After the lonesome folk and skeletal roadhouse soul of her debut album, 2012’s *Half Way Home*, Angel Olsen turned up the intensity on *Burn Your Fire for No Witness*, and she does it again on *MY WOMAN*. The title’s in all caps for a reason: The St. Louis, Missouri, native’s third album is bigger in both the acrobatic feats of her always-agile voice and the widescreen, hi-fi sound that Olsen and co-producer Justin Raisen bring to the table. With the very first song, “Intern,” it’s clear that Olsen has taken us somewhere new. A slow dance in a dive bar at last call, it might be familiar turf were it not for the synthesizers that cast an eerie glow across the song’s red-velvet backdrop. “Never Be Mine” harnesses the anguish of ’60s girl groups in jangling guitar and crisp backbeats; “Shut Up Kiss Me” couches desire in terms so heated the mic practically melts beneath Olsen’s yelp. Mindful of its ancestry but never expressly retro, the album is a triumph of rock ’n’ roll pathos, an exquisite dissertation on the poetry of twang and tremolo. And even if “There is nothing new/Under the sun,” as Olsen sings on the fateful “Heart Shaped Face,” she is forever finding ways to file down everyday truths to a finer point, drawing blood with every new prick. As she sighs over watery piano and fathomless reverb on the heartbreaking closer, “Pops,” “It hurts to start dreaming/Dreaming again.” But that pain is precisely what makes *MY WOMAN* so unforgettable, and so true.
Anyone reckless enough to have typecast Angel Olsen according to 2013’s ‘Burn Your Fire For No Witness’ is in for a sizable surprise with her third album, ‘MY WOMAN’. The crunchier, blown-out production of the former is gone, but that fire is now burning wilder. Her disarming, timeless voice is even more front-and-centre than before, and the overall production is lighter. Yet the strange, raw power and slowly unspooling incantations of her previous efforts remain, so anyone who might attempt to pigeonhole Olsen as either an elliptical outsider or a pop personality is going to be wrong whichever way they choose - Olsen continues to reign over the land between the two with a haunting obliqueness and sophisticated grace. Given its title, and track names like ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’, it would be easy to read a gender-specific message into ‘MY WOMAN’, but Olsen has never played her lyrical content straight. She explains: “I’m definitely using scenes that I’ve replayed in my head, in the same way that I might write a script and manipulate a memory to get it to fit. But I think it’s important that people can interpret things the way that they want to.” That said, Olsen concedes that if she could locate any theme, whether in the funny, synth-laden ‘Intern’ or the sadder songs which are collected on the record’s latter half, “then it’s maybe the complicated mess of being a woman and wanting to stand up for yourself, while also knowing that there are things you are expected to ignore, almost, for the sake of loving a man. I’m not trying to make a feminist statement with every single record, just because I’m a woman. But I do feel like there are some themes that relate to that, without it being the complete picture.” Over her two previous albums, she’s given us reverb-shrouded poetic swoons, shadowy folk, grunge-pop band workouts and haunting, finger-picked epics. ‘MY WOMAN’ is an exhilarating complement to her past work, and one for which Olsen recalibrated her writing/recording approach and methods to enter a new music-making phase. She wrote some songs on the piano she’d bought at the end of the previous album tour, but she later switched it out for synth and/or Mellotron on a few of them, such as the aforementioned ‘Intern’. ‘MY WOMAN’ is lovingly put together as a proper A-side and a B-side, featuring the punchier, more pop/rock-oriented songs up front, and the longer, more reflective tracks towards the end. The rollicking ‘Shut Up Kiss Me’, for example, appears early on - its nervy grunge quality belying a subtle desperation, as befits any song about the exhaustion point of an impassioned argument. Another crowning moment comes in the form of the melancholic and Velvets-esque ‘Heart-shaped Face’, while the compelling ‘Sister’ and ‘Woman’ are the only songs not sung live. They also both run well over the seven-minute mark: the first being a triumph of reverb-splashed, ’70s country rock, cast along Fleetwood Mac lines with a Neil Young caged-tiger guitar solo to cap it off. The latter is a wonderful essay in vintage electronic pop and languid, psychedelic soul. Because her new songs demanded a plurality of voices, Olsen sings in a much broader range of styles on the album, and she brought in guest guitarist Seth Kauffman to augment her regular band of bass player Emily Elhaj, drummer Joshua Jaeger and guitarist Stewart Bronaugh. As for a producer, Olsen took to Justin Raisen, who’s known for his work with Charli XCX, Sky Ferreira and Santigold, as well as opting to record live to tape at LA’s historic Vox Studios. As the record evolves, you get the sense that the “My Woman” of the title is Olsen herself - absolutely in command, but also willing to bend with the influence of collaborators and circumstances. If ever there was any pressure in the recording process, it’s totally undetectable in the result. An intuitively smart, warmly communicative and fearlessly generous record, ‘MY WOMAN’ speaks to everyone. That it might confound expectation is just another of its strengths.
