Music Reviews

Majical Cloudz Are You Alone?

Are You Alone is about self-rehabilitation as much as it is about calm introspection, an absorbing and deeply personal listen that gives singer-songwriter Devon Welsh the chance to reassure himself that solitude only exists relative to its opposite.

Juan Edgardo Rodríguez reviews...

The Libertines Anthems For Doomed Youth

With their first album in over a decade, can The Libertines recapture that lightning in a bottle that made them one of the most exciting bands of the early 21st Century?

Joe Rivers finds some of us have aged better than others...

Girl Band Holding Hands With Jamie

File Girl Band under “_______” and just enjoy the volume.

Sean Caldwell reviews...

Battles La Di Da Di

Battles' third record, their first as an instrumental band, has elements of their sense of invention, but is marred by unseemly structural decisions.

Stephen Wragg reviews...

Wand 1000 Days

Wand drop their 3rd LP, only 13 months after dropping the first. 1000 Days is an impulsively progressive garage record, and a reasonably well-organized mess. If they remain as prolific as they have been for the last year, we might even have another LP in the New Year...

Carl Purvis thinks he's getting it...

Metric Pagans in Vegas

Metric's follow-up to 2012's Synthetica shows a disappointing decline away from heart-pounding dance-pop and into robotic, uninspired electronica peppered with some vestiges of the band's former glory.

Gabbie Nirenburg reviews...

U.S. Girls Half Free

Meghan Remy's first album with 4AD is both a revelation and a breakthrough, one that finds Remy elevating her songwriting panache while carrying a certain mysticism that seems grounded in both plausibility and commonality.

Juan Edgardo Rodriguez reviews...

Skylar Spence Prom King

Prom King, the new album from Skylar Spence, revisits '80s music with all the youthful exuberance and bouncy sheen of the music that inspired it, shot through with a disco and contemporary dance influence that distinguishes it from the more conventional synth-pop artists currently crowding the indie market.

Bradley Hanford reviews...

Elbow Lost Worker Bee EP

Elbow's latest release finds them missing and singing about home the way that only this band can: with warmth, expressive lyrics and catchy melodies, all tinged with a sense of melancholy that this trip home will only last for so long.

Joe Marvilli listens to Elbow return home...

Ought Sun Coming Down

Sun Coming Down constantly engages and enthralls with an odd sense of humor, cementing Ought as one of the few contemporary post-punk acts that seamlessly merge frantic irreverence with feral intelligence.