Tagged: albumoftheweek

Shearwater's last three albums, the ones that brought the Austin band to prominence, all made up parts of a loose overarching concept-album trilogy, one that had something to do with islands and bird-migration patterns and general isolation. Once a band gets done with a hugely ambitious project like that one, the temptation is probably to just crank out a quick batch of tunes with nothing to do with anything, to explore its unambitious side. And advance press about Shearwater's new one Animal Joy indicates that the band has stepped back from its orchestral grandiosity and made something resembling [...]

A year and a half ago, I had a perfectly lovely telephone conversation with Isobel Campbell, the former Belle & Sebastian member who has recorded three ultra-satisfying albums of Nancy Sinatra pastiche with Mark Lanegan. And during that conversation, I learned something about Lanegan that seems to throw this entire career into stark relief: He is a massive fan of the Los Angeles Clippers. More specifically, he is someone who will fly on three separate planes to get to a Clippers game. And given that the Clippers have historically been one of the great lost causes of professional [...]

The story goes like this: Just a couple of years ago, Leonard Cohen was a septuagenarian retiree, more or less done with music, living in a Buddhist monastery in California. He stopped touring in 1993, and his last studio album, Dear Heather , came out in 2004. Cohen had done plenty in his life, releasing at least four albums that are in the dorm-room canon for anyone getting serious about loving music and, along with Serge Gainsbourg, defining a sophisticated-sensualist persona that's become one of rock's great archetypes. He'd more than earned the chance to spend the rest of [...]

The story goes like this: Just a couple of years ago, Leonard Cohen was a septuagenarian retiree, more or less done with music, living in a Buddhist monastery in California. He stopped touring in 1993, and his last studio album, Dear Heather , came out in 2004. Cohen had done plenty in his life, releasing at least four albums that are in the dorm-room canon for anyone getting serious about loving music and, along with Serge Gainsbourg, defining a sophisticated-sensualist persona that's become one of rock's great archetypes. He'd more than earned the chance to spend the rest of [...]

The first two volumes of Clevelander Dylan Baldi's work as Cloud Nothings showcase a musician with a precocious knack for hooks, ping-ponged hooks laid onto a backdrop of Baldi's sunny jangle with songs like Turning On 's " Hey Cool Kid " and Cloud Nothings ' " Should Have ." So, when word got out that Steve Albini was on board for Cloud Nothing's third LP, Attack On Memory , a prognosticator's imagination could only run wild with the possible implications of the marriage; the death of Cloud Nothings signature lo-fi vibe, the [...]

The young L.A. rapper Kendrick Lamar is well on his way to becoming something truly special. Section.80 , Kendrick's very strong 2011 album, was the work of a ferociously talented rapper and a restless, emotive mind. It wasn't perfect - it chased a few too many half-baked ideas down different rabbit holes - but it felt like the beginning of something exciting. And a couple of months ago, I saw a room full of UVA students chanting along with nearly every one of that album's twisty stanzas. The kid is catching on in a very real way. And now [...]

First things first: The music business is still on an extended holiday break from releasing almost any actual music. Next week is the first week in what feels like forever that more than one worthy-of-consideration album will be in stores. And during a busier week, Live From The Kitchen , the new album from Memphis rapper Yo Gotti, probably wouldn't stand the remotest chance of appearing in this space; it's not exactly a major work. Still, slow release weeks can lead us to consider records that might otherwise fly way under the radar. And Live From The Kitchen [...]

An important thing to remember about the Guided By Voices reunion: They were the weird old guys in the club the first time around, too. Back in the day, the music press had an easy time lumping them in with the then-ascendant wave of lo-fi indie rock wiseacres: Pavement, Sebadoh, Smog, about a million others. And there were similarities, certainly: slapdash recording techniques, lyrical obtuseness, general lack of fashion sense. But they were also old enough to remember the Camaro-rock anthems of the 70s and drunk enough to attempt their own versions of those songs. Robert Pollard was the only [...]

Album releases slow way down this time of year, and this week's Album Of The Week was mostly a two-horse race between the Black Keys' El Camino and the Roots' undun . That ends up being a pretty interesting race because the two albums work in opposite, almost opposed ways. El Camino is practically a riff-delivery system. It has no sweeping ambition or centralizing concept; its only aim is to rock your face for 38 minutes. It gets in and gets out, leaving us feeling just slightly stomped-upon. The Roots album, meanwhile, is a rap-opera [...]

Here are the facts as we know them: Blut Aus Nord is the one-man black metal project of a Frenchman who calls himself Vindsval. Vindsval debuted his whole thing in 1994, but he has allowed the public to learn basically nothing about him in the years since, which is fine, since guys who make black metal often turn out to be either (1) sociopaths or (2) boring nerds. (There are even some boring nerd sociopaths.) I hadn't heard of him before this year, when he released the first two volumes of his 777 album trilogy, which is getting [...]