Michael Kiwanuka’s stunning second LP proves he’s an artist with something to say. *Love & Hate* is a timely and timeless set of slow-burning soul that recalls Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, and Curtis Mayfield. Produced by Danger Mouse, it sounds of the past and present all at once—as it does in the string-embossed swing of “Black Man in a White World.”
Neko Case, k.d. lang, and Laura Veirs are a bewitchingly lovely folk-rock supergroup. On their debut album as case/lang/veirs, the singer/songwriter titans combine their distinctive vocals and beguiling melodies. The songs on which Case takes lead (like the gorgeous opening track “Atomic Number”) are girded with poignant melancholy, while lang’s tracks (the yearning “Blue Fires” is one such highlight) are as smooth and seductive as her legendary croon. Veirs brings a clever indie-rock sensibility to the warm, wonderful “Best Kept Secret.” With its luminous harmonies and lush arrangements, *case / lang / veirs* is a thing of beauty.
*You Want It Darker* joins *Old Ideas* and *Popular Problems* in a trio of gorgeous, ruminative albums that find Cohen settling his affairs, spiritual (“Leaving the Table”), romantic (“If I Didn’t Have Your Love”), and otherwise. At 35, he sounded like an old man—at 82, he sounds eternal.
On their final album, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi rekindle a chemistry that endeared them to hip-hop fans worldwide. Filled with exploratory instrumental beds, creative samples, supple rhyming, and serious knock, it passes the headphone and car stereo test. “Kids…” is like a rap nerd’s fever dream, Andre 3000 and Q-Tip slaying bars. Phife—who passed away in March 2016—is the album’s scion, his roughneck style and biting humor shining through on “Black Spasmodic” and “Whateva Will Be.” “We the People” and “The Killing Season” (featuring Kanye West) show ATCQ’s ability to move minds as well as butts. *We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service* is not a wake or a comeback—it’s an extended visit with a long-missed friend, and a mic-dropping reminder of Tribe’s importance and influence.
Dori Freeman's album is the kind of country-folk record that hits you like a train: stunningly gorgeous, lyrically rich and so thoughtfully executed it seems it must be the work of an artist with years of releases under her belt. Yet the 10-track, self-titled album is Freeman's label debut. Produced by Teddy Thompson, son of folk legends Richard & Linda Thompson, Dori Freeman features an all-star cast of backing musicians (including producer Thompson himself). Freeman's lilting vocals shine front and center, at times reminiscent of Emmylou Harris, and are delivered with such an aching, melancholic sincerity that her reflections on love, loss and heartbreak find themselves buried deep under the skin. The album dances between country and western, old-time and folk, some instrumentations swelling with pedal steel and country fiddle, others reducing to simply Freeman's voice and sparse percussion. Born and raised by a musical family in the Blue Ridge town of Galax, Virginia, Freeman grew up performing in her grandfather's shop on the historic Crooked Road - a hugely important place in American musical history that remains a bastion of roots traditions today. Freeman herself plays an integral role in the new generation of roots music celebrants in the region, and her music is certainly influenced by the rich musical history of the area - although it extends well beyond the revivalist realm. Pure, striking, and at times utterly heartbreaking, Dori Freeman is a record of profound catharsis from an artist with a deep sense of purpose, and a visceral approach that cuts to the bone.
On this, his first masterpiece, Chance evolves—from Rapper to pop visionary. Influenced by gospel music, *Coloring Book* finds the Chicago native moved by the Holy Spirit and the current state of his hometown. “I speak to God in public,” he says on “Blessings,” its radiant closer. “He think the new sh\*t jam / I think we mutual fans.”
