Black Sugar Transmission Dream Finisher Independent Three full albums in a year is an amazing achievement for any artist, and to have left the best for last is almost as remarkable. Andee Blacksugar is usually classed as post punk or electro [...]
Travis 10 Songs BMG The same melodic, emotional sincerity that made Scottish band Travis famous has also made the four-piece a music press target, patronizingly dismissed as a guilty pleasure. On ninth album 10 Songs, Travis alternates between [...]
Touché Amoré Lament Epitaph Records Los Angeles post-hardcore band, Touché Amoré, has come to lighten things up with their fifth studio release, Lament. Since their inception back in 2007, Touché Amoré has tackled a myriad of tough subjects such [...]
Bahamas Sad Hunk Brushfire Records With the release of Sad Hunk by Bahamas, Afie Jurvanen makes the transition from cool grooves to self-aware dad jams. It is a glorious transformation. The incredible 2018 album Earthtones saw Jurvanen exploring [...]
Garcia Peoples Nightcap At Wits’ End Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Have you been hiding all those faves you have from the psych/prog era, particularly those that have folkish tendencies and vocal harmonies that do not overtly show off their [...]
Future Islands As Long As You Are 4AD Nearly three years after releasing The Far Field (2017) and six years after their breakout album Singles (2014), Future Islands have returned with another beautiful new wave synth-pop album called As Long As [...]
John Lennon Gimme Some Truth. The Ultimate Mixes Apple/Universal Music Today, October 9, 2020, John Lennon would have turned 80, and perhaps the best way to celebrate his birthday is to release a retrospective of his music. Gimme Some Truth. The [...]
Anne Malin Waiting Song Independent How does a combination of Cowboy Junkies and Coco Rosie, both at their most imaginative, sound to you? If the answer to that question is an emphatic yes, then Waiting Song, the second album from Anne Malin, is [...]
METZ Atlas Vending Sub Pop Records “I woke up to hear the dial tone/And the sound gets stuck between my teeth”, utters Alex Edkins in “Pulse”, the opening track of Atlas Vending, the long-awaited fourth full-length from METZ. Those words, along [...]
Lupin Lupin Grand Jury Music After two triumphant LP’s as frontman for the indie outfit out of Minneapolis, Hippo Campus’s Jake Luppen is now launching his own solo career under the name Lupin. His self-titled debut is beautiful in a bizarre way [...]
Dawes Good Luck With Whatever Rounder Records Recorded in Nashville under the guidance of six-time Grammy-winner Dave Cobb, veteran rock band Dawes returns with their seventh album, Good Luck With Whatever, a 9-track collection of mellow, [...]
Working Men’s Club Working Men’s Club Heavenly Recordings The eponymous debut album from Working Men’s Club is addictive upon arrival, love at first sight. Emerging from England’s Yorkshire countryside near Manchester, the band is lead by the [...]
Peach Pit You And Your Friends (Deluxe Version) Columbia Records With the release of their sophomore album You and Your Friends, Vancouver-based indie darling Peach Pit cemented their reputation as upcoming indie rockstars. Building on the [...]
Eric C. Powell and Andrea Powell Fly Away Independent Fly Away is Eric C. Powell and Andrea Powell’s fifth album and their second for 2020 (Mute was released earlier this year). The sheer quantity of music would be cause for concern, in that, [...]
Queen + Adam Lambert Live Around the World EMI Records Queen and Adam Lambert have been touring around the World in recent years, and have put together a live album highlighting some of their shows. Live Around The World leads with the energetic [...]
Public Enemy What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? Def Jam Recordings Despite kind-of-firing-kind-of-not-firing Flavor Flav in March of this year, east coast hip hop pioneers Public Enemy are back; perhaps better than they have been in the [...]
Sufjan Stevens The Ascension Asthmatic Kitty It is hard to believe, but it has been five years since Sufjan Stevens released a ‘conventional’ studio album. That doesn’t mean he has not been busy, because he has. The Ascension is a return to [...]
Will Butler Generations Merge Records Will Butler is a busy man. It’s been five years since the release of his solo debut album Policy (2015), but in between he also released Friday Night (2016), an energetic live album, and as a member of [...]
Deftones Ohms Reprise Four years ago, Deftones released Gore, the most drastic departure from their known alternative brand of metal. Now, the band has reunited with long-time producer, Terry Date, who produced the first four Deftones’ records [...]
Bendrix Littleton Deep Dark South NNA Tapes Initially, many music fans didn’t realize what kind of a gap was left when late great Sparklehorse, aka Mark Linkous, left us prematurely. These days that left-of-center nether space between roots, [...]
Big Sugar Hemi-Vision (Deluxe Edition) Universal Music A quarter of a century on from its original release, the platinum-selling Hemi-Vision gets the big “deluxe” treatment. This reissue comes complete with newly-released lost takes, acoustic [...]
Télépopmusik Everybody Breaks The Line Warm Music So, you think electro pop music has nothing substantial to offer? Have you forgotten LCD Soundsystem, or any of the ‘thinking’ French electro bands, like Télépopmusik for example? The duo of [...]
Squirrel Nut Zippers Lost Songs Of Doc Souchon Southern Broadcasting Jimbo Mathus and his crew continue to convert and subvert vintage jazz on this set, “inspired by all the mysterious characters from the history of New Orleans jazz music”. [...]
Magnolia Bayou Strange Place Independent Hailing from Southern Mississippi, Magnolia Bayou have released their sophomore album, Strange Place. The full-length album follows their 2018 self-titled debut and a series of singles released throughout [...]
