Album Reviews

For more than a decade, Suga has had the world’s eyes upon him: As a member of BTS, the MC-singer-producer lives at the epicenter of a pop frenzy. Since 2016, though, he’s been testing his artistic boundaries with releases under the name Agust D — “Suga” spelled backward, with the …

Earlier this year, a debate briefly flared on social media: where have the superstars gone? What happened to the days when Kendrick Lamar and Drake battled for global supremacy, Kanye West elicited praise from the likes of David Lynch, the Future Hive controlled rap Twitter, Lil Wayne was the best …

The psychedelic crew Animal Collective have spent 20 years as the answer to the musical question “What if we actually were the signals in Brian Wilson’s brain?” The four animals (Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deakin, and Geologist), or some combination thereof, have built a bloodshot-eyed fanbase by cross-fading between psychedelic …

Kanye West’s new album opens with an extended chant of his dead mother’s name, which gives way to an exuberant, drumless track with lyrics about being arrested and taken to jail. Taken together, this first three-and-a-half minute stretch of Donda is the kind of tonally complex, musically adventurous suite that …

Doja Cat is a weirdo, but that’s why and how we fell in love with her. Her first big taste of viral fame was, after all, a song about cows. In the years since “Mooo!” the world can’t quite shake one of pop’s preeminent internet trolls (only Lil Nas X …

Sarah Mary Chadwick knows she’s broken. She gracefully contorts the ache in her voice into bizarre postures throughout her latest album, Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby, as she parses grief, breakups, and general feeling of worthlessness. But she never allows herself to break down completely. Instead, she props herself …

Pylon came out of the small college town of Athens, Georgia, at the dawn of the Eighties, playing a new kind of Southern rock that stunned people at the time and has continued to make converts ever since. Spare but fun, disorientating but inviting, their sound was in step with …

On a fairly regular basis, Joni Mitchell’s official Twitter feed posts vintage photos of the genre-defining singer-songwriter. A few weeks back, up popped one of the most surprising—a shot of a fairly glam Mitchell and her former manager and label head David Geffen happily partying at Studio 54 in the …

Haim’s third album, the cheekily titled Women in Music Pt. III, begins like an uncapped fire hydrant spraying water on a scorching summer day. A sax solo from Henry Solomon leads into Danielle Haim begging for a miracle from their hometown on album opener “Los Angeles.” While they love L.A., …

Of all of Bad Bunny’s many gifts — his charmingly nasal vocal delivery, his apparent good nature, his preternatural ability to pull off a manicure — his finest attribute may be his knack for pleasant surprises. As the modern música urbana industry’s predilection toward unexpected album drops often reflects disorganization …