Bon Iver’s third LP is as bold as it is beautiful. Made during a five-year period when Justin Vernon contemplated ditching the project altogether, *22, A Million* perfects the sound alloyed on 2011’s *Bon Iver*: ethereal but direct, layered but stripped-back, as processed as EDM yet naked as a fallen branch. The songs here run together as though being uncovered in real time, with highlights—“29 #Strafford APTS,” “8 (circle)”—flashing in the haze.
'22, A Million' is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then '22, A Million' is the letting go of that attachment to a place.
The soul singer and Stax legend returns home.
Aaron Lee Tasjan fell over and broke his wrist. “It could have been much worse” he said. “I could have broken my guitar”. This man is interested in his guitar and his music more than anything else. Even girls. Well, maybe not. I come not to tell you how incredible Aaron Lee Tasjan is but seeing this is his album I suppose I should make some sort of effort. After all, he’s my dear friend and he’s made three cool albums with me, he and I together and not too untogether on the mushrooms, either. And he came up with that great guitar riff that Jack White plays on my I Believe In Elvis Presley record. Aaron rides into town with his guitar and his little amp and a bag full of gizmos and a wild suit that would make Lefty Frizzell wince. He’s got the tunes, he’s got the verbal, he’s got the humour and the heartbreak and the hat. “There must be some way outta here” as Bob said. And there is. ALT by name and altitude by nature. Like Dan Penn and Neil Young, this is white soul that is beyond colour and full of colour, heart to art and vice versa, the voice authentic with the dust of the road. Songs of pain and redemption, of loss and longing and toleration and elucidation and maybe elevation, which way is up? And d’you mind if we have a laugh along the way? The geography: born in Ohio, now in Nashville via Boston then New York and a spell with its Dolls. Aaron would make me proud to be American if I was American but I’m not so forgive me mentioning it. He’s a liberal, forward-thinking chap who takes digs at himself with a smile and a simile and wouldn’t mind saving the world while he’s at it. Aaron is an American in the best way. Let’s not kid ourselves here. It’s a strange world and Aaron’s a strange chap and therein lies the beauty of it. The cat’s songwriting is treble mega in a lineage that embraces The Fabs to Willie and the driest wryness since John Lennon. Ah, and that ALT guitaring: one moment the finger-prints of the acoustic finger-picking of John Fahey on Owsley, then that ferocious six-string electric twang that leads from lunacy to salvation and beyond. I mean, dig the brilliant bonkers one-note-guitar/piano solo here on the aptly-titled ‘Out Of My Mind’ which is worth the price of admission alone, with our hero sanguinely singing “When I get in my own head I go out of my mind… why is it so quiet when I think aloud..?” Muddy had an album titled Hard Again. The first song here on Silver Tears is It’s A Hard Life. One iconic, one ironic. The ALT choogle is good, even when he’s hurting or having a go at himself. That’s what great artists do – they’re their own fall-down guys. Unless it’s a bit of bombast of course and then Aaron can out-twang Neil Young Live Rust using only his big toe well no that’s a lie but you get my drift. Be careful of believing this troubadour all the time. The way he often sings it, he’s mostly stoned out of his tree and more drunk than Hank (who turns up in the song ‘Ready To Die’, fact fans). Whatever the medicine is, dear pal, keep taking it because it suits you. Either that or at times the greatest songwriters are the ones who tell redemptive lies. Like The Beatles with Tamla Motown, The Stones and their fascination for Chess Records, Dylan’s love first for Little Richard and then for Woody Guthrie, ALT too has his influences – the fab Georgics of the contagious ‘Dime,’ the maybe kneel to Neil of the heart-wrenching ‘Refugee Blues’ where “your conscience becomes thinner than the soles of worn out shoes”. You can imagine Gram having a lonesome warble through ‘On Your Side’ and Mavis kissing the heavens with the benedictions of ‘Where The Road Begins And Ends’. And Aaron could’ve been a Wilbury just fine. Rock’n’roll, is it simply showbiz or is it ultra mega boogaloo where Gods walk among us, plugged in & shakin’ out the achin’? I believe in Aaron Lee Tasjan. – BP Fallon, New York City 2016
Puberty is a game of emotional pinball: hormones that surge, feelings that ricochet between exhilarating highs and gut-churning lows. That’s the dizzying, intoxicating experience Mitski evokes on her aptly titled fourth album, a rush of rebel music that touches on riot grrrl, skeletal indie rock, dreamy pop, and buoyant punk. Unexpected hooks pierce through the singer/songwriter’s razor-edged narratives—a lilting chorus elevates the slinky, druggy “Crack Baby,” while her sweet singsong melodies wrestle with hollow guitar to amplify the tension on “Your Best American Girl.”
