Album Reviews
Björk Is as Vibrant as Ever on the Moving, Earthy Fossora
Aside from her unmatched ability to constantly and successfully reinvent herself, one of Björk’s greatest qualities is her deft, poignant interrogations on the complex ties between humanity and nature. On her previous album, 2017’s lovely Utopia, the Icelandic experimental pop singer envisioned a world beyond ours, contrasting ethereal imagery and feather-light production with her growing concerns about the environment and her lingering grief around her divorce. Fossora — the followup to Utopia and her 10th overall record, out Friday (September 30th) — finds Björk coming back down to Earth, surveying the decay of our natural world and meditating on its debilitating effect on our own relationships. We don’t take care of our planet, Björk seems to suggest, because we fail to take care o...
The Anxiety and Ambition of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Cool It Down
It goes without saying that the world has changed since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs unleashed their feral debut album, Fever to Tell, in 2003. Written in the wake of of 9/11, it was a 37-minute adrenaline rush of post-punk you can dance to. The record cemented them as an integral part of the wave of guitar-heavy New York bands, such as The Strokes and Interpol, that rose to prominence at the start of the century. Even now, they’re still considered a New York band, despite the city, its music, the band themselves, and the world around them continuing to change. The band went on hiatus shortly after releasing their third album Mosquito in 2013, though Karen O focused on releasing her solo work and contributing to film soundtracks, and became a mother for the first time. Meanwhile, Nick Zinner lent h...
Natural Brown Prom Queen Is Sudan Archives’ Brilliant Homecoming
Brittney Parks might be the only artist who can use the phrases “step inside my cottage” and “only bad bitches” in the same verse. The multi-hyphenate alt-R&B musician — better known as Sudan Archives, our September Artist of the Month — uses both of them effortlessly in “Home Maker,” the opening track to her multifarious new album Natural Brown Prom Queen. At once, she paints herself as both the modern hot girl and a timeless Aphrodite. “Home Maker” is a fitting mission statement to Natural Brown Prom Queen, a record that luxuriates in introversion, creature comforts, and the freedom allotted by the places you feel most safe. “Don’t you feel at home when you’re with me?” she repeats in the bridge. There’s a bit of a come-hither wink to it, but also an edge. Rather than playing into th...
Muse’s Will of the People is Vague, Jumbled, and Unimaginative: Review
At the end of Muse‘s third studio album, 2003’s Absolution, is a powerful ballad that, to this day, is one of the band’s best ever creations: “Ruled By Secrecy.” The song, rooted in Matt Bellamy‘s dueling arpeggiated pianos, is a patient exploration of an individual’s lack power against an unknown societal force, a stirring call to those who “are working so hard/ but [they’re] never in charge,” and a nod of suspicion towards society’s manipulative leaders. “Ruled By Secrecy,” along with the other dramatic, apocalyptic themes of Absolution, marked a new thematic highway for the British trio, and it’s one that they’ve followed staunchly since the album’s release in 2003. Black Holes and Revelations came next with a greater emphasis on sci-fi, but still found the band using a s...
Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine Is a Kaleidoscope of Pain and Gain
Do not let the title of Megan Thee Stallion’s sophomore album, Traumazine, fool you — she is stronger than ever, even as she processes her pain through vulnerability. Honesty is at the heart of working through any kind of trauma, and Megan has decided to let us into her process. Meg comes out swinging with “NDA,” finding pockets within pockets of the beat — one of her greatest assets as a rapper. “I ain’t perfect, but anything I did to any of you n****s, y’all deserved it/ You see me in that mode, don’t disturb me when I’m workin’,” she declares. She’s focused over the entire 51 minutes of the project, zeroing in on the intensity that pulsed beneath the surface of her earlier mixtapes Tina Snow and Fever. Traumazine (released Friday, August 12th) is absent of obvious club bangers, which wi...
Lizzo’s Vibrant New Album Makes Us All Feel Special
“Hi motherfucker, did you miss me?” Lizzo asks by way of introduction on “The Sign,” the bouncy first song on her new album Special (available today, July 15th — stream it below). Quite honestly, we did. How has the Grammy-winning chart-topper been spending her time since we last saw her? Lizzo is happy to share: She’s been healing, making smoothies, training and twerking — plus, working hard on this record, her follow up to 2019’s Cuz I Love You. In just about everything she does, Lizzo has a magical knack for making the listener or viewer feel like her best friend, whether it’s her candid and cheeky TikTok presence, inclusive energy onstage (get tickets to her upcoming tour here), or stories told through her music. Of the 12 tracks on the album, two were released ahead of time as si...
