Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

Maluma knows that sex sells. One need only refer to his last full-length effort, 2020’s Papi Juancho, which returned the Colombian singer and bonafide superstar to smutty form following the arena ambitions of the preceding 11:11. His ability to pivot between the after hours sinful pleasure seeking of “Felices Los …

In 1998, the year Black Star made their debut, shameless commercial rappers were the culture’s equivalent to co-workers who heat up fish in the office microwave. They were guilty of an obvious if prevalent faux pas that probably felt too good to abandon just for propriety’s sake. But Mos Def …

Legacy artists need exit strategies. These days, with pandemic disruptions closing off lucrative live-performance opportunities, a lot of the biggest names in rock and pop history have taken headline-grabbing catalog buyouts of their sizable discographies for eight- to nine-figure sums. But departing the entertainment industry isn’t solely about cashing out; …

After Rosalía released her 2018 album El Mal Querer, a baroque masterwork anchored in solemn flamenco traditions and glowing pop sounds, the Spanish artist’s world cracked wide open, and everything seemed to rush at her at once. There was endless praise: She was a creative genius. She was a hero …

Imagine a 2022 version of the rustic harmony and song-splurge electricity of Bob Dylan and the Band’s Basement Tapes, and you’ll have a pretty decent notion of what Big Thief are up to on their fifth album.Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is a 20-song double-LP in which …

The U.K.’s PinkPantheress broke onto the scene last January with “Pain,” a trendy, trailer-short song about rejection that feels as epic as a full-on teen melodrama. Though it’s an aural sad-face emoji, the viral sensation, with its playful, chantlike refrains is all about keeping your cool, which is likely why …

After coming to prominence as a sardonic folkie in the tradition of Todd Snider on albums like 2015’s In the Blazes and 2016’s Silver Tears (see that LP’s “12 Bar Blues”), Aaron Lee Tasjan, like many of his East Nashville contemporaries, has in recent years moved away from country-roots music …

Rivers Cuomo has always been an onion of irony — layer upon layer of smirking innuendo, gentle obfuscation, smarty-pants witticism, each shielding a sensitive heart. That emotional sleight of hand is what made Weezer‘s “Sweater Song” and its ham-fisted metaphor of a cardigan unraveling until Cuomo, the group’s frontman and …

It must be painful for Low Cut Connie mastermind Adam Weiner to keep himself from going overboard. The group’s sixth and latest album, Private Lives, is a double album, featuring 17 songs that Weiner recorded with nearly 40 of his closest friends. They indulge gospel-choir sing-alongs, channel classic-sounding soul horn …

In the 1810 Caspar David Friedrich painting “Abbey in the Oakwood,” a group of monks carries a coffin through the snow into the crumbling ruins of a gothic abbey. Beyond the abbey, a grove of bald, gnarled oak trees basks in the dim sunlight. Death lingers, but not its fresh …