Music
Mourning Aretha Franklin
The energy Franklin put into her singing suggests the existence of something to overcome, her swooping dynamics and shouts coming from a place of insecurity and hardship.
Music
Music
Pioneers of Michigan's Noise Scene Return to Their Land
The 2018 incarnation of Universal Eyes has been a moment to look forward to, and an opportunity to look back on the noise and experimental music scene that emerged in the 2000s in Michigan and the Midwest.
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A Rap-Rock Hybrid that Rocks
The stylistic scramble of Bali Baby's Baylor Swift declines commercial polish in favor of rap as junkyard.
Music
On the Margins of Country Music
We’re witnessing a transitional moment for the country music genre that opens up space for weirdness and experimentation.
Music
An Electropop Take on Romantic Rapture
The grand arc of Sophie’s bewilderingly titled Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides swings through a billion little moments of rapture, with sounds beautiful, ugly, extreme.
Music
Alternative Rock Gets a Reboot
Trading in activism, self-awareness, and intimacy, four alternative guitar-rock albums manage to revitalize familiar forms.
Music
A Talking Heads Album, Forty Years Later
More Songs About Buildings and Food, a concept album about late capitalism, speaks with disarming directness to the current political moment.
Music
The Precision Rap of Blocboy JB
Blocboy JB’s new mixtape, Simi, is the most meticulous demonstration of formal rigor hip-hop fans will likely hear all year.
Music
Rap Futurism: Cupcakke, Ski Mask and the Slump God, Playboi Carti, and Kanye West
The future of rap lies in silliness, absurdism, functionalism, and sonic delight.
Music
Two Sprawling and Disorderly Trap Albums
Migos and Rae Sremmurd streamline voguish rap conventions into digestible product.
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The All-Encompassing Cardi B
Invasion of Privacy sounds like another conventional rap album, before revealing Cardi B’s maniacal determination to be all things to everybody.
Music
Fast, Fizzy, Rapturous, and Bloodcurdling: U.S. Girls, Turnstile, Amen Dunes, Sofi Tukker
Four albums aspire to subversion, but delight is disruptive by definition.