Skyway Man Explores the Cosmos on ‘Flight of the Long Distance Healer’
Skyway Man’s Flight of the Long Distance Healer settles into a solid retro-pop vibe full of brightness and melody, but some of it disappears into stargazing.
Music Reviews
Kentuckian Abby Hamilton Aspires to Be As Good As the ‘#1 Zookeeper’
Americana’s Abby Hamilton presents her characters’ experiences as valuable simply because of their quotidian relatability. Kentucky is everywhere and everyone.
Yuko Araki’s ‘IV’: Torn Between Voice and Noise
Experimentalist Yuko Araki highlights her vision’s first new element: the human voice, which was either absent or lost beneath the layers of havoc in the past.
Pretty Lights Ignite at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco
Electronic dance act Pretty Lights crank up their interdimensional soundship space system with transcendent results and a dazzling psychedelic light show.
Grails’ ‘Anches en Maat’ Takes a Cinematic Turn
Grails’ new LP is like listening to the soundtrack for an existential cosmic Western, Andrei Tarkovsky taking a stab at some Werner Herzog Mesoamerican mythologizing.
Mukqs Shatters Electronic Music Conventions on ‘Stonewasher’
Chicago-based weirdo pioneer Mukqs returns with one of the best electronic albums of 2023. Enter the dizzyingly immersive world of Stonewasher.
Billy & the Kids Bring “Daze of the Dead” to Halloween Fiesta
Billy & the Kids don’t aim to reproduce Grateful Dead’s sound, with the players pushing the envelope in tone and attack to give the band a more modern sound.
New Order’s ‘Substance 1987’ Is Even More Essential on Re-issue
This is the complete story of how New Order assimilated US underground dance sounds and determined the direction of indie music for many years to come.
Dolly Parton Does a Great Job Pretending She’s a Rock Star
Dolly Parton’s Rockstar is another solid, consistent piece of work that shows the country legend having fun and enjoying herself at this point in her career.
Sofia Kourtesis Makes Radiant Dance Beats on ‘Madres’
Madres is Sofia Kourtesis elevated, a contemporary work of electronic dance music powerful on sonic and emotional levels alike.
‘Robed in Rareness’ Elaborates Shabazz Palaces’ Afrofuturism
On Robed in Rareness, Ishmael Butler aka Shabazz Palaces takes yet another step in his forward-thinking, far-sighted project of Afrofuturistic hip-hop.
‘Cat Power Sings Dylan’ Revives a Legendary Bob Dylan Concert
Cat Power’s version Bob Dylan’s 1966 concert with the Band in Manchester is reverential but not literal and honors the legend more than the facts.