Review
The Lowdown: For her post-divorce album, Plastic Hearts, Miley Cyrus deploys big synth energy in full ’80s-rawk drag. Over six uneven albums, Cyrus has dabbled across pop genres, but she’s always held a penchant for the era and attitude of mainstream glam, new wave, and hair rock, dropping covers of Joan Jett and Blondie in live sets and covering Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” as early as 2010’s Can’t Be Tamed. Now 28 years old, Cyrus leans fully into these influences, enlisting heroes like Stevie Nicks to have a blast with her while ripping themselves off. Even without her current incarnation’s spunky sneer and platinum shag, Cyrus still has teeth, though this algorithmic “rock” can filter out her bite at times. Still, this might be Cyrus’ most successful pastiche yet. [embedded...
The Smashing Pumpkins’ CYR Treads Water in a Sea of Excess: Review
The Lowdown: Twenty-five years ago this fall, The Smashing Pumpkins released the most essential double album of the 1990s. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness used every second of its 120-plus minutes to redefine the artistic possibilities of Billy Corgan and his band, moving away from the grunge comparisons that always chafed the mercurial frontman and towards something more expansive, stately, and baroque. That was 1995. One break-up, seven albums, and a Diamond certification later, The Smashing Pumpkins are once again presenting a double album for consideration. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Corgan described the new record (named for early Christian child-martyr St. Cyricus) as a reflection of the “spiritual dystopia” that haunts 2020. Sonically, that translates t...
Santana’s Abraxas Still Casts a Mystical Spell Half a Century Later: Review
Consequence Podcast Network and Sony’s The Opus is back for Season 11 with a new host and a new classic album to explore. Click here to listen as host Jill Hopkins (The Moth Chicago, Making Beyoncé podcast) conjures the enduring legacy of Santana’s landmark Abraxas. Also, after you read this article, scroll below to enter our exclusive Santana giveaway or score some original Opus swag. — The story of Carlos Santana and the band that bears his name has been one of near-constant evolution. Critics and fans have attempted to tame Santana’s catalog over the years by sorting the group’s 25 studio albums by era, style, or lineup. That’s not a totally fruitless exercise. Nobody, for instance, will mistake the frenetic jam session that is Santana’s seminal 1969 debut for, say, the earthy jazz-fusi...
Megan Thee Stallion Delivers the Good News on Deft Debut: Review
The Lowdown: Megan Thee Stallion’s 2020 was one of turbulence with moments of immense triumph thrown in. She celebrated the two biggest hits of her career: “Savage” (which was accompanied by an epic Beyoncé remix) and her Cardi B collaboration, “WAP”, a song that dominated the cultural discourse for months.… Please click the link below to read the full article. Megan Thee Stallion Delivers the Good News on Deft Debut: Review Candace McDuffie You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
BTS’ BE Comforts Listeners with the Hopeful Message That Life Goes On: Review
Like everyone else in the world, the BTS boys are at home — and how lucky we are that they’ve invited us in to join them for a while. The members of the groundbreaking pop septet (RM, Jin, SUGA, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook) have spent the past seven years… Please click the link below to read the full article. BTS’ BE Comforts Listeners with the Hopeful Message That Life Goes On: Review Mary Siroky You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
AC/DC Crank the Voltage to High on Power Up: Review
The Lowdown: This year AC/DC celebrated the 40th anniversary of Back in Black. Little did we know that the hard rock legends were poised to unleash another classic record in the bleak year of 2020. The band’s 17th studio album, Power Up, arrives like an antidote to the malaise and… Please click the link below to read the full article. AC/DC Crank the Voltage to High on Power Up: Review Jon Hadusek You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
Elvis Costello’s Aim Remains Remarkably True on Hey Clockface: Review
The Lowdown: English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello has about three dozen studio LPs under his belt (including collaborations), yet he’s never lost his inimitable knack for crafting scornful witticisms, tender ballads, catchy-as-hell rockers, and everything in-between. Likewise, his skill at working within multiple genres while both modernizing his sound and staying true to his distinguishing DNA is virtually unmatched by his peers or proteges. In other words, he’s always staked out his own path within the realm of popular music, and with Hey Clockface, he continues that legacy. It doesn’t rival his greatest LPs — not that anyone expects it to — but it’s a surprisingly wide-ranging and substantial venture that reveals how much creative spark and ability is still there after all these yea...
