Album Reviews
Adele’s 30 Is Much More Than a Divorce Album — It’s a Hard-Won Journey to Self-Love
“To be loved and love at the highest count, means to lose all the things I can’t live without.” When Adele croons that line on the devastating piano ballad “To Be Loved,” one gets the impression that it is not only emblematic of her latest album, but also the journey of the past six years of her life. On the surface, 30, out Friday (November 19th), could be perceived as a divorce album, but it’s more than that: It’s about depression, new love, rebirth, choosing the harder road even if it means self-preservation. Here, the singer digs deeper than she ever has before. Though Adele has always mastered the art of remaining notoriously private, despite being one of the biggest pop stars in the world, 30 unveils the extreme change she’s experienced over the years. Advertisement The world has bee...
Snail Mail Hits the Emotional Sweet Spot on Valentine
Love hasn’t gotten any easier for Lindsey Jordan, but her heart is better equipped to sustain it on Valentine, her second studio album as Snail Mail (out November 5th via Matador Records). The 22-year old indie rock upstart reemerges after grappling with a tumultuous rise to stardom from her 2018 breakout debut Lush, which recounted a series of relationships that left her burned. However, she returns not hardened by her experiences, but enlightened, accountable, and against all odds, open to falling in deep once again. Now in sequence as the opening track, the album’s debut single “Valentine” serves as an even greater introduction to Snail Mail’s next phase; the initial enveloping synths and warbling flourishes tucked deep into the verses hint at both the vast expansion of sound and subtle...
Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On Resounds 50 Years Later: Classic Review
Editor’s Note: Sly and the Family Stone released their fifth studio album on this day 50 years ago. Read Okla Jones’ retrospective essay below, and stay tuned for an exciting giveaway on Consequence surrounding the anniversary. When There’s a Riot Goin’ On was released in 1971 — exactly 50 years ago today, November 1st — America was a nation in transition, feeling the effects of the previous decade. The shadow of Dr. King’s assassination loomed over the black community; and the Vietnam War divided an entire country. What Sly and the Family Stone’s fifth album did was give a voice to a new generation yearning to be heard. The revolution, as it was referred to by some, was when the hip, twenty-somethings of the world experienced an awakening, so to speak, and pushed the limits of sex, drugs,...
Jerry Cantrell’s Brighten Shines a Light Back on His Stellar Solo Work: Review
The Lowdown: As one of the main creative forces of Alice in Chains for decades, singer-guitarist Jerry Cantrell is responsible for penning some of rock’s all-time great guitar riffs. He has remained busy with Alice in Chains (regularly issuing albums and touring after the arrival of singer William DuVall in 2006), and as a result, his solo career took a backseat — his last solo offering, Degradation Trip, dropped all the way back in 2002. So, nearly 20 years later, Cantrell is ready to go at it solo once more with Brighten. For the new album, he enlisted the aid of such renowned names as Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, ex-Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato (who supplies background vocals), and producer/composer Tyler Bates, among several additional respected musicians. The Good:...
Mastodon Explore Every Facet of Their Musical Language on Hushed and Grim: Review
The Lowdown: The four-year wait for Mastodon’s eighth studio album, Hushed and Grim, felt like an eternity. As one of the definitive modern metal bands, the group has displayed a level of craftsmanship that’s elevated its discography to the top of the heap. There’s a reason Mastodon garnered so many Metallica comparisons early in their career; not that they sounded alike, but rather, people could sense that the Atlanta quartet were going places. After releasing four now-considered-classic LPs, the band took a similarly mainstream turn, and for good reason. Mastodon had amassed a global audience that yearned for their cracking brand of prog-tinged sludge metal. If the wait for Hushed and Grim felt long, it’s because Mastodon were prepping a double-album opus spanning 15 tracks — a huge unde...
The War on Drugs Tighten and Lighten Up on I Don’t Live Here Anymore
The War on Drugs makes big songs, meant for arena-scale rock reveries. In 2022, they’ll embark on a headlining tour at the biggest venues they’ve ever played (including Madison Square Garden), stepping onto stages that match the scope of their music. Yet the latest album from the six-piece led by Adam Granduciel, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, marks a turn towards directness and concision. Don’t worry! If you like The War on Drugs’ previous work, chances are you’ll like I Don’t Live Here Anymore, out Friday, October 29th. The band’s fifth LP and their first since 2017’s Grammy-winning A Deeper Understanding still showcases the group’s texture-rich, somehow-original revisions of the most-winning aspects of mid-’80s commercial rock. Each of the 10 tracks runs over four minutes, most hovering in ...