Ask Mitski Miyawaki about happiness and she'll warn you: “Happiness fucks you.” It's a lesson that's been writ large into the New Yorker's gritty, outsider-indie for years, but never so powerfully as on her newest album, 'Puberty 2'. “Happiness is up, sadness is down, but one's almost more destructive than the other,” she says. “When you realise you can't have one without the other, it's possible to spend periods of happiness just waiting for that other wave.” On 'Puberty 2', that tension is palpable: a both beautiful and brutal romantic hinterland, in which one of America’s new voices hits a brave new stride. The follow-up to 2014's 'Bury Me At Makeout Creek', named after a Simpsons quote and hailed by Pitchfork as “a complex 10-song story [containing] some of the most nuanced, complex and articulate music that's come from the indiesphere in a while,” 'Puberty 2' picks up where its predecessor left off. “It's kind of a two parter,” explains Mitski. “It's similar in sound, but a direct growth [from] that record.” Musically, there are subtle evolutions: electronic drum machines pulse throughout beneath Pixies-ish guitars, while saxophone lights up its opening track. “I had a certain confidence this time. I knew what I wanted, knew what I was doing and wasn't afraid to do things that some people may not like.” In terms of message though, the 25-year-old cuts the same defiant, feminist figure on 'Puberty 2' that won her acclaim last time around (her hero is MIA, for her politics as much as her music). Born in Japan, Mitski grew up surrounded by her father's Smithsonian folk recordings and mother's 1970s Japanese pop CDs in a family that moved frequently: she spent stints in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malaysia, China and Turkey among other countries before coming to New York to study composition at SUNY Purchase. She reflects now on feeling “half Japanese, half American but not fully either” – a feeling she confronts on the clever 'Your Best American Girl' – a super-sized punk-rock hit she “hammed up the tropes” on to deconstruct and poke fun at that genre's surplus of white males. “I wanted to use those white-American-guy stereotypes as a Japanese girl who can't fit in, who can never be an American girl,” she explains. Elsewhere on the record there's 'Crack Baby', a song which doesn't pull on your heartstrings so much as swing from them like monkey bars, which Mitski wrote the skeleton of as a teenager. As you might have guessed from the album's title, that adolescent period is a time of her life she doesn't feel she's entirely left behind. “It came up as a joke and I became attached to it. 'Puberty 2'! It sounds like a blockbuster movie” – a nod to the horror-movie terror of adolescence. “I actually had a ridiculously long argument whether it should be the number 2, or a Roman numeral.” The album was put together with the help of long-term accomplice Patrick Hyland, with every instrument on record played between the two of them. “You know the Drake song 'No New Friends'? It's like that. The more I do this, the more I close-mindedly stick to the people I know,” she explains. “I think that focus made it my most mature record.” Sadness is awful and happiness is exhausting in the world of Mitski. The effect of 'Puberty 2', however, is a stark opposite: invigorating, inspiring and beautiful.
Clark applies her writerly touch to songs that are bold, relatable, and rich in detail. *Big Day in a Small Town* finds the GRAMMY®-nominated singer/songwriter following up her acclaimed solo debut—2012’s *12 Stories*—with a set of big, beautifully realized country narratives that includes shimmering, hair salon melodrama (“Soap Opera”), brash but subversive rock (“Broke,” “Girl Next Door”), Patsy Cline-like honky-tonky (“Drinkin’, Smokin’, Cheatin’”), and haunting ballads (“Since You’ve Gone to Heaven,” inspired by her father’s death in a logging accident.)
