Album Reviews

Learning to enjoy the 1975 has always required a certain suspension of disbelief. If you can believe that a boy-band-pretty synth-pop quartet from Manchester with a poodle-haired lead singer can create nuanced, voice-of-a-generation anthems hidden inside layers upon layers of irony and bombast, then consider yourself a fan. Matty Healy, …

From anniversary re-creations by the band to its inclusion in the Library of Congress’ National Registry, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nationhas been rightly defined as one of the landmarks of Eighties indie rock, and possibly its last galvanizing moment before so much of that scene collapsed. The band still played a …

Monster wasn’t R.E.M.‘s “comeback” album or their Get Back. After two gargantuan hit albums of down-tempo, mostly acoustic ruminations (Out of Time and Automatic for the People), Monster now sounds more like the next logical step for the band — it’s loose, loud, and unsentimental, something more akin to their …

Prince in the early-to-mid Eighties was spitting out hot songs at such a clip, it’s no wonder he shared the wealth. And wealth it was: his “Manic Monday” was the Bangles’ first hit, reaching Top Five in the U.S., while Sinead O’Connor never had a more successful song than “Nothing …

A debut album is normally thought of as a statement of purpose, but boy band Why Don’t We’s 8 Letters feels aimless, like a series of genre exercises hastily thrown together. This musical aimlessness has a commercial purpose; in fact, it’s a necessary strategy for any boy band or girl …

Caffeinated, ever-mutating garage-bubblegum crew Oh Sees are wobbling off the timeline that leads from “Incense and Peppermints” to “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Like last year’s Orc, their 21st album (and second with their current lineup) spills off into other parts of the Sixties and Seventies: Thin Lizzy choogle and Zep shuffle, Motörhead chug …

Bebe Rexha‘s voice makes a quirky, squirmy sound that may not be your cup of squeak. But if it is, then it’s crazily irresistible and, given the right melody, unstoppable. Her serpentine wail is the precious ingredient in some of today’s biggest hits, the factor that’s turned otherwise bland songs …

Guitar virtuoso Ry Cooder has spent the majority of his 50-year career as one of the country’s most vital communal historians and champions of roots music, illuminating and reanimating everything from bolero to bluegrass. Over the past decade or so, Cooder has also emerged out of his group of Sixties …

It’s been so long since onetime 120 Minutes mainstays Belly put out an album, that a rapper with the same moniker now dominates Google searches for the word “Belly.” That lack of activity has relegated a band that put out a Gold album (1994’s Star), scored a video hit with …

Leon Bridges, 28, grew up listening to Ginuwine and Usher, developed as a songwriter on the Fort Worth, Texas open mic circuit, and got his break hooking up with half of Austin indie-prog-whatever quartet White Denim. None of this sounds like a recipe for retro soul, but Bridges filled his …