Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. Read the full review.
On "22, A Million," Justin Vernon reimagines his music from the bottom up by letting technology β synthesizers, treated vocals, electronic sound effects β dictate. The songs retain their melancholy cast, but now must fight for air beneath static and noise. The new album embraces her individuality more explicitly than ever, both more autobiographical and more politically and socially direct than anything she'd recorded previously.
It's a rawer, less elaborate work than its predecessors, yet still hugely ambitious. Read the review. Kendrick Lamar's "Untitled, Unmastered" is presented as an unfinished work, though it rarely sounds like one. Woody introduces the gang to a homemade spork toy with self-esteem issues in "Toy Story 4. She's made a style-hopping pop album that infuses her songs with a relaxed spaciousness while muting, but not ignoring, her country roots.
Now "Schmilco" dBpm Records arrives, a product of the same recording sessions that produced "Star Wars" but a much different album. Though it's ostensibly quieter and less jarring than its predecessor, it presents its own radical take on the song-based, folk and country-tinged side of the band.
A party spirals out of control, the music rich but low key, a melange of organ and hovering synthesizers. Ocean uses distorting devices on his voice to add emotional texture and to enhance and sharpen the characters he briefly embodies. The upshot: They're all little slices of Ocean's personality with a role to play and they each sound distinct. Warpaint's unerring feel for gauzy hooks and slinky arrangements germinated over a decade and flourished on the quartet's excellent self-titled album.