To this point, I've lived a full and happy life without ever much considering the works of Ms. Kate Bush. I knew the singles, sure, and I had a general understanding of her influence on later art-pop spell-weavers like Bat For Lashes. I knew other people's covers of her songs, which range from transcendent (Maxwell's "This Woman's Work") to annoying (the Futureheads' once-hyped "Hounds Of Love"). But the singles, with their twisty helium squeals and their non-Euclidean melodies, never convinced me to dig much further. For the most part, Bush has been, for me, one of those canonical blind spots [...]

I resisted Drake. I resisted Drake hard . In the beginning, when he was just another face on Lil Wayne's already-overcrowded Young Money roster, I wondered how the hell anyone was supposed to take this kid seriously. Rap, after all, has not historically been kind to Canadians or to teenage soap-opera veterans . When he released his So Far Gone mixtape, he suddenly started to make sense; his rapping was pedestrian, but he had a silky voice and a great instinct for what sort of music best fit it, and "Best I Ever Had" [...]

In the early '00s, when Cass McCombs and I were both living in Baltimore, we knew each other a little bit. We weren't friends or anything; I doubt he'd remember me. But we had mutual friends and we'd see each other at parties and stuff. At one point, he toured with a backing band comprised entirely of guys I knew from around town; I think most of them are in Arbouretum now. One Halloween, when his hair was just sproingy and not yet scraggly, he dressed as Robert Smith from the Cure and pulled it off admirably. Most of the [...]

This is, admittedly, a bit of a curveball. Miranda Lambert is very much a product of pop-country's starmaking machinery - a pretty blonde woman singing sparkling, glossily produced songs in an industry full of people who match that exact same description. She got her break when she came in third on the reality show Nashville Star , and the one time I saw her live was when she opened for Toby Keith at a New Jersey arena a few years ago. For plenty of the people reading this paragraph, all those things will immediately mark out Lambert as some [...]

From where I'm sitting, the best heavy metal in the world is being made in the American Southeast, by heavily bearded and tattooed bands who know just what to do with a fuzz-pedal. Mastodon, who have been drifting toward watery prog lately, are probably nonetheless patron saints of this great little wave. Kylesa and Baroness, from Savannah, and Torche, from Miami, are linchpins. Last year, Kylesa released the furious Spiral Shadow , a truly righteous combination of skyward hooks and merciless pummel that probably stands as my favorite metal record of the past few years. This year, Arkansas bashers [...]

Someone wise once told me that most great country singers are really just soul singers. I'm not sure whether Ryan Adams even counts as a country singer anymore; he's spent the past decade or so slip-sliding into the L.A. rock-pro universe. But he's definitely a soul singer, especially on his new one Ashes & Fire . His singing voice, as strong and confident as it's ever been, stands as the number-one reasons why Ashes & Fire is worth your time. It's a gorgeous instrument, hushed and intimate even when it's projecting with full-on back-of-the-room power. [...]

It's hard to believe Zola Jesus is only two proper albums deep into her career; she's already been through a world of aesthetic evolution. Nika Roza Danilova's first album was 20092s scraping, feral noise-beast The Spoils , an album I could admire but never properly enjoy. So when she followed it up with her Stridulum EP last year, it was a legit shock. Stridulum and its follow-up EP Valusia were as dark and mysterious as The Spoils , but they were also grandly theatrical and melodically warm enough that they worked as [...]

[ Every Tuesday, Stereogum will pore over the week's official releases and offer a closer look, and listen, at the one we're most into. This week, that album is Dum Dum Girls ' Only In Dreams .] Dum Dum Girls new album, Only In Dreams , is the best thing the group has done, and that's no underhanded jab at their earliest songs , the solid debut I Will Be , the hazier earlier self-titled EP, or the bridge [...]

Brooklyn three-piece cheeky rappers Das Racist released two mixtapes last year Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man . This week, the trio (Heems, Kool AD and Dap) released an album proper that they want you to buy called Relax . It features production from Chairlift's Patrick Wimberly, Diplo, Blood Diamonds, El-P , Rostam Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer's Anand Wilder. Relax is a 14-track collection of crass, referential, fun, dumb party rap songs with hyper-exuberant synth productions. Lead single 'Michael Jackson' is a [...]

• Das Racist - Girl
• Das Racist - Michael Jackson

You Are All I See , the debut album from Pat Grossi aka Active Child has a magnetising and alluring charm to it. A former Philadelphia Boys choirboy, Los Angeles-based Grossi's modus operandi includes an angelic falsetto, effects-laden expansive harp tones and big reaching '80s synthesizers and on his debut album he combines all of these disparate elements in ways that his previous Curtis Lane EP only hinted at. There's a beautiful fragility to You Are All I See which takes its primary sounds from R&B, folk and electronic music. [...]