Rina Sawayama’s ‘Hold the Girl’ Is a Bewildering Anticlimax
Rina Sawayama’s second LP, Hold the Girl, suffers from a lack of risk and is self-consciously conservative in terms of execution. It’s a bewildering anticlimax.
Rina Sawayama’s second LP, Hold the Girl, suffers from a lack of risk and is self-consciously conservative in terms of execution. It’s a bewildering anticlimax.
While Renaissance occasionally sports more style than substance, Beyoncé emerges as the re-coronated Queen of Pop and the reigning regent of eclecticism.
Lizzo’s Special is as much a celebration of the Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook cosmos as it is an in-person, post-Covid bacchanal.
Memoria is a psychedelically inspired allegory, an impressionistic inquiry into human existence, including ignorance and insight, suffering and enlightenment.
When aesthetic balances are in place for much of Sometimes, Forever, Soccer Mommy glows like a moon reflecting a dying sun, one of the substantial artists of her generation.
With Big Time, Angel Olsen draws inspiration from some of popular music’s most perennial templates, revamping them and reinventing herself.
SCALPING’s Void energetically captures music designed for a club/real-time environment and hybridizes any number of EDM, punk, and metal precursors.
Despite some successes, including song-of-the-year contender “Leathery Whip”, Warm Chris mostly shows the gifted Aldous Harding trying to navigate a troublesome limbo.
King Hannah’s new album shows the duo honing their sound and posture, building on the more Dionysian and possibly less self-conscious stylings of their 2020 EP.
What is revealed with The Beatles: Get Back is a set of cumulative portraits that shed light not only on John, Paul, George, and Ringo but on all of us.
Neil Young’s latest set resonates as fervently composed and heartfeltly topical, and the band are as committed as ever to authentic and vigorous performance.
Listeners familiar with Constant Smiles’ mutative oeuvre will find Paragons intriguing for the chameleonic adoption of familiar pop templates.