With Jack in the Box, j-hope Isn’t Afraid to Embrace the Darkness
“It was Hope that was kept in the innermost nook of the box. It trailed behind the miasma of darkness, assuaging the ill effects on humankind. Hope gave people the will to keep on living amidst the pain and strife.” The introduction of j-hope’s full-length debut solo album, Jack in the Box, is a female voice recounting the myth of Pandora’s Box; it’s a story j-hope, who was born Jung Hoseok, has long gravitated towards, and a partial source of his stage name. For nearly a decade now as part of BTS, j-hope has more than lived up to the name. He’s embodied it — epitomized it, even — by developing a reputation as the ray of sunshine in the global, record-smashing group. His energy onstage is astounding; anyone who is lucky enough to have seen BTS in concert inevitably walks away amazed by the...
Nova Twins Fight the Good Fight with the Genre-Bending Supernova: Review
Sometimes, the best art is born out of adversity, struggle and strife. Look at some of the greatest creative movements in history, for example. The protest songs of the ‘60s, the Harlem Renaissance — they come from times when pain, oppression and destruction were to no longer be tolerated by the masses. For UK’s Nova Twins, that adversity, struggle and strife was large scale — an intersectional pile on of racism, sexism, environmental decline, and the loss of rights. Their sophomore album, Supernova, tackles some of these issues from the opposite perspective, focusing on the reclamation of what’s been taken rather than the agonizing over what’s been lost. Instead of forlorn lyrics directly reflecting our many tragedies, the duo, Amy Love and Georgia South to be specific, create agency in t...
Nova Twins Fight the Good Fight with the Genre-Bending Supernova: Review
Sometimes, the best art is born out of adversity, struggle and strife. Look at some of the greatest creative movements in history, for example. The protest songs of the ‘60s, the Harlem Renaissance — they come from times when pain, oppression and destruction were to no longer be tolerated by the masses. For UK’s Nova Twins, that adversity, struggle and strife was large scale — an intersectional pile on of racism, sexism, environmental decline, and the loss of rights. Their sophomore album, Supernova, tackles some of these issues from the opposite perspective, focusing on the reclamation of what’s been taken rather than the agonizing over what’s been lost. Instead of forlorn lyrics directly reflecting our many tragedies, the duo, Amy Love and Georgia South to be specific, create agency in t...
Nova Twins Fight the Good Fight with the Genre-Bending Supernova: Review
Sometimes, the best art is born out of adversity, struggle and strife. Look at some of the greatest creative movements in history, for example. The protest songs of the ‘60s, the Harlem Renaissance — they come from times when pain, oppression and destruction were to no longer be tolerated by the masses. For UK’s Nova Twins, that adversity, struggle and strife was large scale — an intersectional pile on of racism, sexism, environmental decline, and the loss of rights. Their sophomore album, Supernova, tackles some of these issues from the opposite perspective, focusing on the reclamation of what’s been taken rather than the agonizing over what’s been lost. Instead of forlorn lyrics directly reflecting our many tragedies, the duo, Amy Love and Georgia South to be specific, create agency in t...
Angel Olsen Delivers Country-Sized Emotions on Big Time
Angel Olsen has never repeated herself. Her debut Half Way Home introduced Olsen as a psych-folk songwriter with a powerhouse voice, before the lo-fi indie of Burn Your Fire For No Witness reframed her within the context of a band. Two years later, My Woman upped the production value and saw Olsen at her most intense and confrontational. All Mirrors wiped clean any pre-conceptions of Olsen, and even when she literally repeated herself with Whole New Mess, it felt like an entirely new statement. Since the one-two punch of All Mirrors and Whole New Mess, Olsen has kept fans guessing on which direction she might be headed next. In 2021, she released her Sharon Van Etten collaboration “Like I Used To,” a victory lap of an indie rock song for two of the genre’s most accomplished singer-songwrit...
Not Even Post Malone Can Save Post Malone on Twelve Carat Toothache
Twelve Carat Toothache (out today, June 3rd) is Post Malone‘s shortest album to date. And according to Posty, this is a deliberate play to resist the overloaded track lists that dominate streaming platforms; “I’ve made a lot of compromises, especially musically, but now I don’t feel like I want to anymore,” he said in a Billboard cover story back in January, “I don’t need a No. 1; that doesn’t matter to me no more, and at a point, it did.” This points to a few different potential outcomes for his fourth studio album — now that Post Malone has indeed scored his multiple No. 1s, ascended to true headliner status, and became a “sensitive bad boy” icon, taking some of that pressure off to make hit after hit could absolutely work in his favor. If he has nothing to lose at this point in his some...