Lana Del Rey Meditates in an Emergency on Blue Banisters
“If this is the end, I want a boyfriend,” Lana Del Rey sings on “Black Bathing Suit,” one of the standout tracks on her eighth album, Blue Banisters. The pop balladeer has long mooned over romantic apocalypse, but with this collection, she gets to set explorations of doomed relationships against the backdrop of global crisis. At their best, Del Rey’s ruminations in an emergency extend her range on all levels — lyrics, vocals, dynamics, and candor. Throughout her prolific, decade-long career, Del Rey has leaned into nostalgic fantasy with a faded silver-screen sheen — writing Gatsby cosplay, tragic Hollywood heroine apologias, and references to the unhinged end of the 1960s that make it sound like it happened yesterday. (Didn’t it?) But on Blue Banisters, Del Rey weaves the relatable banal ...
Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres Is Completely Oblivious to Its Own Plight
On “Trouble In Town,” the third track on Coldplay’s 2019 LP Everyday Life, the band places a rather disturbing sound clip of a police officer rudely interrogating someone — this comes after Chris Martin’s solemn lament on unequal power structures and how they always “add more police,” and before a full-band psychedelic freak out of an outro, which is not necessarily what you’d associate with Coldplay. This was not an anomaly on the record; Everyday Life featured Coldplay at their most experimental, their most vital, and playing the riskiest music they’ve made in years. But what’s more, is that it sounded like Coldplay had changed, that over a span of 20 years as a band, they were almost more weathered and rugged. Fast forward to two years later; Coldplay have released their ninth studio al...
With Juno, Remi Wolf Signals That the Future of Pop Music Is Already Here
“Remi Wolf is a crazy bih but is also hella nice and sweet sometimes but also likes to yell at people but has figured out that maybe instead of yelling at people she can just sing.” This is the description that greets users who visit Remi Wolf’s official Spotify artist page. It’s not an inaccurate first impression for people who might be new to our October Artist of the Month, Remi Wolf. She’s arrived on the indie-pop scene in a neon and rainbow-drenched burst and has become something of a festival darling over the past year. Active social media users probably heard her track “Photo ID” on TikTok, but Wolf’s budding discography is much more than the viral hit may have suggested. Juno, her debut full-length album, is an odyssey through a world of oddities. In a recent interview with Consequ...
On A Beginner’s Mind, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine Use Fiction as a Guide and a Salve
Sufjan Stevens is nothing if not prolific. The experimental artist has released a ton of albums over the past few years, each one a unique effort at navigating his emotional state and the state of the world at large. Almost one year ago to the date, Stevens released The Ascension, an expansion exploration into love, death, apocalypse and nationality. The Ascension was preceded by Aporia, a collaborative album with Stevens’s stepfather, Lowell Brams. Earlier this year, Stevens unleashed Convocations, a five-volume instrumental exploration of grief in the wake of the death of his biological father. We’ll do the math for you: A Beginner’s Mind marks Stevens’s fourth album in two years. This time, he’s collaborated with Californian Angelo De Augustine, who has an indie-folk style complementary...
Carcass’ Torn Arteries Is a Masterpiece of Bitterness: Review
The Lowdown: British death metal innovators Carcass helped found the genre in the ’80s and expand its boundaries in the early ’90s with a series of mostly-excellent and progressively different records, then broke up before getting their due. After a long hiatus they returned in 2013 with the platonically perfect Surgical Steel, maybe the best comeback album in all of metal and Heavy Consequence’s eighth-best metal album of the 2010s. Eight years later, their long-delayed follow-up, Torn Arteries, is harder to love than its predecessor, but still excellent. The Good: Carcass play to their strengths on Torn Arteries, chief among them guitarist Bill Steer’s potent balance of rhythmic chugging, saturated guitar tone, and speedy-but-bluesy melodic runs. These have been the focus of his sound si...
Iron Maiden Craft Their Most Diverse Album in Years with Senjutsu: Review
The Lowdown: Metal legends Iron Maiden were riding high prior to the pandemic. The band were in the midst of their “Legacy of the Beast Tour” — a career-spanning celebration of the band’s discography. The comprehensive setlist pulled from every era of Maiden — even the Blaze Bayley albums — hitting major highlights as well as obscure deep cuts. Somewhere in the middle of the jaunt, in early 2019, the band found time to hit the Guillaume Tell Studio in France to track the material that would become Senjutsu. Perhaps running through 40 years of songs every night worked as the ultimate songwriting stimulant, because Senjutsu is easily Iron Maiden’s most diverse work in years — no easy task for a band that continues to chiefly operate in a long-since-established heavy metal style. The Goo...
