There’s plenty to like about the music of Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, but I honestly don’t know that it would have ever occurred to me that the pair would make dandy collaborators. While they both exhibit an arch cleverness … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Lotta Sea Lice

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