Reviews
Deftones Embrace Their Heavy Roots on the Commanding Ohms: Review
The Lowdown: Sacramento alt-metallers Deftones tend to transform at the turns of decades. In 2000, they released their conceptual high-water mark White Pony, while 2010’s Diamond Eyes is a stellar collection of catchy-but-clever skate rock tracks. On the other hand, 2020’s Ohms isn’t a radical reinvention, but it’s a solid addition to their legacy — a surprisingly heavy one, at that. The Good: Deftones’ albums exist along a delicate axis: At the one end, singer Chino Moreno’s romantic and crooning atmospheres, and on the other, guitarist Stephen Carpenter’s sludgy, metallic slug-fests. The band is at its best when these elements are in balance, and the tension between these poles is the core of their identity. 2016’s Gore seemed like a Moreno-heavy album, focused on dreamy landscapes. In c...
IDLES’ Ultra Mono Offers Rallying Cries for a Burning World: Review
The Lowdown: In a year that’s seen the world burn physically, politically, and epidemiologically, getting into a debate about whether or not a rock band is phony feels as nostalgic as it does futile. However, this is an IDLES review, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do (at least for a minute). After the twin triumphs of 2017’s Brutalism and 2018’s Joy as an Act of Resistance vaulted the Bristol five-piece into the upper echelon of the British music world, the backlash arrived with bite that seemed to go beyond the music. Pick any IDLES profile from this album cycle, and you’ll inevitably see references to the recent charges and epithets leveled by fellow artists like Sleaford Mods (“their take on [political music] is cliched, patronising, insulting and mediocre”) and Fat White Family ...
Artist of the Month Anjimile’s Giver Taker Is a Startlingly Beautiful Prayer to the Present: Review
The Lowdown: Anjimile Chithambo might be new to the spotlight, but he’s been paying attention for a long time. His debut album, Giver Taker, carries a wide variety of influences — among them church choirs, ’80s pop, African music, and indie-folk — and melds them together as if they were born for this, born to flow into one another. The Boston-based trans musician wrote much of Giver Taker while in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, and many of the songs are also concerned with his experiences coming out as trans and non-binary. As such, the entire album is papered with transformation, but through lenses of tenderness: the love implicit in confessions and the awe of one’s own resilience in the face of socialization and struggle. The Good: Would that I could just plop every single lyric f...
YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s Top Hints at a Next Level: Review
The Lowdown: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has become home to some of the most fertile “breeding grounds” in the hip-hop industry. Considered a small city by census standards, it is the hub to several major tech, medical, and entertainment companies — along with being the home of Louisiana State University. For all of its bright spots, Baton Rouge is also one of the poorest cities in America, riddled with crime, poverty, and a culture of youth facing an uncertain future. With hip-hop being born out of struggle and desperation, this town has become a hot bed of sorts, giving rise to some of the genre’s biggest emerging stars, including YoungBoy Never Broke Again. Since 2015, YoungBoy has released 16 mixtapes and two studio albums, an output level that is a testament to the dedication he has for h...
The Flaming Lips Return to Earth on Devastatingly Beautiful American Head: Review
The Lowdown: Looking back now, it feels safe to say that the ’10s represent something of a lost decade in the long, strange journey of The Flaming Lips. After ushering in the new millennium with a pair of unlikely mid-career classics (1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots) and closing out the ’00s with unexpectedly muscular rock fanfare (2009’s Embryonic), Wayne Coyne and his merrymakers spent most of the next 10 years getting into tabloid feuds, recording scattershot side projects, and cosplaying as Miley Cyrus’ acid-casualty uncles. The Flaming Lips records they did manage felt like dispatches relayed from a derelict space station, about sonic landscapes too grim (2013’s The Terror) or fried (2017’s Oczy Mlody) or daft (2019’s The King’s Mouth) to warrant re...
Big Sean Rediscovers Himself on Detroit 2: Review
The Lowdown: Since he first emerged on the hip-hop landscape, Big Sean has been recognized as one of the most talented MCs in the game. After displaying his skills in the presence of Kanye West at a local radio station, he was signed to G.O.O.D. Music in 2007, becoming one of the imprint’s flagship artists and continuing the legacy of Detroit hip-hop. With a frequent string of mixtapes and hit albums released throughout the 2010s, Big Sean garnered critical acclaim and commercial success, catapulting him into superstardom. It could be argued, quite convincingly, that Big Sean gave birth to a style that has influenced an entire generation of rappers, which brings us to the present. Taking time off to manage his mental health and discovering a renewed sense of inspiration, he makes his long-...
