Quick Takes

  • The Armed ULTRAPOP

    ULTRAPOP is not easy listening by any means. But weighed against the rest of The Armed's discography, it's objectively their most accessible—the mock-branding exercise of the album's artwork itself prone to fooling anyone who...

  • Amina Shareef Ali In the Dark (Awake of Course)

    Amina Shareef Ali's newest release, In the Dark (Awake of Course), is an unexpected folk record. With the charming (if occasionally discordant) rawness of a demo tape or found recording, Ali takes us on a journey of loss,...

  • Maxïmo Park Nature Always Wins

    Much like the British art-pop bands that started in the early 2000s, Maxïmo Park finds themselves in a strange in-between. Neither too unfairly-maligned nor ardently adored, the Newcastle band have defended their underdog status by...

  • Goat Girl On All Fours

    On their debut LP, Goat Girl covered an impressive amount of musical ground—whether it was moody post-punk, agitated rockers, or ominous instrumental interludes. Led by guitarist/vocalist Lottie Pendlebury's raspy drawl, the South...

  • Cool Sounds Bystander

    If Cool Sounds comes off more like the title of a boomer’s latest playlist than a Melbourne-based indie guitar band than so be it. If the songs from Bystander were shuffled in with tracks from The Velvet Underground’s Loaded, The...

  • Cassandra Jenkins An Overview on Phenomenal Nature

    Listening to Cassandra Jenkins' natural, observational stories brings about the question of how much can we feel for those we don't know. Learning the tiniest minutiae of the New York singer/songwriter isn't particularly novel, though...

  • Clap Your Hands Say Yeah New Fragility

    Looking at the title of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's latest LP, New Fragility, it might appear as if Alex Ounsworth is taking a hard look at the state of the world. And there is some truth to that: on tracks like Hesitation Nation and Thousand...

  • Black Country, New Road For the first time

    Black Country, New Road follow in the steps of frequent collaborators Black Midi—they bring to the table a loud, sprawling post-punk, jittering every step of the way. The London collective are willing to indulge on sparse, echoing beauty,...