The Folk Implosion Begin Again with ‘Walk Thru Me’
After a quarter century, Lou Barlow and John Davis of the Folk Implosion return with an album that testifies to their enduring friendship.
experimental rock
Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Opus Remains Powerful and Prescient
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor reminds us that sometimes the most powerful protest is (nearly) wordless.
Dirty Three Prove the Theory That Love Changes Everything
Dirty Three continue their long career of making organic, meditative post-rock jazz that always humbly approaches a single moment, without pretense or distraction.
Frank Zappa’s ‘Whisky a Go Go 1968’ Appears in Deluxe Edition
Released this month in a Super Deluxe Edition, Whisky a Go Go 1968 recovers a legendary “lost” performance by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
MONO Recommit with Life-Affirming ‘Oath’
MONO return with a post-rock album about faith and commitment, which serves as a fitting epitaph for their long-term artistic collaboration with Steve Albini.
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis Deliver Thrills
Imagine a train that seems to be going off the rails yet keeps on track, and you’ll get a sense of what The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis sounds like.
Avant-Metal’s Lords of Terror: Fantômas’ Eponymous Debut at 25
Fantômas stand as one of the most audacious music projects of the 1990s. You almost wonder if the quasi-mainstreamish Faith No More held Mike Patton back.
Melvins’ ‘Tarantula Heart’ Marks Their Strange Trip
Melvins are masters of their craft, still able to make songs that stand with their finest work precisely because they’re never trying to recapture that past.
25 Years of Tom Waits’ ‘Mule Variations’
With Mule Variations, Tom Waits tamed his vaudevillian guises and showed that he was aging gracefully, while retaining his integrity towards his artistry.
Avalanche Kaito’s ‘Talitakum’ Is a Jagged, Electroacoustic Dream
Avalanche Kaito’s Talitakum is one of the most intriguing albums this year so far. It’s a work of futurist folk-rock and a mixed-media sculpture.
What Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ Got Right About Music Streaming
Wilco’s net-streaming experiment with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was part of the utopian promise for technology’s future, and it worked.
Kim Gordon’s ‘The Collective’ Is an Addictive Mix of Sounds
Who had Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon making a collection of trunk-rattling near hip-hop and industrial noise on their 2024 bingo card?