Danny Brown – Stardust [Warp 2025]
The real radical shift is not the hyperpop production crafted by mostly young trans artists, though it’s reflective of his fierce love of outsiders despite his apolitical stance. Nor is it the honesty with which he documents and confesses his substance abuse excesses which landed him in rehab, a situation he once deemed “pussy” on his darkest and thinnest album. No, the change is the bright look towards the future that Daniel Dewan Sewell now sees for himself after two decades of borderline nihilistic rumination – note his grasp of mortality, not only does he start with “Before they chisel the last four numbers on my tombstone” he ends with “I’ma keep goin’ ’til my life is over”. As subject matter he’s done sex, drugs, violence, anxiety, fear, coping, but now new colors are added to his palette like oh I don’t know; Hope? Love? Dedication? And while some publications aren’t incorrect in his occasional lyrical platitudes, recovery after all famously requires pushing past writer’s block, if you track-by-track the 14 songs like I did he hits potently on at least 10. I’m not sure what else you could want from him. One of The Greats in my book. 4.2/5
Stevie Wonder – Songs in The Key of Life [Motown 1976]
The story goes that Stevie Wonder was tired of conquering the music world to the point he was about to quit and move to Ghana for humanitarian reasons, but then Berry Gordy offered him so much money and creative freedom that he got roped back into the industry. So he figured go as big and elegant as possible. Some 130 other people contributed sound or engineering in some way to the record which for modern music fans would probably put Stevie in a throughline with Brian Wilson as a composer/visionary, a legacy that stretches down to Kanye and Beyonce today. But Wonder was probably looking further back to the jazz composers he namechecks on “Sir Duke” like Count Basie or Mr. Ellington himself. At the ripe old age of 26 he was so on fire that he could wear whatever hat he wanted and it would still sound clean and bright, soul, rock and roll, jazz, whatever you want: Stevie the New Father, Stevie the Ironist, Stevie the Bard of Racial Discrimination. All of it rolled up into Stevie The Educator who wasn’t just informing on Jazz greats but America’s multicultural history of accomplishment, America’s persecution of his people, the love found in family and loss, and the communal manifestations of a samba-turned-disco beat. Nourishing stuff, na’ mean? 5/5
Algernon Cadwallader – Trying Not to Have a Thought [Saddle Creek 2025]
Now that they’re all 40 and no longer live in the halcyon days of Obama that they did in their early 20s, the Philadelphia fourth wave emo godfathers reconvene with elder statesman status and a focus on the fury of failed neoliberal and insurgent fascist policies. And they still split Cap’n Jazz and American Football in terms of sound. If you still drink it’s one to crush a PBR tall boy to after you tuck the kids in. 4.0/5
(“World of Difference”, “You’ve Always Been Here”)
The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck [Merge 2011]
As they move to their drummer’s label the late 70’s singer songwriter position John Darnielle has set them up to be in seems to be spinning its wheels. Everything is crafted durably and contains melody and literature, so then why does it feel so forgettable? Death songs that feel trite – this ain’t them. 3.6/5
Wednesday – Bleeds [Dead Oceans 2025]
Read any critical reviews or long form interviews about Wednesday and you’ll notice that there’s always a mention of lap-steel, lap-steel, lap-steel. Did you know they’re from the South? You can tell by the lap-steel guitar. Which, okay, yea there’s some lap-steel on some songs. But that’s like saying “Did you try that new breakfast place? Crazy use of flaky salt on their eggs benedict”. You’re missing the forest for one flavor of a tree. There’s a whole 90% of Wednesday records that are 90’s-era guttural wails and guitars either in jet engine mode or playing sweet & sour riffs over propulsive backbeat. Karly Hartzman’s views are self-evident, she’s both of and critical of the kind of crusty crunchy working class art collective bohemia that flourishes in the rural patches around Asheville. She’s much more irony-poisoned though. Her voice, being trained in indie rock and country, is less a fluid instrument than a vehicle by which she can duct tape melodic pitches together with the seams showing to convey her Gothic-yet-sentimental views on her friends and weirdos. Having dialed the noise down there’s a focus on those lyrics which have become even more writerly and imagery-evocative; “You’re chopping ketamine with a motel room key/Like a razor on a waterslide” being a particular highlight. And in a shift away from noise-as-wall to noise-as-burst she makes something that goes down smoother, and kinder. 4.3/5
