Renaissance, the new album from Beyoncé, had me cackling with glee from it’s first moments. The opening track “I’m That Girl” springs to life with an electronically manipulated intonation of “Please, motherfuckers ain’t stop–, please, motherfuckers” and variations on the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Renaissance

What if getting dropped by a major label is the best thing that could possibly happen? Maybe Muna could have found their way to the current version of their collective creative self under the corporate yoke of RCA Records, but … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Muna

Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers make a nifty racket together. Hailing from the Isle of Wight, the longtime friends decided to form the band Wet Leg just a couple years ago and quickly got down to the business of crafting … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Wet Leg

For Mitski, everything’s different now. Or rather, everything clearly started to feel different for her at some point during the long post-release promotional and support cycle for her fifth full-length album, the exceptional Be the Cowboy. Somewhere in there, this … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Laurel Hell

Presumably, the consensus starting point in conceding dazzlement before the art of Snail Mail remains the songwriting precociousness of Lindsey Jordan. She’s not a kid anymore, as she most certainly was when her first recordings were released. Jordan’s debut effort … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Valentine

Kacey Musgraves has a story to tell. It’s a sad story, it’s a true story, and it’s her story. After filling Golden Hour, her roundly acclaimed 2018 release that won her the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, with … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Star-Crossed

Chvrches might not have felt like they needed a rebound from their third album, Love Is Dead. There are some signs that the Scottish trio knows they went down a blind alley, both in some stray comments here and there … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Screen Violence

Any Shape You Take, the sophomore album by Indigo De Souza, lives up to the generous acceptance of its title. While grounded in R&B-based pop music, De Souza lets her musical muse wander widely. She doesn’t quite reach the wild … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Any Shape You Take

I’m hardly privy to all the information I would need to definitely determine why Billie Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, became an outright sensation. It’s sold more than four million copies to date, … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Happier Than Ever

Eleven years is a long stretch between solo albums, but sometimes the world conspires to make working alone, more or less, the most prudent course. In the time since the generally well-regarded debut released under her first name, Anika Henderson … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Change