Robert Ellis has named his new album after himself and the reason is clear. The album is both his most personal statement yet and a summation of his career thus far. Robert Ellis opens with “Perfect Strangers,” a meditation on what brings people together (and how tenuous that connection can be), and ends with “It's Not OK,” a raw look at emotional compromise. Between those two powerful bookends are nine other songs that set Ellis's soaring vocals and knowing melodies against his sharp, dark observations, and that show him in full command of a vibrant set of songwriting skills—irony, distance, character, narrative, a thoughtful relationship between sound and sense. Ellis was born and raised in Lake Jackson, a town about an hour from Houston whose other famous residents have included the Pauls (Ron and Rand) and Selena (the original Queen of Tejano, not the current pop sensation). From an early age, he escaped small-town boredom through music. At first, his tastes ran toward traditional hits. “I remember having a bunch of pop records when I was really young: No Doubt and Michael Jackson and Garth Brooks. That was when I was pretty passive as a listener—I liked them, but maybe I got to them because my mom or one of my sisters had them. The first I really got obsessed with was a Doc Watson collection. I was already starting to play guitar, and my uncle told my mom to get it for me. He was my first guitar hero.” As he developed as a writer, though, he found himself drawn toward the smartest and sharpest of the class of songwriters who developed in the 1970s: artists like Paul Simon, John Prine, and Randy Newman. And he didn’t just listen to them. He learned from them. Specifically, he learned the finer points of songcraft. “I've been a big fan of Paul Simon for a long time,” he says. “He has this capacity to surprise you with his music and his lyrics. With John Prine's songs, I grew from believing that they happened to him to understanding that it didn’t matter if they really happened to him. And Randy Newman? Wow. I especially love a record like Trouble in Paradise, when there are all these artificial 1980s production techniques, but they’re being used in the service of this master composer.”
There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of *Lemonade*—Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album—and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar. An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: \"I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.” The speech—made by her husband JAY-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015—reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her blackness, her husband’s infidelity) and make for Beyoncé\'s most outwardly revealing work to date. The details, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting. Billed upon its release as a tribute to “every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing,” the project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave—a vivid personal statement from the most powerful woman in music, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. It is also astonishingly tough. Through tears, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” This panoramic strength–lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal–nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero. Every second of *Lemonade* deserves to be studied and celebrated (the self-punishment in “Sorry,” the politics in “Formation,” the creative enhancements from collaborators like James Blake, Robert Plant, and Karen O), but the song that aims the highest musically may be “Don’t Hurt Yourself”—a Zeppelin-sampling psych-rock duet with Jack White. “This is your final warning,” she says in a moment of unnerving calm. “If you try this shit again/You gon\' lose your wife.” In support, White offers a word to the wise: “Love God herself.”
Recorded shortly after two years of intense touring, *Dig in Deep* captures the blues rock icon in peak form. On politically charged rocker “The Comin’ Round Is Going Through,” the only thing sharper than Raitt’s tongue is her slide playing. Channeling their inner Little Feat, her band show off their funky chops on a sensuously percussive rendition of INXS’ “Need You Tonight.” Certainly no stranger to singer/songwriter fare, Raitt takes her place at the piano for set closer “The Ones We Couldn’t Be,” one of the most emotionally naked tunes of her storied career.
It\'s tempting to view *The Weight of These Wings* as Lambert\'s \"divorce album\" following her split from Blake Shelton, and songs like the acoustic, regret-laden \"Pushin\' Time\" certainly lend credence to that notion. But this ambitious, double-length LP illustrates the full range of her talents. A roadhouse-rockin\' cover of Danny O\'Keefe\'s 1971 tune \"Covered Wagon,\" the throbbing indie-pop beat of \"Six Degrees of Separation,\" and the funky slow-burn of \"Pink Sunglasses\" only hint at the wide terrain traversed here.
How does a punk follow up a landmark album such as *Transgender Dysphoria Blues*? For *Shape Shift with Me*, Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace proves that writing a bunch of brokenhearted pop songs is always a good option. There are plenty of punk ragers here, such as “Dead Rats,” but jangly odes to heartache \"Crash\" and \"Boyfriend\" bounce and chime in ways that no other Against Me! songs ever have, while \"Rebecca\" is a fizzy New Wave ode to the anxiety spawned by new love.
Radiohead’s ninth album is a haunting collection of shapeshifting rock, dystopian lullabies, and vast spectral beauty. Though you’ll hear echoes of their previous work—the remote churn of “Daydreaming,” the feverish ascent and spidery guitar of “Ful Stop,” Jonny Greenwood’s terrifying string flourishes—*A Moon Shaped Pool* is both familiar and wonderfully elusive, much like its unforgettable closer. A live favorite since the mid-‘90s, “True Love Waits” has been re-imagined in the studio as a weightless, piano-driven meditation that grows more exquisite as it gently floats away.
