Lyricist Aaron Weiss of post-punk Christian band mewithoutyou used the F-word in a song and it got banned from radio and the album got pulled from record stores. Meanwhile, his fans ponder his parodying of cultural mores.
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.
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's X: The Godless Void and Other Stories, just like many of its predecessors, must be digested in one sitting to grasp its magnificent inventiveness and ideas.
Making a New World tackles some heavy ideas via Field Music's commonly charming, luminous, and multifaceted aesthetic.
Richard Dawson's 2020 is a coruscating state-of-the-nation piece as Britain faces up to its muddled identity at the end of a tumultuous decade.
Nearly 30 years have gone into the making of Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson's seventh album as No-Man, Love You to Bits. Bowness speaks with PopMatters about returning to the duo's electronic early days, and how Love You to Bits may be the Terminator: Dark Fate of No-Man albums.
Wave's status as Patti Smith's most unapologetically pop album reveals the most authentically "punk" gesture of her career: rejecting the idea that her genre capabilities begin and end with that four-letter word.
Art-rocker Kapil Seshasayee takes on a sexist Bollywood trope with musical skill and visual pathos in "The Item Girl".
The anguish a parent feels for losing their child is harrowing and Ghosteen masterfully captures Nick Cave's grief and spiraling rumination on mortality.
Florence Welch participated in a deep discussion and gave a short performance as part of the 2019 New Yorker Festival.
The Velvet Underground's 1969 self-titled release, known as the "Grey Album", blazes boldly 50 years later, and retains the same sonic relevance as a Laura Nyro or Nick Drake record: artworks utterly of their moment, that sound like they could have been made yesterday.
With Giants of All Sizes, Elbow conclude the 2010s with another addition to their streak of brilliant records.
Boston art rockers, Bent Knee turn a corner with perhaps their most accomplished album yet in You Know What They Mean.
Jazz, art-rock, punk, and synthpop are just a few of the styles Alexander Noice and his exceptionally talented band explore on an album where the energy level never flags.
In 1969, the deeply strange musician known as Captain Beefheart released an album that is still ahead of its time a half-century later. PopMatters spoke with musicians and writers about this landmark work of art and why it continues to fascinate.
The Flaming Lips' King's Mouth couples spacey cinematic passages with driving rhythms to create a sombre and thoughtful musical whole.
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