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

I have previously confessed to having a weakness for songs about songs. The inherent meta-based tomfoolery is enjoyable, but I think there’s another layer to it. Responses to pop songs — great pop songs, anyway — tend to run deep, tapping into emotions that shiver beneath the surface, anxious for an outlet. When a song directly acknowledges that abiding desire, it is asserting the value of its purpose in the most automatically convincing manner. If the song also manages to be catchy, enticing, disarming, then it approaches the realm of the pop culture magic. What Now, the sophomore album from … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: What Now

Damon Albarn sure has a funky, groovy id. It’s now been about twenty years since the frontman of Blur created a decidedly strange side project: an Archies for the then-looming new millennium. Working with comic book artist Jamie Hewlett, Albarn fashioned an animated quartet (comprised of lead vocalist and keyboardist 2-D, guitarist Noodle, bassist Murdoc Niccals, and drummer Russel Hobbs) that unleashed loose, lithe dance tracks. I don’t recall if Albarn ever explicitly noted that the “virtual band” was a means to more playful expression musically, but it definitely seemed that way to me, especially as Blur moved toward increasingly dense and ponderous … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Humanz

When Robyn Hitchcock released his prior album, 2014’s The Man Upstairs, he offered explanations about the track listing’s assemblage of cover songs and previously incomplete originals salvaged from the archive. He told Billboard that the aging process stirred a specific instinct, making creators “want to put themselves in a historical context, like a picture looking for a frame.” It seemed an intentional announcement of a revised approach to his musicianship, an allowance that glances backward might be the new norm for a singular artist whose deeply embedded eccentricity had previously offered endless surprise. It wasn’t all bad news — the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Robyn Hitchcock

To a degree, Josh Tillman has always positioned himself as a man out of time when performing in his Father John Misty persona. There’s a wounded troubadour embrace of classic pop that’s always been the shiniest threads running through the fabric of his songs. There’s also been a sense of humor that clangs against the opposing guardrails of bleak and boisterous, but mostly Father John has long sounded like a guy on the brink of collapse, and not in the James Brown grand showman way. The existential agony is what’s getting him down. Even happiness sows aching confusion. Tillman quadruples … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Pure Comedy

Crushes on bands are a thing, right? Certain songs, certain albums, certain riffs and vocal howls can set the heart aflutter with something that transcends taste and appreciation and escalates to full-on swooning adoration. I feel like that used to happen to me about every other week when I was a devoted staff member at the college radio station, eons ago. Every undiscovered album dropped over the spindle or CD fed into the player held the potential of triggering a rapturing affair of the psyche. For whatever reason, album rarely leave me reeling in that way any longer, probably because … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Swear I’m Good At This

When I was writing music reviews for Spectrum Culture, I sometimes felt obligated to volunteer for the new releases from bands who had banged out tunes at club shows staged before some of my cohorts were born. There was no clanging indication that I was an uncommon elder, but I felt a certain protectiveness. My own longstanding skepticism of bands who’d arguably overstayed their welcome — or, worse yet, reunited after a significant layoff — made me want to make sure that the artists I’d once played new records from on college radio were getting a fair shake. That I … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: In Between

  I’m not sure M.I.A. has ever made a single album that’s great from start to finish. Her muse has too much wanderlust for that. Running freely can lead an artist to cross entirely new landscapes, but it can also result in a mad rush into a blind alley or two. It can also lead to a sort of artistic exhaustion, which isn’t quite what M.I.A. copped to in suggesting that AIM, her fifth full-length overall, will be her final album. Still, she’s said she’s ready to move onto other projects, and there are times when AIM betrays a sense … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: AIM

Consider the enormous pressure that must come from following up a true breakthrough. Angel Olsen’s 2014 album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, wasn’t a debut, but it felt like it was. It was infused with the immediacy of a voice that had no previous avenue suddenly unleashed, able to express everything that had been stewing in a wounded soul. That it offered this smack of fresh perspective with an intense restrained quiet rather than a reverberating caterwaul only made it more striking. Perhaps the more impressive thing about My Woman, Olsen’s new release, is that it honors and maintains … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: My Woman

Here’s my true confession, offered with more shame than usual: much of hip hop resides in my musical blind spot, or deaf spot, I suppose. I tried and tried when I was in college radio, as a slew of formative acts in the genre released seminal albums. Time and again, I was left cold, maybe admiring the material intellectually, but never holding it to my rebellious heart the way I did punk or even, in the words on Kathleen Hanna, “the whole, like, big-white-baby-with-an-ego-problem thing” form of alternative rock that took hold at about the same time. Back in those … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: and the Anonymous Nobody