Recorded music834 total entries
Recent reviews22 reviews in the last 7 days
Latest entry4 in the last 7 days
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Dirty Beaches - Drifters / Love Is The Devil
Released: 20/05/2013
Zoo Music
Whizzing by in under 30 minutes, Alex Zhang Hungtai’s debut Badlands evoked Suicide and the soulful ghost of rockabilly past. He’s keeping that noir aesthetic on this new double album (see nocturnal soundscape ‘Love is the Devil’), which documents two years on the road, as signified by wanderlust-evoking song titles like ‘Greyhound at Night’ and ‘Alone at the Danube River’.
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 72%    
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 5 |
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
Released: 20/05/2013
Columbia
Mammoth hype after the success of the stupidly infectious ‘Get Lucky’ and the presence of Nile Rogers, Pharrell Williams and Julian Casablancas set this album up for.... a mostly excellent critical reception. Mumblings from electro forefather Giorgio Moroder and something that sounds a bit Broadway apparently make for brilliant album tracks, on the first record in seven years by the French dance heroes.
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78%
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 4 |
The National - Trouble Will Find Me
Released: 20/05/2013
4AD
The National have been making miserable sound good since 2001 (frontman Matt Beringer recently said their songs are ‘all about death’), but after the success of 2010’s High Violet, the Brooklyn band have been doing it on a much bigger stage. Album six delivers more morbid indie with collaborations from Sufjan Stevens and Annie ‘St. Vincent’ Clark.
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 81%
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 6 |
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
Released: 13/05/2013
XL
Whether you find their 'stylistic melting-pot' approach refreshing or infuriating, this New York lot are a difficult band to pigeon-hole. It looks like they’ve dropped the jagged Afro-pop and Ivy League-indie quips that defined their first two records on album three though, which might be their most cohesive yet.
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85%
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 4 |
Helado Negro - Invisible Life
Released: 06/05/2013
Asthmatic Kitty
When we spoke to Roberto Lange about side-project OMBRE last August, he said he was finishing up a new solo record. Here it is - his third, and the first to feature English vocals and appearances from Devendra Banhart among others. There’s still a discernable Latino influence to his sound, characterised by OMBRE bandmate Julianna Barwick as ‘breezy positive fun’ – we concur.
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73%
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 7 |
Savages - Silence Yourself
Released: 06/05/2013
Matador
In the short time they've been together, Savages have made quite a name for themselves. This eagerly awaited debut displays a particular take on post-punk and brings to mind Joy Division, Fugazi and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The mood is set with the angsty spoken-word opener ‘Shut up'.
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80%
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 7 |
Deerhunter - Monomania
Released: 06/05/2013
4AD
What’s eating Bradford Cox on the sixth Deerhunter record? Monomania actually seems a misleading title, as the band’s punk-gaze sound has rarely sounded so diverse, taking in something approaching rockabilly on ‘Pensacola’ and almost entirely devoid of the ambient interludes which seem now to be the domain of Cox’s ‘solo’ project Atlas Sound.
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76%
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 6 |
Colin Stetson - New History of Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
Released: 29/04/2013
Constellation
Judges (2011), the preceding installment in this Canadian saxophonist’s trilogy, was nominated for the Polaris prize. Bon Iver's Justin Vernon appears on the third, but don’t let that fool you; Stetson specialises in atonal saxophone drone, and the uninitiated should dive in headfirst with the unsettlingly bleak, 15-minute long title track.
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81%
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 9 |
Neon Neon - Praxis Makes Perfect
Released: 29/04/2013
Lex Records
A collaboration between Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys and producer Boom Bip, Neon Neon follow their Mercury-nominated debut with a second record of electro-pop delivered with a Welsh accent. Out on CultureCritic favs Lex Records, it’s a concept album based on Leftist Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, whose life is imagined with Gruff’s typically playful sense of humour.
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67%
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 5 |
No Joy - Wait To Pleasure
Released: 22/04/2013
Mexican Summer
Montreal duo No Joy – the ‘two hot blonde girls’ famously described by Bethany Cosentino as the best band ever – return with a second album. In fairness, after hearing their excellent 2010 debut Ghost Blonde we could see where Cosentino was coming from; scuzzy-pop with killer hooks and lots of murk, best exemplified here on album highlight ‘Hare Tarot Lies’.
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74%
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