Photo Credit: Meg Young Post Malone’s fourth LP, Austin, has been a long-awaited masterpiece that showcases his evolution as an artist. In an ever-changing and diverse music landscape, Post Malone stands out as a genre-blurring maverick, seamlessly weaving elements of hip-hop, pop, and rock into a tapestry that’s uniquely his own. Austin is not just… Read more
Photo Credit: Matty Vogel Since their early hardcore days, Massachusetts trio-turned-solo-project PVRIS have pivoted further and further towards electro-pop and pop-rock – and though the album art for their fourth LP, Evergreen, may initially suggest otherwise, this newest offering presents a continuation of this trend. Of course, as PVRIS moves further into pop territory, the prospect… Read more
Photo Credit: Christian Tierney One Direction’s ‘nice guy’ Niall Horan has failed to have the big stand-out moment since the beloved boy band’s dissolution in 2016 that Harry Styles and, briefly, Zayn Malik enjoyed. If Horan’s newest album, The Show, is any indication, the 29-year-old seems to have made peace with this reality. A collection… Read more
Photo Credit: Julian Burgueño California quartet The Aces are part of a growing group of alt-pop artists using the genre to tell compelling female-led, unapologetically queer stories (see also: Carlie Hanson and Hayley Kiyoko). On their new album, I’ve Loved You For So Long, The Aces best showcase their strength in this area on the… Read more
Photo Credit: Vincent Haycock Since Kesha sued Dr. Luke in 2014, her reputation has shifted from that of the party girl of pop to the genre’s survivor. In the near-decade that’s ensued, she’s alternately embraced and run away from that title; on 2017’s “Praying,” she offered a direct rebuke to her former producer in the… Read more
Photo Credit: Madison Phipps Ellie Goulding has made a point of describing her fifth album Higher Than Heaven as her “least personal album” to date. In an age of pop music geared towards the confessional and emotionally weighty, many fans have welcomed Goulding’s embrace of a pop ethos that prioritizes massive hooks, earworm melodies, and… Read more
Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn In music journalism, there’s a concept known as the five-album-test: any band that has released five consecutively great albums passes. The test is imperfect and controversial – rewarding consistency over irregular bursts of excellence – but the bands who pass it, undeniably, belong to the very highest echelons of music. Most would… Read more
Photo Credit: Stephen Ringer In 2020, Aly & AJ’s 2007 single “Potential Breakup Song” went unexpectedly viral on TikTok. It’s a testament to the duo’s artistic integrity that on 2021’s A Touch of The Beat… – their first album in 14 years – and now, on With Love From, they don’t shamelessly try to recreate… Read more
Photo Credit: Nasty Little Man Gorillaz began more than two decades ago, originally a form of collaboration that was unique, to say the least, between a musician (in this case, Blur vocalist Damon Albarn) and an illustrator (Jaime Hewlett, creator of the British comic book series Tank Girl) with the purpose of creating a soundtrack… Read more
Photo Credit: Lauretta Suter A decade or so ago, you couldn’t flick between radio stations without catching half-a-dozen inescapable hits from DJs – be it Calvin Harris’s “We Found Love”, Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” or Naughty Boy’s “La La La.” With those hit-makers now all years removed from their last chart-toppers, Reading’s Sam “SG” Lewis… Read more