Album Reviews
With Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar Chooses Himself and Makes a Masterpiece
“I choose me, I’m sorry.” The last five words on Kendrick Lamar‘s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers hit the hardest for anyone who “did the work,” as trained and untrained therapists like to say. Kendrick’s fifth album, out today (May 13th), is a lot of things: part political analysis, part social critique, with a dash of familial observations. But from start to finish, it’s all therapy. Kendrick’s latest effort is the Compton emcee putting himself on the couch and asking, “Why?” Why is he addicted to women and cheating? Why is he overwrought with guilt when he can’t help old friends? Why does he bathe in toxic relationships? Or even why he’s so damn competitive when it comes to rap? Advertisement Kendrick created a double LP sure to inspire tons of ink spillage from the pop culture indust...
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti Is Summer’s Swaggering, Flavorful Soundtrack: Review
After making history with his last album, Bad Bunny is taking a lawn chair to the beach and basking in his success with his new LP, Un Verano Sin Ti (“A Summer Without You”). Across a whopping 23 tracks, the Puerto Rican superstar celebrates the music of the Caribbean with his signature emo flow. In addition to the usual suspects of reggaeton and Latin trap, he explores influences that include merengue, bomba, and dembow music. He continues to push reggaeton forward with alternative acts like The Marías and Bomba Estéreo, adding touches of Afrobeat and house music in mix. With his most fun and colorful album yet, Bad Bunny is ready for the summer season. The rapper released a trio of albums in 2020, culminating in El Último Tour Del Mundo making history as the first all-Spanish language al...
On WE, Arcade Fire Raise the Stakes Higher Than Ever, But to Mixed Results: Review
“It’s an age of doubt/ and I doubt we’ll figure it out,” sings Win Butler on the first line of “Age of Anxiety I,” the opening track of Arcade Fire’s sixth studio album, WE (out Friday, May 6th). From the very start, things are bleak and contradictory; the song essentially describes a full-on panic attack, even though the music beneath it is synth-covered, electrifying dance-rock, and as the track comes to a close, Butler trades repetitions of the phrases “It’s all about you” and “It’s not about you.” The latter contradiction is a crucial one in the context of WE: There is a deep consideration from the band about the all-or-nothing cultural mentality that we find ourselves in in 2022, and the separation of “I” and “We” is what makes up the core of the album. The first half o...
Black Star’s No Fear of Time Proves Even 24 Years Is Just a Number for Hip-Hop Greats
Time is crazy, right? It’s the one thing we never have enough of and, sometimes, can’t wait to have in the rearview mirror. Time is on the mind of Black Star, the duo who surprised hip-hip 24 years ago with a debut album still spoken about in hushed tones today. Talib Kweli and Yasiin Bey (f.k.a. Mos Def) capitalized on that success with their own solo careers. Still, fans kept asking — sometimes incessantly — where’s the next Black Star album? After two decades, the day finally arrived as the Brooklyn group released their sophomore album, No Fear of Time (currently only available on Luminary). While mere mortals might quake in their boots simply thinking about the prospect of releasing a new record so many years after a landmark debut and finding a way to match those lofty expectations, K...
Metallica’s Kirk Hammett Indulges Classical and Prog Tendencies on His Excellent Debut Solo EP Portals: Review
For a band with a such a storied career as Metallica, it is rather surprising that the longtime active members haven’t ventured off into various solo projects. That said, if we were to have wagered which member was most likely to go it alone, our best bet would’ve been Kirk Hammett. For years we’ve been hearing about the guitarist stockpiling hundreds, if not thousands of riffs on his phone. Considering Metallica’s deliberate workflow, only so many of these riffs and melodies, if any, will actually make it onto one of their records. Kirk needed an outlet, and he found it with his debut solo EP, Portals. No, this isn’t Kirk’s foray into becoming a singer-songwriter. Rather, the four-song release is entirely instrumental and contains minimal traces of heavy metal. Hammett said he took a “Aud...
The Diverse Appeal of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s Omnium Gatherum
Australia’s King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are easily among the most prolific and versatile acts of the last couple of decades. They’ve put out nearly two dozen collections since 2012, with several years spawning multiple releases each. Plus, their highly adventurous blends of psychedelic rock, hip-hop, garage rock, metal, ambient, dream pop, and electronic evoke artists as wide-ranging as Pink Floyd, Motörhead, Childish Gambino, Japanese Breakfast, Black Midi, and Tame Impala. Considering their talent and tenacity, it was only a matter of time before they pushed themselves further than ever by creating a double album. Indeed, Omnium Gatherum — which has more in common with 2021’s welcomingly exploratory Butterfly 3000 than it does last month’s avant-garde Made in Timeland — is essen...
