Kylie Minogue is well aware of the irony of releasing a dance-pop album called Disco during a year when going out to clubs isn’t a good idea or even a possibility. But with the release of her highly anticipated 15th… Read More
‘I hate God.’ As far as opening lines for a novel, that of Jenny Hval’s Girls Against God (translated by Marjam Idriss) certainly sounds explicit. As you go deeper into the novel, however, you realize that there is very little… Read More
Anaal Nathrakh – Endarkenment (Metal Blade) Birmingham’s Anaal Nathrakh play an extreme take on extreme metal. Everything is pushed beyond the point of breaking in their style, yet they somehow remain in control of it. By combining the most out-there… Read More
Deceit, despite its jokey title, is not a happy album. I recall my father saying to me once that he couldn’t express how it felt to live through the Cold War era. He had no language that might describe to… Read More
If one wants to write a book about a rock ‘n’ roll band, there are only two ways to do it: give new information that adds to the band’s legacy or chop up old information in a new way that… Read More
There isn’t a logical explanation for the persistence—or, really, the swelling—of interest in music of the Grateful Dead in 2020. The Dead’s visionary and spiritual center of gravity was singer/guitarist Jerry Garcia, and when he died in 1995 after years… Read More
When Strange Days released in the US in the fall of 1995, the internet and the idea of digital connectivity was new enough that forward-thinking philosophers and artists had begun speculating on its potential, and in often alarmist ways. The… Read More
Given the shadowy avant-gardism of their self-titled debut a year earlier, it may come as a bit of a surprise to find how bright This Heat sounded on this 1980 12″ EP. In truth, Hayward and Bullen had both been… Read More
Ariana Grande’s Positions is a perfect pop album in a very conservative sense of the term. The songs average under three minutes. Innovation is on hold for the moment, and the experimentation—the muffled house of “Motive”, which imagines Grande and… Read More
The most distinctive aspect of Canadian singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle’s latest release, Monarch Season, is its stillness. Castle sings and plays guitar and piano quietly on this solo release. Even when Castle blows on the harmonica, there is a calmness to… Read More