Reviews
The Psychedelic Furs’ Made of Rain Is a Confident, Trippy, and Wonderful Comeback: Review
The Lowdown: Few British post-punk/new wave acts made as big a splash in the 1980s as The Psychedelic Furs. Led by the illustrious vocals and bass playing, respectively, of bothers Richard and Tim Butler — and with tracks such as “Pretty in Pink”, “Heaven”, and “Love My Way” becoming huge hits — the group was as much a part of that zeitgeist as any of their genre peers. Sadly, they went on hiatus following the release of 1991’s World Outside, and although the pair continued to create with Love Spit Love prior to a Furs live reunion at the turn of the millennium, fans have been clamoring for a proper new record for nearly three whole decades. Thankfully, it’s finally arrived, and it’s as exhilarating and charming a return as anyone could’ve wanted. [embedded content] Joining the main duo th...
folklore Is Taylor Swift’s Smoldering Pop Rebellion — Finally
The great fascination enveloping folklore, Taylor Swift’s mossy, surprise eighth LP, lies not within the album’s steadfast execution but the attempt itself — that during a global crisis which has paralyzed entire nations, a pop monolith would venture to swerve from her honey-soaked Lover’s lane and rumble deep into the forest, fixated on sonic reinvention. Hell, Swift’s fans would’ve been satisfied with a simple music video for her 11-month-old synth-bop “Cruel Summer.” Instead, she’s written furiously in isolation, launching an organic rebellion far beyond the pseudo-defiance of Reputation (nine Max Martin co-writes don’t exactly scream disobedience) and churning out the quickest album turnaround of her career. For studio expertise, she tapped the National’s indie-rock svengali Aaro...
Taylor Swift’s folklore Dismantles Her Own Self-Mythologizing: Review
The Lowdown: Born of isolation, Taylor Swift’s eighth album, folklore, interrogates the pop star’s self-mythologizing and turns her gaze outward. Created during the ongoing pandemic, Swift collaborated remotely on 11 songs with Aaron Dessner of The National, who shared orchestrations composed inside his own quarantine. The results lean toward modern folk and glitchy experimentation, abandoning pop bombast but not the drama of swelling strings or anxious percussion. The accompanying visuals depict a gloomy summer, and listeners can imagine Swift watching storms barrel across the Atlantic horizon and wandering old-growth forests in half-done braids, alone or with a companion socially distanced beyond the frame. Dropped on 24 hours’ notice without her typically painstaking roll-out, the 16 mo...
Courtney Marie Andrews’ Old Flowers Finds Growth in Moving On: Review
The Lowdown: Old Flowers, Courtney Marie Andrews’ fifth full-length LP, is an album about heartbreak and growth. After a nine-year relationship that began at the tender age of nineteen, Andrews realized it was time for her to move on and grow on her own. In her own words, “Anytime I felt like myself, I was alone and wandering, and I knew that was a sign that it was time for change.” This is a tale as old as time for many, when you realize the love you share with someone cannot grow anymore. As Andrews puts it herself in the title track, “You can’t water old flowers,” meaning, you can’t force something to grow that’s already dead. Andrews understood it was time to take the reins of her life herself, as scary as that would be, and she does this with as much grace as possible on her new album...
The Chicks’ Gaslighter Galvanizes The Trio’s Long-Awaited Return: Review
The Lowdown: The most infamous act in country music, The Chicks (formerly known as the Dixie Chicks), stopped releasing new music 14 years ago, after their seventh album, Taking the Long Way, netted five Grammys. These included Album of the Year, plus Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “Not Ready to Make Nice”, which settled any lingering questions about whether they regretted their 2003 criticism of George W. Bush (they did not). Gaslighter marks the trio’s official return, and a lot has changed, both in the surrounding world and in the sound of The Chicks’ music. But some crucial elements remain the same: their attention is firmly focused ahead of them and on the things they care for. In the songs that focus on deteriorating relationships, and notably lead singer Natalie Maines’...
The Revenge of /\/\/\Y/\
As the 2000s became the 2010s, no artist looked more poised to transform the landscape wholesale than Mathangi Arulpragasam, whom most millennials know as M.I.A. A brilliant Sri Lankan musician, political disruptor, and cultural synthesizer from London, she made music almost entirely about being exiled by birthright, about her complicated relationship with societal upheaval having an activist father with links to (but not, as oft-believed, actually in) the LTTE, about how rich music itself becomes when you look outside of spaces colonized by Western whites. Then she ate a truffle fry. It’s instructive to look back on how deeply M.I.A.’s and Kanye West’s paths diverged as the 2010s took shape. Both were cutting-edge royalty beginning in 2004, pulling just about every musically inclined pers...
Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon Secures the Late Rapper’s Legacy: Review
The Lowdown: Last summer, at a congested intersection in Flatbush, the hip-hop rule book was left to smolder in a fiery, steel mesh garbage can. Passersby extinguished the fire, but by then Pop Smoke had already scored an improbable hit with “Welcome to the Party”. Pop Smoke (born Bashar Jackson) hardly seemed destined for superstardom; only a Noo Yawker could love those carelessly dropped “R’s” and that honking bassone cadence. And “Welcome to the Party”, with its retro drum’n’bass synth riff, could have been recorded between rounds one and two of the Bush tax cuts. It was the song that time forgot. Yet, it was streamed 80 million times. Coming to a barber shop near you is Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon, Pop Smoke’s posthumous new album. (He was killed in a February home invasion; ...
My Morning Jacket’s The Waterfall II Offers a Slice of Thoughtful Summer Escapism: Review
The Lowdown: In our diseased and never-ending present, 2015 feels like a hell of a lot longer ago than just five years. That April, My Morning Jacket released The Waterfall, a record that our Sheldon Pearce praised for its “stunning sonic scenery” and “perceptive, generation-bending kind of songwriting about lost love and nostalgia.” In addition to producing their best-received record since 2005’s breakthrough, Z, the sessions at Panoramic House in Stinson, CA, also produced a second album’s worth of material that Jim James and company decided to save until they needed them most. At the time, James told critic Steven Hyden in an interview for Grantland that “the two records aren’t related or anything” and that he “[didn’t] want to put it out as, like, The Waterfall 2 or anything like that....
HAIM’s Women in Music Pt. III Brims with Nuance and a Smorgasbord of Sounds: Review
The Lowdown: Summertime milestones are shaping up to become a staple in HAIM’s career. Just about a week shy of the three-year anniversary of the release of their sophomore album, Something to Tell You, the trio — composed of sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este Haim — put their latest work, Women in Music Pt. III, out into the world. Like the adorable video of their parents opening their Women in Music Pt. III vinyl in matching “Go HAIM or Go Home” t-shirts (which, if it isn’t already, should definitely be added to all future merch tables) that the band posted on Instagram, the album contains a raw tenderness that drums up its own sense of quiet magic on each track. Equally cool and cozy, Women in Music Pt. III sees HAIM tackle incredibly vulnerable subject matter against a musical smorgasbo...
Bob Dylan’s Rough and Rowdy Ways Paints a Better Self-Portrait
For six decades, Bob Dylan has proven completely peerless. His lyrics especially have redefined risk-taking and boundary-pushing in popular song. His eyes have always been on the horizon. On his 39th studio album, he looks inward to explore the undiscovered country of his own heart, mind, and creative process. Rough and Rowdy Days is a typically astounding, kaleidoscopic journey through the last half-century of American history. The first hint of a new album came back in March when “Murder Most Foul,” a staggering, 17-minute orchestral elegy to John F. Kennedy, was dropped online with a typically cryptic message: “This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you.” It was Dylan’s first original song s...
Run the Jewels’ RTJ4 Takes Aim at Systemic Oppression amid National Uprising: Review
The Lowdown: Run the Jewels 4, which was released on June 3rd (two days earlier than originally announced), couldn’t have come at a better time. The duo, comprised of hip-hop mainstays Killer Mike and El-P, have ostensibly grown since their 2013 self-titled debut album. It’s imperative to recognize that the… Please click the link below to read the full article. Run the Jewels’ RTJ4 Takes Aim at Systemic Oppression amid National Uprising: Review Matt Melis 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 revenu...
Run the Jewels’ RTJ4 Is Driving Music for a Cop Car on Fire
Run the Jewels don’t make a reviewer’s job easy because everything that’s great about them is the stuff we’re supposed to ignore to get to the bottom of the hype. They began as the best kind of “supergroup”: An unlikely pairing of beloved talents who still had plenty of room to peak higher. El-P’s fantastic Fantastic Damage and his countless innovative productions for his own previous, self-built Def Jux universe (Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein, Mr. Lif’s I Phantom) were unmistakably the most futuristic squelches in dusty-crate-obsessed indie-rap. Jaime Meline set the stage for dystopian soundscapes in hip-hop more than a decade before Death Grips, Yeezus, or the “mutant” scene that’s spawned Black Dresses and Deli Girls. Then you’ve got Michael Render, d/b/a Killer Mike, a firebrand of an MC...