You have no right to be depressed You haven’t tried hard enough to like it There are two kinds of great lyrics. The first is the banger/anthem catch phrase: "Normal life is borin' / but superstardom is close to post-mortem." The second is more complex (and more rarely found): "Like a bird on a wire / Like a drunk in a midnight choir/I have tried in my way to be free" — with ideas, themes, and personae unfolding over the course of songs, contradicting each other, confronting the listeners' preconceptions, like Pete Townsend, Morrissey, or Kendrick Lamar. Will Toledo, the singer/songwriter/visionary of Car Seat Headrest, is adept at both, having developed them over the course of his eleven college-recorded Bandcamp albums and his retrospective collection last fall, Teens of Style. With Teens of Denial, his first real "studio" album with an actual band, Toledo moves from bedroom pop to something approaching classic-rock grandeur and huge (if detailed and personal) narrative ambitions, with nods to the Cars, Pavement, Jonathan Richman, Wire, and William Onyeabor. "I’m so sick of / (Fill in the blank)" or "It’s more than you bargained for / But it's a little less than what you paid for" are more than smart, edgy slogans. Over the course of Teens of Denial's 11 songs, Will narrates a journey with his mysterious companion/alter-ego Joe that addresses big themes (personal responsibility, existential despair, the nature of identity, the Bible, heaven) and small ones (Air Jordans, cops, whether to have one more beer, why he lost his backpack). By turns tender and caustic, empathetic and solipsistic, literary and vernacular, profound and profane, self-loathing and self-aggrandizing, he conjures a specifically 21st century mindset, a product of information overload, the loneliness it can foster, and the escape music can provide. “Fill in The Blank,” the mission statement of the album, kicks things off — it’s a fist-pumping anthem about feeling lousy in an ill-defined way, the fear of settling into a routine of futility, and not wanting to deal with it. Although it’s oddly joyful sounding, Toledo considers it the introduction to his angriest record yet. In that vein, “Vincent,” “Hippie Powers,” and “Connect The Dots” are about both fighting to hold your place in the crowd and to hold your drink, as well as DIY college house shows, and having no one to dance with, respectively. Initially similar, "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” veers off in surprising directions, each piece flush with huge, irony-free hooks. At the heart of the album sits the 11:32 "Ballad of the Costa Concordia," which has more musical ideas than most whole albums (and at that length, it uses them all). Horns, keyboards, and elegant instrumental interludes set off art-garage moments; vivid vocal harmonies follow punk frenzy. The selfish captain of the capsized cruise liner in the Mediterranean in 2013 becomes a metaphor for struggles of the individual in society, as experienced by one hungover young man on the verge of adulthood. Teens of Denial refracts Toledo's particular, personal story of one difficult year through cultural touchstones such as the biography of Frank Sinatra, the evolution of the Me Generation as seen in Mad Men and elsewhere, plus elements of eastern and western theology. The whole thing flaunts a kind of conceptual, lyrical, and musical ambition that has been missing from far too much 21st-century music. I won’t go down with this shit I will put my hands up and surrender there will be no more flags above my door I have lost, and always will be There are two kinds of great lyricists. The first kind is one one you find in books, canonized by time and a lifetime of expression. The second has it all in front of him. Meet Will Toledo. Or at least one version of him.
The L.A. indie-rock outfit return, refreshed. *Heads Up* finds the foursome melding their gauzy post-punk with elements of modern R&B, pop, and dance music for a set that shimmers and throbs. “You come along and wash away the rain,” they sing on “New Song,” their finest to date. “You are the sun that leads me back to where I belong.”
When Maren Morris moved to Nashville, the now megastar had modest dreams of making a living as a writer for hire on Music Row. After finding her footing in town (as well as connecting with a top-notch cadre of cowriters), Morris wrote a song that would forever change her life: “My Church.” “I didn\'t have the interest to just be back onstage again for probably four or five years,” she tells Apple Music. “Then I wrote ‘My Church’ and it just kind of rekindled this flame in me of wanting to be the one on the microphone, because I just couldn\'t hear someone else singing that song.” The Grammy-winning single is only one of several hits on her fourth album *Hero*, which was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Album and led to Morris’ 2016 CMA Award win for New Artist of the Year. The breezy, carefree pop of “80s Mercedes” foreshadowed Morris’s genre agnosticism, while “Rich,” with its irreverent lyrics and earworm of a chorus, showed her versatility. Morris scored her first No. 1 hit at radio with the wistful ballad “I Could Use a Love Song,” an accomplishment that cut through the glut of men clogging country radio charts. “At the time, I don\'t think people remember how unheard of it was for a female with a ballad to go all the way to the top,” she tells Apple Music. Morris coproduced *Hero* alongside the late producer and songwriter busbee, who served as an integral collaborator for Morris until his death at 43 in 2019. “He’s just so embedded in every tom sound, every kick drum,” she tells Apple Music. “Every bass note is him playing. It’s still such a timeless record, to me, because of him.” *Hero* would soon catapult Morris to new heights, including featuring prominently on Zedd’s massive, paradigm-shifting pop hit “The Middle,” a move that would make her a household name just in time for the release of *Hero*’s follow-up, 2019’s *GIRL*.