On It’s Almost Dry, The Game Pulls Pusha T Back In
Almost every gangster movie or its sequel features a character going legit. Or trying as hard as they can. Scene after scene in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II show Michael Corleone telling anyone who will listen that the Corleone family is walking on the side of the angels after one, two, or a dozen more scores. For Pusha T, his 2018 opus Daytona was his massive score. Push distilled everything about his dope brand of hardcore hip-hop into an almost perfect seven-track piece of work. It’s Almost Dry, due out this Friday (April 22nd), feels like the reflections of a former gangster doing his best to live a regular life. But, to paraphrase the head of the Corleone family, just when Push thinks he’s out, the game pulls him back in. While not as strong as Daytona, It’s Almost Dry is m...
Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century: Doomed Love Songs For the Pseudo-Nostalgic
“What’s ‘deeply funny’ mean anyhow?” Father John Misty asks on “Q4,” a single from Chloë and the Next 20th Century. The song is the album’s clearest, most cutting satire, but this question feels earnest, the stakes intimate to the singer — as a performer and person seeking connection in a modern wasteland. Over five albums, singer-songwriter Josh Tillman has been a craftsman of story-songs delivered via absurdist personae, scaffolding ironic provocation with heartfelt croons and soaring folk-inspired instrumentation. On Chloë, singer-songwriter Josh Tillman returns with his first new material since 2018’s taciturn God’s Favorite Customer. Written and recorded in fall/winter 2020, the album sees Tillman continuing to collaborate with multi-instrumentatlist/producer Jonathan Wilson and engin...
Soul Glo Turn In a Landmark Hardcore Album with the Political and Personal Diaspora Problems: Review + Stream
In the roiling summer heat of 2021, Philadelphia hardcore act Soul Glo took to their practice space to record the 12 songs that would form Diaspora Problems. The material was conceptualized over a five-year period and harnessed in true punk fashion, under tumultuous and budget-conscious conditions. In many ways, Soul Glo have followed the tried-and-true punk trajectory, gradually building a fanbase via touring, DIY releases, and EPs. It’s culminated with the band inking a deal with storied punk label Epitaph Records, home to legends such as Bad Religion, Rancid, Social Distortion, and many more. But Soul Glo are far from your average hardcore band. With predominantly Black band members, the band is inherently distinguished among a scene long dominated by whiteness — a topic Pierce Jordan d...
Weezer Go Vivaldi-Rock (?) on SZNZ: Spring EP
For a band still very much defined by the crunchy alt-pop of their very first album (and by the departures from that sound on their classic follow-up), Weezer has used its unlikely second and third decades as a band to practice a surprising amount of eclecticism. For Decade Two (roughly 2003 through 2013), this translated to never knowing whether a Weezer song would be pop-rock bliss or appalling disaster, leaving only the certainty that any given album would have at least several tracks’ worth of each. But since 2014 or so, the band has seemed less defiantly scattershot in their experiments. Their albums still come out at a steady clip, but they feel more sonically and thematically cohesive — without sacrificing their playfulness. Appropriate for its debut in a season of blooming, the ban...
Mitski Blazes Forward on the Enigmatic Laurel Hell
Mitski had made up her mind after finishing her “Be The Cowboy” tour in late 2019: after months of frequent shows, press, and supporting her biggest album to date, she was quitting music for good. “I felt it was shaving away my soul little by little,” said Mitski in a recent profile, describing the anxiety, pressure, and existential dread she was experiencing as simply too much to bear. Of course, endings aren’t always that simple. She began working on Be The Cowboy’s follow-up quickly after, but only because she was contractually obligated to do so; yet, after over two years of writing and recording in the midst of a global pandemic, Mitski arrives this week (February 4th) with her sixth studio album, Laurel Hell. And by all measures, Laurel Hell is yet another phenomenal entry in Mitski’...
Earl Sweatshirt’s SICK!: Flawless Rapping That Doesn’t Overstay Its Welcome
How does one find the perfect words to describe life-changing events, the oppressiveness of living in a constant state of stress caused by a pandemic, and reflections of the past? Nobody pays me enough to answer that question. Luckily, I don’t have to, because Earl Sweatshirt discovered the cheat code. SICK!, his fourth album, is inspired by this moment in time. But it’s not just the COVID in the air on his mind. Since the last time we heard him in 2019, Earl said “hi” to fatherhood, cut back on his alcohol, and rediscovered his religion. Any one of those things is enough to pen something the size of a Greek epic poem. But all three? And in the face of, well, all of this? That’s a lot to process. The mere fact Earl only took 25 minutes to say it all with his chest is a testament to his tal...