Angel Olsen’s Whole New Mess Redefines Familiar Specters: Review
The Lowdown: In October 2018, Angel Olsen and engineer Michael Harris stayed in the small town of Anacortes, Washington, for 10 days and recorded music in a legendarily haunted Catholic church converted into a studio. These were the sessions that ultimately unfurled into All Mirrors, Olsen’s darkly expansive masterpiece from just last year. Olsen returns now with Whole New Mess — a reimagining and reconfiguring of much of that same work, but through a far more restrained and personal lens. The Good: The tracks on this album are brilliantly haunting. The stripped-back production lets Olsen’s vocals shine through with breathtaking clarity on tracks like “Summer Song”, which feels like a siren song rising through the depths of a sea cave. The same effect surfaces on “Impasse (Workin’ for the ...
Metallica’s S&M2 Cleans Up Nicely for Home Release: Review + Stream
The Lowdown: Last September, Metallica reunited with the San Francisco Symphony for the two performances that would become S&M2 — the sequel to their illustrious symphonic metal collaboration from 20 years earlier. To commemorate the event, the band teamed with Trafalgar Releasing to screen the concert film in movie theaters across the world. The S&M2 shows took place on September 6th and 8th, and the film premiered on October 9th. In film production timelines, that’s an impossibly small window for post-production on a concert film and album. Nevertheless, the theatrical film was a box office success, though a trained eye and ear could tell that it might have been rushed to release. The initial edit of director Wayne Isham’s footage, though clean, had an unfinished quality to it. I...
Katy Perry’s Smile Makes Us Reconsider What We Want from Pop Music: Review
The Lowdown: Katy Perry has always seemed willing to be pop’s sexy clown: serving up effervescent anthems that don’t take themselves too seriously. When Perry did delve into her own a-woke-ening on 2017’s Witness, she was dismissed as politically tone-deaf and creatively off the mark. But on her sixth album, Smile, Perry manages to marry her “purposeful pop” with the big, uplifting production of her massive hit-making past. Perry is an entertainer who seems to sincerely want to make audiences a little happier; however, her album’s old tricks leave us wondering what we ask of pop music in 2020. [embedded content] The Good: This week, Perry marked two major milestones: She welcomed her first child, Daisy Dove, and celebrated the 10-year anniversary of her juggernaut album Teenage Dream. If y...
Nas’ King’s Disease Reintroduces the Legend to a New Generation: Review
The Lowdown: In 2018, Queensbridge-bred lyricist Nas released his 12th studio album, NASIR. In being a collaborative effort with Kanye West, this LP was met with high expectations. However, whether it was the album’s lack of cohesion, its poor timing, or the chaos surrounding its production and West’s antics, NASIR was deemed underwhelming by both fans and critics alike. After disclosing that he would be working with the Grammy-winning producer Hit-Boy on his upcoming project, some people were skeptical that this approach could help the rapper revert back to form and the high-quality work that had preceded NASIR. On August 21st, Nas and Hit-Boy succeeded in silencing critics and reintroducing the legendary emcee to a new generation of listeners with King’s Disease. By definition, “king’s d...
Artist of the Month Awich’s Partition EP Flaunts the Rapper’s Talent and Resolve: Review
The Lowdown: Trying to sum up the complex existence of Japanese rapper Awich is a losing game, but here are some basics: Born Akiko Urasaki, her moniker is short for “Asia Wish Child,” and she grew up on an island off mainland Japan called Okinawa. There, she grew up observing Okinawa both struggle for independence from Japan and the removal of American marine bases. It’s also where she fell in love with hip-hop — and learned English — with the help of Tupac’s All Eyes on Me. Entranced by the record and its depiction of struggle, she quickly began making music herself at age thirteen. Now in her 30s, Awich has no shortage of lived experiences to pull from for inspiration. In the years since, she moved to the US for college, got married, and had a child with an American man — who was then m...
The Killers’ Imploding the Mirage Goes All in on a Better Tomorrow: Review
The Lowdown: The Killers have always sounded like a band born to run. Living in the desert of Las Vegas will have that effect. For 16 years, Brandon Flowers and company have been running away down highway skylines, on the backs of hurricanes with Springsteen-like abandon. However, until now, they’ve always seemed to be running from what plagues them — fears, depressions, and the oppressive trappings of Small Town America — instead of toward what inspires them. Despite Flowers’ advice on Wonderful Wonderful single “Run for Cover”, The Killers have always seemed to have one eye looking back over their shoulder as they blow across an expansive wilderness, seeking some sort of escape from it all through romantic, heartland lyricism and rock and roll bombast. 2017’s Wonderful Wonderful caught T...
