Since the release of Sleep Well Beast, the seventh studio album from the National, the commentary has settled into two camps. There are those who insist that the album represents a serious modification of the band’s sound, pushing into intriguing … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Sleep Well Beast
I mean, no one really thought there would never be another LCD Soundsystem album, right? For all the anguish and wistful valedictory celebration that accompanied the announcement of LCD Soundsystem’s farewell, back in 2011, the dissolution of James Murphy’s triumphant … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: American Dream
I readily concede that at this melancholy moment there’s a greedy desire to hear echoes of Tom Petty just about everywhere. But, whenever I now cycle back to A Deeper Understanding, the new album from the War on Drugs, I … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: A Deeper Understanding
In the best way, Grizzly Bear makes music that nags at me. Although there’s the occasional track that is immediately arresting — “Yet Again,” from 2012’s Shields, for example — but my predominant experience with the group’s music is one … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Painted Ruins
In November, Randy Newman will turn seventy-four years old. Despite his advancing years, he sounds exactly the same as he always has in his latest full-length release, Dark Matter, his eleventh studio album. That’s not a testament to virile youthfulness … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Dark Matter
When I first heard songs from Reflektor, the fourth album from Arcade Fire, I was left a little cold. The long run-up to that album, the Montreal band’s follow-up to the surprise Grammy winner The Suburbs, doled out songs one … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Everything Now
It causes me some amount of pain to acknowledge that an album with a distinctly nineteen-nineties alternative rock sound is a throwback. My aged bones ache a touch more heartily at the mere thought of it. But here we are … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Out in the Storm
I’m glad there’s a place in the pop universe for the music made by Haim. There is no claim being made here that the trio of sisters from Los Angeles are delivering something wildly transgressive or otherwise deviously edgy in its … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Something to Tell You
I have a lot of affection for the Mountain Goats, but I was disappointed with their last album. Released in 2015, Beat the Champ was a concept album, awash in songwriter John Darnielle’s abiding affection for professional wrestling, and not the kind that takes up hours of national programming hours with intricate stories and flashy production values. Darnielle was writing for the hardscrabble, downscale grapplers who shed blood and sweat (but no tears in this manliest of sports) in half-filled municipal coliseums and on static dappled UHF stations in his younger years. Much as I appreciate Darnielle’s conviction that absolutely … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Goths
How ludicrously exquisite can pop music get? Truly, how much tingly elegance can be layered into songs of piercing beauty before the material shifts and ripples into something else entirely, some fragile creation that begs for the invention of a whole new artistic designation. Words must be coined, because the contents of the current dictionary are inadequate. Others have flirted with this level of dazzling transformation — Kate Bush comes immediately to mind — but it’s beginning to seem that Mike Hadreas, in his guise as Perfume Genius, may yet reach it. No Shape is the fourth full-length studio release under … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: No Shape
Coffee for Two 