album reviews

There are few kinds of music reviews I detest more than the review that offers advice to the musician. It comes from the demonstrably false premise...

On their new record, To Be Kind, Swans want to tell you something. Swans want to speak directly to you. They call out from the pulpit.

Wow, this is a nice one. There are so many qualities that make Harvey Mason’s Chameleon a successful album, that it is hard to find a place...

I have always liked Coldplay. There is something inherently honest-seeming about their faces, and I liked how once they got paid, they could afford...

One of my best friends has a motto: In life, he who gives the least fucks wins. Which is basically saying, a successful person cares very little.

My husband will, on occasion, wax lyrical about British autumn afternoons, sitting, as a toddler, next to his mother and listening to her play...

Sometime in the early 2000s, back when I was fat (but not so fat that I couldn’t walk up some stairs) I saw a band called the Coachwhips play Cardiff.

I'm not a huge lyrics person — I hear the music first. But sometimes tuning in to the words can clarify things. And when I checked out the lyric...

Being a teenage Tori Amos fan in the ‘90s was, of course, the greatest. A strong — the strongest ever! — run of albums with no fan consensus on a...

The last thing I remember was lying on the operating room table staring at all these lights shaped like UFOs on the ceiling like a scene out of ER...

I think the most accurate thing I can say about the new Papercuts album is that it’s honest. Normally, that would be a compliment. Usually, albums...

Lily Allen writes tunes. The currency of popular music, regardless of style and genre, is tunes. Lily writes good tunes.