Album of the Week

Stripped bare to the bone.

Composer and trumpeter jaimie branch died from an accidental overdose at age 39, just before this album was done and I mourn the loss of such a unique and compelling voice as though we were best friends.

Bordering on too beautiful, Julie Byrne’s The Greater Wings, released on Ghostly International last month, is instead perfectly balanced on the edge.

The older we get, the more difficult it becomes not to compare new things to things we already know. I view this as a kind of curse. A disease.

Covers can be tricky. My perfect balance between original and redo finds no set formula but one commonality among the covers I love is listening to the new brings the old along with it, like the presence of a dear departed friend.

Ana Roxanne (see Because of A Flower) and DJ Python’s (Brian Piñeyr) collaboration saw its roots take hold in NYC in 2020 during lockdown as they drove around the outskirts of NYC, listening to Telegram by Björk, HTRK, Portishead, all manner of melancholy acoustic indie […]

2001: A Space Odyssey super fans have already sat up straighter with just a look at the title of CORIN’s latest album, Lux Aeterna.

We’ve talked about US-born, Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer Carmen Villain before, specifically about Only Love From Now On her 2022 album that I found “Hypnotic, organic, and wonderfully strange.” Villain is back with another slice of wonder.

These days it’s hard not to be concerned. For some people, for people like me, that means it’s hard not to grow tired. Weary, even.

Modern Cosmology is Laetitia Sadier, the voice of Stereolab, + Mombojó, a Brazilian band from Recife, Pernambuco. Together they mix up a perfect cocktail for the sweltering summer heat.

Have you had the experience of listening to a new record and thinking—I wish I knew the person who made this wondrous music.

Words, especially those from a National Youth Poet Laureate, put to music can be a powerful thing.

I’ve been on a bit of noise tear of late and Mandy, Indiana, a four-piece experimental noise band based in Manchester, has been filling that longing nicely and noisily.

I normally shy away from band’s that rely on a one liner pun for a name because it always strikes me as being rather trite. But listening through Lana Del Rabies’s Strega Beata set me straight.

I find myself attracted, at times, to less than pretty sounding vocalists telling less than pretty stories in song.