Typically as an artistic or stylistic choice, deluxe editions of albums are released a few months or so following the initial album drop, expanding upon the original record with the inclusion of more songs. With (relatively) recent examples such as Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS (spilled) (2024) and Tyler, the Creator’s CALL[Read More…]
Tag: album
Something to give the girls
Pop music has hit a lull in the past few months. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are busy touring, Dua Lipa is missing in action, and Ariana Grande is busy getting raked over the Twitter coals for her new boyfriend. A few select artists have provided tunes throughout the recent slump—credit[Read More…]
boygenius continues to amaze its listeners on ‘the rest’
Since debuting their self-titled EP in 2018, boygenius—the alternative/rock group formed by Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker—has been on everyone’s radars. After reuniting almost seven months ago to release their first full-length album, the record, the group put out a four-song EP on Oct. 13 titled the rest.[Read More…]
‘Five Easy Hot Dogs’: Mac DeMarco’s listless instrumental road trip
Mac DeMarco was trying to break out of an artistic rut, a process that led to the conception of his latest project, Five Easy Hot Dogs. The album, released on Jan. 20, follows DeMarco’s road trip after a Bay Area show in mid-January of last year. He began driving north[Read More…]
Kacey Musgraves’ ‘star-crossed’ is a refreshing take on the breakup album
On Sept. 10, Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves released her fifth studio album, star-crossed. Focussed on her divorce from Ruston Kelley—whose love story was detailed in her previous Grammy-winning album, Golden Hour (2018)—the album is a stunning project that navigates the non-linear healing process of grief. While Musgraves’ previous work[Read More…]
Ofer Pelz’s ‘Trinité’ experiments with audible embodiments of visual perception
Composers have experimented with the art of musical composition for centuries, but rarely have they gone so far as to remove something so integral to music as melody itself. Ofer Pelz is a Montreal-based composer, pianist, and improviser who uses traditional classical music instrumentation to create unique, experimental sounds that[Read More…]
Landing softly: A conversation with Japanese Breakfast at Bar Le Ritz
Japanese Breakfast–Brooklyn-based singer and guitarist Michelle Zauner’s solo project–released their sophomore album Soft Sounds From Another Planet (Soft Sounds) on July 14. Zauner was once the frontman of the emo indie band Little Big League, where her yelping vocals and decisive lyrics earned the Philadelphia band the designation of “underrated.”[Read More…]
Pop Rhetoric: OKNOTOK is not what rock and roll needs right now
For all their talk about being so vehemently anti-capitalist, and–by proxy–true to their art, Radiohead loves a good gimmick. It was around this time last year, for example, just days before the release of their first album in seven years, that the British rock band effectively erased themselves from the[Read More…]
Album Review: The Altar – Banks
Over the two years after the release of her first album, Goddess (2014) Jillian Banks—better known by her stage name, Banks—has climbed to success, winning awards and touring internationally with The Weeknd. The University of Southern California graduate’s academic background in psychology shines through in the themes she explores in[Read More…]
Album Review: Clay & Alex – At Home
At Home marks local Montreal duo Clay & Alex’s debut release and, as the title suggests, is an eight-song album recorded entirely in their apartment. The opener, “Hot Shame,” leads the album off on a relatively calm, yet hopeful note, with something that sounds like a mixture of Bon Iver[Read More…]
