Music
Four Bands on Sex, Politics, and the Weather
New albums by Rhye, Physically Sick, Toni Braxton, and Johnny Jewel share a warped relationship to their ostensible themes.
Lucas Fagen
Music
A K-Pop Flash in the Darkness
As with any deceased musician, there’s the temptation to speculate how much Jonghyun’s real-life suffering informed the music.
Test 2018 posts
Electronica Against Trump
Whether as respite, inspiration, distraction, or candy, music carries political utility simply by tapping the social value of pleasure.
Test 2018 posts
Oceans of Sound: Jlin, Relax World, Slowdive, Thundercat
The best background music is also the best full-immersion music.
Test 2018 posts
Pop Fixations: St Vincent, Lorde, Taylor Swift, Portugal the Man
Three of these four albums count among 2017’s best, and they all share the same producer.
Music
Shimmer and Melancholy in SZA's 'Ctrl'
The songs on Ctrl occupy a space where insecurities over sex, romance, and gender are credibly illuminated, coexisting as they do with music committed to functionalism and the pleasure principle.
Music
Anatomy of a Christmas Song
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and kitsch is in the air.
Music
The Quintessential Millennial Romance Album
Khalid, a 19-year-old vocal prodigy, looks at millennial culture and doesn’t see hedonism; it’s just life.
Music
Reveling in the Beauty of Emo-Rap
Critics overstate the extent to which Uzi and other new rappers have absorbed the influence of emo, which lately seems to have become a buzzword for vulnerability and interiority.
Music
Genuine Alternatives: The War on Drugs, Fever Ray, Julien Baker, Moses Sumney
Four new albums go from a bland, booming pastiche of rock noises to questioning notions of coupledom and the possibility of love.
Music
Case Studies in Musical Hooks: Father John Misty, Galantis, Ed Sheeran, Ashik Reza
Craft in itself means nothing unless it reaches total flawlessness.
Music
The Killers’ Glamor, Sincerity, and Kitsch
Wonderful Wonderful is almost embarrassingly intense, indecorously intimate, forgetting to blush while expressing feelings too huge for the songs to contain.