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Angel Olsen Creates a 'Whole New Mess'

No one would call Angel Olsen's Whole New Mess a pretty album. It's much too stark. But there's something riveting about the way Olsen coos to herself that's soft and comforting.

                                      
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PopMatters is moving to WordPress. We will publish a few essays daily while we develop the new site. We hope the beta will be up sometime late next week.

No one would call Angel Olsen's Whole New Mess a pretty album. It's much too stark. But there's something riveting about the way Olsen coos to herself that's soft and comforting.

Nnamdï's BRAT is a labyrinth detailing the insular journey of a young, eclectic DIY artist who takes on the weighty responsibility of reaching a point where he can do what he loves for a living.

Acclaimed guitarist and composer Gregory Uhlmann charms and confounds with his gorgeous, layered sophomore solo album, Neighborhood Watch.

There's a whole lotta love (and maybe a little hate) in the captivating new memoir by Chris Frantz, who is an open book while talking about life with Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, and wife Tina Weymouth in this candid interview.

On Wicked City, UK art-pop duo Jockstrap run through a gamut of styles and sounds, sometimes gracefully, sometimes forcefully, but always seductively.

While Kate Bush is a national treasure in the UK, American listeners don't know her as well. The following 12 songs capture her irrepressible spirit.

On Half Price at 3:30, Art Feynman again proves himself adept at building colorful worlds from unexpected and well-placed aural flourishes.

From emotive funk and pastoral folk to bright electropop and soulful pop, Phoebe Katis skillfully balances contemplative, fragile melodies with catchy, uptempo hooks.

Sublime harmonies and constant innovation make Ohmme's Fantasize Your Ghost an impressive work of modern indie rock art.

Shadow Offering has glimmers of Braids' former album but with a new direction and an attempt to adopt a new maturity and sensibility.

At 25, Phoebe Bridgers is, by all metrics, an artist at the beginning of her career, though Punisher sounds more like the work of a time-tested veteran perfecting a style she's been honing for years.

Sweden's Freja the Dragon has toured with Peter Björn and John, and on Long Gone Girl, she partners Björn Yttlin to craft her exemplary debut showcasing her mesmerizing brand of art pop.

Drab City combine sultry vocals, superlative songwriting, vibraphone chords, twangy guitar, and shadowy atmospherics to conjure an intense trip-hop fever dream on Good Songs for Bad People.

You need to care so much about your art to pack this much meaning into not only the words, but the tones that adorn and deliver them. Perfume Genius cares so much it hurts on Set My Heart on Fire Immediately.

The Uzbekistan-born, Chicago-raised NIIKA combines art-pop and exotic jazz stylings to create a deeply rewarding listening experience on Close But Not Too Close.

After nearly 50 years and two dozen albums, Sparks continue their reign of resonantly quirky art pop-rock delights on A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip.

On Lake Constance, composer Davide Rossi and Matt Hales (better known as the voice behind Aqualung) have pooled their respective talents to craft highly evocative, sophisticated soundscapes from swathes of cool, digital textures and towering layers of majestic strings.

Half Waif's second album, The Caretaker, takes a microscope and a scalpel to the mysteries and wonders of the quotidian, to great effect.

At Severed Heads' third-last show in New York, after decades of playing electronic, art-pop, Tom Ellard swung a noose around his band's head and, with an imitable grin, slowly pulled tighter. After 40 years, Severed Heads is done, and Ellard muses on his long career.

Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters is bold and demanding, and it might very well go down as the finest full-length she has ever made.

British psych-pop band, Glass Animals' "Your Love (Déjà Vu)" is tasty for a minute or two, then curiously flavourless.

With the help of some celebrity friends, Anna Calvi tinkers with her past and creates an alternate version of her last album.

"On the Floor" is the Perfume Genius we've been wanting: heartfelt songwriting delivered through sunny, sumptuous pop-craft.

Austra's "Anywayz" is a musical exploration of the fear associated with leaving someone and the even more frightening realization that life continues. It's also stunningly gorgeous.

Agnes Obel's Myopia is delicate and personal, employing treated vocals and piano to plow depths of sorrow and interrogate dark storms of the soul.

Brooklyn post-punk trio, the Wants deal in 21st-century dread but do so in a most danceable way on Container.

Creative, existential bondage for the sleep-deprived, Grimes' "Idoru" is better than any hallucination Titanic Sinclair could dream up for Poppy this week.

Meghan Remy's experimental pop project U.S. Girls ventures into more mainstream territory to mixed results on Heavy Light.

Number five on the list is practically synonymous with Great Artistic Statements. But was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band really the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper"? A splendid time is guaranteed for all as Counterbalance figures it out.

Ironically, you may wind up wishing that Grimes' vision of a scorched Earth was a bit more fun.

Hyperspace ends up being a frustrating record. Beck and Pharrell Williams produce two excellent songs, "Uneventful Days" and "Saw Lightning", but their other five tracks each leave something to be desired.

Four decades in the music business is no small feat, and yet the Pet Shop Boys enter the new decade sounding just as current and catchy as the pop landscape they helped construct.

Montreal's Little Scream offers up reflections on class and poverty disguised as sweet low-key pop songs on her real grower of an album, Speed Queen.

Prince's 1999 is not so much one of the greatest albums of all time as a curation from an amorphous mass of music that might be one of the greatest achievements in pop.

Poppy lays bare a necessary reminder to reject conformity and encircle empowerment. Whereas I Disagree explores what is confining and liberating - the latter is the album's unequivocal focal point.

J-pop meets vintage girl group in Emergency Tiara's smart, sassy cover of the Eartha Kitt Christmas standard, "Santa Baby".

Brooklyn-based art pop artist, Katmaz dances his cares away with a new single (and video) that chronicles a doomed long-distance relationship.