Big Thief – Double Infinity [4AD 2025]
There was a bit of skepticism from a few of the music fans in my life; “How are they gonna follow up a home run like Warm Mountain with an album that only has 9 songs?” or “It’s gonna be off since they fired their bassist”. But truly Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia haven’t lost any of their sauce to my pleasant surprise. Cosmic is a word that gets used a lot with this group, especially by me, but how else can you characterize an opener in which Lenker states “In two days it’s my birthday and I’ll be thirty-three/That doesn’t really matter next to eternity” with the most fulfilled lilt to her voice that she’s ever had? Ah but the cosmic is always tethered by humanity, Lenker’s a lover of love and a lover of sex, she writes about both explicitly, but you’d be forgiven for missing them since her bandmate’s focus is on reaching into the universal ether and pulling out a sound that somehow they make on instruments created on Earth. And it derives its strength from the steadfastness and trust that all three of them share. 3.9/5
Geese – Getting Killed [Partisan 2025]
Backstory is that a bunch of Brooklyn kids born after 9/11 got together as a band when they were in high school and put out two records of homage-slop until their lead singer decided to go balls to the walls on his solo debut (which I may get to or I may not) and now they’re putting a lot of jam into indie rock. Oh but what tasty jam it is. Cameron Winter’s appeal is like that of many white boi frontmen in indie rock, he’s singing cryptically about heartbreak and ennui in a voice that sounds like if Kermit the Frog had a bit more sex appeal. He provides little bits of lyricism and harmony to grab onto: “I was a sailor but now I’m the boat”, “Will it wash your hands clean/when your husbands all die”, “There’s a bomb in my car”, each injected with Bible references and simple juxtaposition. He and guitarist Emily Green provide textural licks as opposed to leads and solos, canvas for the rhythm section of Max Bassin and Dominic DiGesu to plod and build and crash on. You never want to go all in on a hype wave, it makes you look stupid when it inevitably crashes, so maybe they will live up to the Radiohead and The Strokes comparisons, but probably not. One of those bands gave up a decade ago and the other only had one great album in them. Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them though. 4.5/5
Open Mike Eagle + Paul White – Hella Personal Film Festival [Mello Music Group 2016]
The first name is probably more obvious to underground rap heads than the second. Open Mike is kind of a titan in the scene, putting over humorous-ironic and cerebral/alternative/nerd-core lyrics in a handsome and conversational baritone that for terminally online lefties signifies his own membership to those groups. The second name is Paul White, who’s spent most of his career making some of the most rock-centric beats this side of Linkin Park. Usually, the ones that get published are much darker – he’s Danny Brown’s go-to for dusty broken industrial spaces and Xanned up bangers. Which makes it a pleasant surprise just how warm and soulful these 14 tracks in 45 minutes are. There’s a logical tension, Mike’s a lover and student of this kind of indie rockified beat that eschew mainstream bounce, so what he’s fighting with is comfort versus anxiety; “I looked up what Lena Dunham said and I shouldn’t have”, “a tiny Obama in a drone flies by”; “You know what/Fuck it just lie”. 4.0/5
Hayley Williams – Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party [Post Atlantic 2025]
Anyone with a semblance of patience knew that these 18 celebrations of label-freedom would be formalized with a track list and cover art. After two good-to middling projects during the pandemic Williams delivers another treatise on rage, womanhood, racism, and the constant dissolving of relationships. All downtempo, and beautifully produced, it really is the inverse of her regular noise and speed band. But there’s not enough sonic resonance to feel vital, obviously not that all music has to be, but satisfaction is what she’s reaching for, and without it we strike the occasional emotional note that rings viscerally correct, and so many that just feel like drowning. 3.5/5
They Are Gutting a Body of Water – Lotto [ATO 2025]
Shoegazers led by Philly-fetishist Douglas Dulgarian seeks to turn some combo of Bukowski and Requiem for a Dream into noise. 3.5/5
(“American Food”, ”Sour Desiel”)
Cosmic Hero 