Diana Ross’ return to the pop landscape — her first record of newly written material, not covers, in over 20 years — sounds familiar, and there’s little doubt it was intended that way. In the years after she left the Supremes, Ross reached transcendent levels with billowy pop meant to …
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Geese are a band of Brooklyn kids just out of high school, but they’ve already got the indie-rock-prodigy thing easily in hand on their excellent debut. The erudition on Projector can be pretty staggering. You can hear NYC guitar zone-out Zen masters like Television, the Feelies, and Parquet Courts; the …
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“I live in the darkness,” John Darnielle warns us on the Mountain Goats‘ latest. That Darnielle needs to spell that out so clearly ought to be cause for alarm, since he hasn’t exactly been Mary Poppins up to this point. One of the most charming songs he ever wrote, 2005’s …
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The first Strokes album in seven years picks up pretty much where the last one, 2013’s Comedown Machine, left off — another study in what LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy once called “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered Eighties.” Few bands so embody a place and time as the Strokes did New …
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Justin Bieber loves his wife. Being married, sharing a life together, having sex with his lawfully wedded spouse — he’s enjoying all these elements of his life as a 25-year-old, so much so that he has now recorded an entire album about this subject and not much else. Changes, which …
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It’s been a while since the Flaming Lips have returned to their classic formula of song-driven alternative psych-rock. King’s Mouth, an elaborate concept LP featuring spoken-word narration from the Clash’s Mick Jones, is, in some senses, a back to basics return to form for the group. There are a few moments …
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Since storming out of the gates with their first EP six years ago, UK act the 1975 has thrown themselves into the sort of “biggest band in the world” chatter that defines the music press of their homeland. Their penchant for huge choruses and hyper-neurotic lyrics made tracks like “Chocolate” …
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