Pop songs have piled up clever metaphors for dashed romances and heartbreak since the first time Elvis Aron Presley swiveled his hips. Some are better than others, to be sure. To alight on a new metaphor that borders on genius? … Continue reading This Week’s Model — The Beths, “Expert in a Dying Field”

Look, I am who I am. Much as I earnestly strive to diversify my musical tastes, becoming genuinely enraptured by blipping, blooping tunes I would have been quick to disregard in the past, there are certain sounds that are going … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Rat Tally, “Longshot”

NNAMDï is a force. The Chicago-based musician has put out a slew of solo records, played in multiple bands, and co-founded a label, Sooper Records, that is dedicated to showcasing artists whose hail-Mary commercial prospects make them unlikely to get … Continue reading This Week’s Model — NNAMDï, “I Don’t Wanna Be Famous”

I was a relative latecomer to the kingdom of Beyoncé, but I’m a devoted subject now. Given the opportunity I will expound at tedious length on why Lemonade is rivaled by only Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters in any … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Beyoncé, “Break My Soul”

Because I, too, am sometimes ready to rage. Gnosis, the eighth album from Chicago trio Russian Circles, is scheduled for release in August. Continue reading This Week’s Model — Russian Circles, “Conduit”

For music fans with a long enough memory, I think there’s probably no way for the new Laura Veris single, “Eucalyptus,” to avoid comparisons to Suzanne Vega. A lilting female voice engaged in plain, crisp storytelling using a staccato rhythm … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Laura Veirs, “Eucalyptus”

“Nothing (In My Head),” the new track from the Baltimore band Pinkshift, is a bazooka. In press material accompanying the release, the band explains that the song is about feeling trapping and longing for escape. The annotation is hardly necessary, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Pinkshift, “Nothing (In My Head)”

I don’t know I can be expected to resist this. Suede’s new single, “She Still Leads Me,” moves with a swoop and dramatic grandeur that evokes the nineteen-nineties heyday of Britpop overstaters, such as Pulp, Oasis, and, um, themselves, I … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Suede, “She Still Leads Me”

I guess it’s official: I’m destined to immediately fall — and fall hard — for new tracks that merge a nineteen-nineties guitar fuzziness with early twenty-first century indie-rock yearning. Waxahatchee is undoubtedly the standard bearer for the sound, but Try … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Try the Pie, “Last of You”

The opening plinking tones, the gently kneaded sample of Hugh Masekela’s version of the R&B song “Stop,” the easygoing urgency of Black Thought’s rapping: there’s so much about “No Gold Teeth” that commands attention. Presented as an introduction to a … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Black Thought and Danger Mouse, “No Gold Teeth”