When Flo Morrissey rhapsodizes about “singing through the sky,” it’s easy to imagine her floating through the clouds with a golden lyre. Joanna Newsom producer Noah Georgeson provides the enchanted-forest backdrops for the 20-year-old Brit’s ethereal voice; you’ll get lost in the lush romanticism of “Why,” and the terrifically titled… Source: RollingStone Link: Tomorrow Will […]
In his main gig as Real Estate’s guitarist, Matthew Mondanile helps provide the warm melodic hooks that drive the band’s suburban bliss. Mondanile’s side project, Ducktails, has typically offered him space to explore more abstract guitar moods, but his latest album refines that sprawl with more concise songwriting. A prime… Source: RollingStone Link: St. Catherine
New Jersey rock & roll believers Titus Andronicus get top mileage from a simple idea: baiting hardcore thrust with classic-rock hooks. On their fourth album, they bear down on a 90-minute rock opera in a Quadrophenia vein about growing up, freaking out and coming to unsettled terms. A shaggy chorale,… Source: RollingStone Link: The Most […]
Likable 24-year-old folkie Fraser A. Gorman is the latest member of Courtney Barnett’s circle of Melbourne singer-songwriters. But where Barnett trades in self-aware grunge paranoia, Gorman is a classic-rock romantic who daydreams about ex-girlfriends and road trips. His tastes can run eclectic: These ballads and alt-country rockers find Gorman singing… Source: RollingStone Link: Slow Gum
Instrumental duo Ratatat are indie studio geeks with superproducer chops, just as comfortable reimagining Biggie Smalls joints (see 2006’s hip-hop-themed Remixes Vol. 2) as they are cranking out grooves that suggest a dreamier Daft Punk. Their first album in five years goes heavy on space-age synths, elegiac guitar cheese and… Source: RollingStone Link: Magnifique
Bay Area electronic artist Holly Herndon is an award-winning experimental composer as well as a former Berlin club kid, and both sides of that background come through on her beguiling second album. Herndon’s music is body-moving and confusing, with cybernetic vocal shards crisscrossing above tracks that can recall Aphex Twin’s… Source: RollingStone Link: Platform
It may have taken seven records and a prison scare, but Lamb of God’s expert growler, Randy Blythe, finally sings for once, on “Overlord,” a grungy ballad on this LP — and he actually sounds good doing it. It feels like the threat of losing everything before Blythe was found not… Source: RollingStone Link: VII: Sturm […]
In the Seventies and Eighties, Giorgio Moroder crafted disco hits for Donna Summer, Blondie and David Bowie. Now, after a nudge from Daft Punk, the 75-year-old Svengali is attempting a decades-in-the-making comeback with a cast of A-list collaborators. Although a handful of dated, unimaginative instrumentals drag down Déjà Vu’s momentum,… Source: RollingStone Link: Déjà Vu
Veruca Salt’s 1994 hit “Seether” turned Nirvana guitar growl and Breeders vocal snap into a bubble-grunge classic. The Chicago band’s albums were smarter than they got credit for back then, and this one, the group’s first with its original lineup since 1997, is great by any standard. Singer-guitarists Nina Gordon… Source: RollingStone Link: Ghost Notes
This time: rock albums that you may have missed, but shouldn't. The American band's roots rock sound has won over many converts this year following the release of its sophomore album in May. Singer and guitarist Brittany Howard powers this LP, which adds touches of punk and heavy metal to the band's trademark blend of […]