Thom Yorke’s ‘ANIMA’ Offers an Uplifting Kind of Dystopia
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke's third solo album ANIMA offers relatively peppy music to accompany his unsurprisingly bleak lyrical worldview, but it all works rather wonderfully.
Rod Waterman
Full-time apparatchik for Big Education, occasional poetry instructor, amateur painter, all-the-time seeker of new music.
Liz Harris’ Nivhek Project Is an Exercise in the Ineffable Nature of Grief
Grouper's Liz Harris offers a meditation on the sublime in a way that is itself sublimely beautiful on After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house.
Jane Weaver’s ‘Loops in the Secret Society’ Offers a Glimpse into the Mystic and Her Creative Process
Jane Weaver's Loops in the Secret Society revisits songs from her previous body of work in an "expansionist experiment" interwoven with ambient connective tissue.
Fruit Bats’ ‘Gold Past Life’ Is an Exhilarating Trip Down Multiple Memory Lanes
Deftly avoiding the pitfalls of nostalgia, Fruit Bats' Gold Past Life takes stock of life from the vantage point of middle age and charts a path forward with hope and no little circumspection, without once feeling sorry for itself.
Stereolab’s Recent Re-Isssues Are Re-Imagined, and Re-Contextualized to Stunning Effect
Reissues of two early albums are a startling reminder of Stereolab's power and influence. Their music not only re-invents itself, but it refreshes and renews its listeners as well.
Vanishing Twin Travel the Spaceways on ‘The Age of Immunology’
Vanishing Twin's second album, The Age of Immunology, challenges borders physical, cultural, and beyond in a remarkable musical odyssey.
‘Birth of a Nation’ Unearths a Trove of Music from the Liverpool Scene
Over three discs and four hours, Cherry Red Records does a deep dive into the output of Liverpool's Inevitable Records, home to Pete Wylie and Pete Burns, among many others.
Fujiya & Miyagi’s ‘Flashback’ Takes a Compelling Look at Our Present Moment
Fujiya & Miyagi's eighth album, Flashback, packages a certain critique of nostalgia in the band's trademark motorik sound.
Flying Lotus Does Not Always Soar on ‘Flamagra’
Flying Lotus' fifth album Flamagra contains plenty of strong material but ultimately lacks a unifying coherence.
Protomartyr’s ‘No Passion All Technique’ Contains Plenty of Both
The reissue of Protomartyr's first album No Passion All Technique offers early signs of the band they would become on subsequent albums.
Cate Le Bon’s ‘Reward’ Is a Rich Prize
Cate Le Bon's fifth album Reward offers treasures beyond the everyday realm.
The National’s ‘I Am Easy to Find’ Is a Tangle of Beautiful, Messy Humanity
The National's eighth album is not as easy to locate or to live with, as its title suggests, but it contains passages of sublime beauty and grace.