Album Reviews

On their 2015 breakthrough, Blurryface, Twenty One Pilots were the ultimate post-Spotify rock band, flickering wildly through ideas and genre: Tyler Joseph’s vein-spilling emo rap, Josh Dun’s funky-hard Travis Barker drums, tweaks of electronic music and reggae, twee ukulele indie, the grandeur of a Broadway musical and existential lyrics with …

There’s a simple, age-old idea behind Tomorrow Comes the Harvest: Throw two luminaries from different worlds into the studio, roll tape, see what happens. In one corner, find Jeff Mills, whose credentials are unimpeachable — he co-founded Underground Resistance, the future-facing electronic Detroit outfit that created reams of charged, jazz-friendly …

In 1983, Prince was a budding genius on a historic run that would eventually redefine pop. A year earlier he’d exploded into the Top 10 with his synth-funk double-LP opus,1999,and he was already hard at work onPurple Rain,the album/film project that would render a version of his life story in …

Lenny Kravitz gets angry in only the most Lenny Kravitz way possible: with a high-pitched “hoooo,” some funky bass and his typically über-passionate vocal delivery. Nearly every track on his 11th album, Raise Vibration – at least those that aren’t his signature love songs –seems like he intended it to …

Port Arthur’s most famous living musician returns for his first album in five years, and it’s an opportunity for a host of rappers to pay homage. Big K.R.I.T. produces the strongest track, “Outta Season,” which is the soulful, bluesy equivalent of riding on dubs with the top down, the breeze …

Serpentwithfeet’s influences make him dangerously cool and impossibly contemporary. His debut was co-released on Tri Angle Records, home of Haxan Cloak, Forest Swords and Lotic, as well as a fitting match for his cutting-edge electronics. As a vocalist, his quavering vibrato is trained in opera and classical music, but it’s …

American R&B veterans hoping to reach a mainstream audience face a brutal slog. Rap dominates the market, reducing any singer’s chance of landing a hit. And within R&B, the landscape is harshly segmented by age – any singers above 30 not named Beyonce are automatically shunted to Urban Adult Contemporary …

Neko Case‘s clarion pipes remain the calling card, but on her 8th studio LP, between lyrics and vocal arrangements, they’ve never channeled more imagination or sense of purpose. A set of rangy folk-rock, per usual, Hell-On is attuned to the disasters of the moment; it opens pondering the nature of …

Beach House have spent the last decade-plus making music that hums with feverish intensity even at its most quiet. The Baltimore duo’s albums inspire cult-like devotion from fans, which makes sense: Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally are less a band than a two-person mystical order, endlessly searching for new secrets …

Motormouthed rapper Open Mike Eagle has gotten raves for albums that explore the comedy of neurosis. His new one, easily his headiest, is a concept LP built around Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, a famously mismanaged housing project destroyed 10 years ago. Eagle impressionistically inserts himself into events real and imagined. …