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I Write the Songs…
Listen to “Valentine,” the title cut on the latest album from Matador recording artist Snail Mail, and you feel transported back to the early years of Lollapalooza, if not earlier. The song opens with waves of ‘80s synth and staccato bursts of Police-style guitar, then segues into a crunchy power-pop chorus that Billy Corgan might have scripted. Snail Mail grew up in the D.C. suburbs as Lindsey Jordan. She is 23. Surely, she is not a Billy Corgan fan. You ask anyway. “I have a Smashing Pumpkins tattoo,” she replies. She holds it up to the Zoom camera. Spin the latest albums by Lindsey or Marissa Nadler or Shannon Lay, and you will hear the fruits of a modern singer-songwriter movement, a string of masterful recordings by young, mostly female artists who grew up listening to their parents’ ...
The 30 Best Albums of 2022 (So Far)
The following acts released quality albums in May 2022 alone: Radiohead off-shoot The Smile, Kendrick Lamar, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Sharon Van Etten, The Black Keys, Florence + the Machine, Harry Styles — we’ll stop there for space reasons. It’s been such a wild music year so far, only some of them made the following list. Maybe 2022 was just front-loaded and the final six months will be less eventful. (Judging by the release calendar, that’s probably a bad prediction.) Either way, we had trouble even narrowing this down to 30. Let’s meet back here at year’s end and see how things shake out. 30. Caracara – New Preoccupations Fans of classic 2000s emo — Say Anything, Dashboard Confessional, or Circa Survive, for example — are sure to find something to love in Caracara’s New Preoccupations (and...
