Photo Credit: Edward Cooke Though one of the most popular songs from their great 2021 debut album W.L. was “Glasgow,” for a major city in their native Scotland (though they’re actually from West Lothian), the Snuts widen the range of their subject matter quite a bit on their second album Burn the Empire. The title… Read more
Photo Credit: Kelly Mason Reading Dan Campbell’s lyrics is often like reading a first-person novel. Opening his songs with lines like, “Justin and I have got the windows down // the AC is busted, it’s hotter than hell,” “It’s newly summer, and Tony Bourdain died,” “It’s already June // the light paints you pink,” and… Read more
Photo Credit: Jimmy Fontaine / Courtesy of Atlantic Records Since their 1998 debut album Something About Airplanes Bellingham, Washington alternative rockers Death Cab for Cutie at least outwardly appear to have missed out on mainstream success, even though four of their albums went Top 10 in the U.S. between 2005 and 2015. The band’s tenth… Read more
Sure, one could argue that being a household name within the music industry in any way should disqualify you from complaining. Still, there are plenty of groups out there that deserve way more appreciation than they get. Here is a list of ten groups – new and old – that we think should be talked… Read more
To have something important to say and to know how to say it – that’s the art of succeeding with your debut album. Some debut albums have such an important message that they change the world forever. Some of them are just incredibly well executed, burning with the energy of a new artist who finally… Read more
The concept album hit its stride after the 1960s when large, well-funded bands had the cash and carte blanche to explore, at length, any idea that crossed their addled brains. Whether a bloated 1970s ineffectual gesture or a coherent and brilliant bit of storytelling, the concept album has fans and detractors in equal measure. Here… Read more
Photo Credit: Erika Kamano Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beatrice Lauss, known professionally as Beabadoobee, is one of the most promising musical talents of the 2020s. Or was, at least. Her new album Beatopia, while hardly merit-less, lacks the focus, immediacy, and overall enjoyability of her last full-length release, Fake It Flowers (which this writer named as the… Read more
Photo Credit: Imagine Dragons via Instagram Las Vegas quartet Imagine Dragons have never been ‘album artists’ so to speak. Across the last decade, the band has worked with the biggest producers of the day to create mega-hit singles that become so inescapable that you ultimately have no choice but to surrender and let them lodge… Read more
Photo Credit: Sophie Hur Los Angeles-to-Brooklyn transplants Momma are the latest in a string of bands to embrace the sound of the early and mid-Nineties alternative rock and re-shape it for the 2020s. They’ve already forged a close alliance with Wet Leg, a UK band that has been deservedly hyped and is unmistakably similar in… Read more
Photo Credit: Tom Oxley I rarely had so little to say about an album as Oxford band Foals’ seventh album Life Is Yours, so let’s hear what the band has to say about it. “We wanted to write music that would be a forcefield against the darkness, rather than try to proselytize people,” singer Yannis… Read more