As raw and emotionally direct as Oberst has ever sounded. *Ruminations* finds the singer/songwriter on his own for a set of stark and often unsettling folk—captured over two wintry days in his Nebraska home, following the discovery of a cyst on his brain. “They say a party can kill you,” he sings on “A Little Uncanny,” amid a blur of harmonica and brittle acoustic guitar. “Sometimes I wish it would.”
In the winter of 2016, Conor Oberst found himself hibernating in his hometown of Omaha after living in New York City for more than a decade. He emerged with the unexpectedly raw, unadorned solo album Ruminations. Oberst went to ARC, the studio he built with his Bright Eyes bandmate and friend Mike Mogis, and, with the help of engineer Ben Brodin, recorded all the songs within 48 hours. The results are almost sketch-like in their sparseness: Oberst alone with his guitar, piano, and harmonica; the songs connect with some of the rough magic and anxious poetry that first brought him to the attention of the world, while their lyrical complexity and concerns make it obvious they could only have been written in the present.
Say what it is... Its so impossible... Pinegrove’s Evan Stephens Hall drawls on the album’s highlight track. The line’s meant as an examination of language’s intrinsic hardships, but it’s also an apt description of the record itself. Adopting genres and influences at will, *Cardinal* unfolds through lo-fi indie shouts, country twang, and chunky-riffed pop rock choruses. Each turn of phrase, guitar tone, and harmony feels delightfully stripped-down, comfortably unrushed, and well-lived-in.
In the four years between Frank Ocean’s debut album, *channel ORANGE*, and his second, *Blonde*, he had revealed some of his private life—he published a Tumblr post about having been in love with a man—but still remained as mysterious and skeptical towards fame as ever, teasing new music sporadically and then disappearing like a wisp on the wind. Behind great innovation, however, is a massive amount of work, and so when *Blonde* was released one day after a 24-hour, streaming performance art piece (*Endless*) and alongside a limited-edition magazine entitled *Boys Don’t Cry*, one could forgive him for being slippery. *Endless* was a visual album that featured the mundane beauty of Ocean woodworking in a studio, soundtracked by abstract and meandering ambient music. *Blonde* built on those ideas and imbued them with a little more form, taking a left-field, often minimalist approach to his breezy harmonies and ever-present narrative lyricism. His confidence was crucial to the risk of creating a big multimedia project for a sophomore album, but it also extended to his songwriting—his voice surer of itself (“Solo”), his willingness to excavate his weird impulses more prominent (“Good Guy,” “Pretty Sweet,” among others). Though *Blonde* packs 17 tracks into one quick hour, it’s a sprawling palette of ideas, a testament to the intelligence of flying one’s own artistic freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet you where you’re at. In this case, fans were enthusiastic enough for *Blonde* to rack up No. 1s on charts around the world.
The Felice Brothers' latest release Life In The Dark includes 9 new original tracks recorded at Letterbox Farm in Columbia County, NY and produced by The Felice Brothers. Life In The Dark is available via Yep Roc Records on June 24th. All vinyl orders will come with a digital download code for the full album.
Charming, savvy, and a little bit rugged, Brothers Osborne’s debut boasts a perfect blend of country roots and pop appeal. Co-produced by Eric Church’s right-hand man, Jay Joyce, *Pawn Shop* is a wide swing through low times (“Pawn Shop,” “Dirt Rich”) and high times (“Down Home”), the comforts of home and the freedom of the open road (“Greener Pastures”). It’s topped by the GRAMMY®-nominated highlight “Stay a Little Longer,” co-written by Sam Hunt and Kacey Musgraves collaborator Shane McAnally.
