album reviews
Perfect Pussy
I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling self-released
Punk rock revelations like Perfect Pussy don’t come along nearly often enough. They’ve got it all: great riot-feminist name, excellently miserable hometown (Syracuse, NY), ragingly chaotic live shows and a noise-assault donnybrook of a debut EP that’s right up there with Yeezus among 2013’s freshest headaches. The Double P doesn’t make it easy: They give their songs stark Roman-numeral titles and vocalist Meredith Graves’ vibrant hollerings are buried ... | More »
Burial
Rival Dealer Hyperdub
Nobody makes electronic music swoon like Burial, who mixes sorrow and bliss in a subtle club sound that is both banging and bittersweet. The UK producer's legacy runs deep, lending emotional heft to a dubstep style others have made bombastic over time, and none of his more faithful followers manage to strike the same balance. Rival Dealer, Burial's fourth EP since his 2007 album Untrue, expands his palette of blacks and grays. The title track borrows color from neon-streaked Ninetie... | More »
Beyonce
Beyoncé Parkwood/Columbia
"Can you lick my Skittles?" is the new "Hurry up with my damn croissants." Beyoncé has delivered countless surprises in her 15 years on top of the music world, but she's never dropped a bombshell like this. The Queen Bey woke the world in the midnight hour with a surprise "visual album" – 14 new songs, 17 videos, dropped via iTunes with no warning. The whole project is a celebration of the Beyoncé Philosophy, which basically boils down to the fact that Beyoncé ... | More »
Mutual Benefit
Love's Crushing Diamond Other Music
The opening moments of Love's Crushing Diamond are awash in heartsick strings and wind-struck chimes; it sounds less like a band tuning up than a dust-strewn shack shaking itself awake. That fragile quality is preserved throughout the debut from Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist Jordan Lee, who has an alpine voice and a nature-lovin' heart. "Golden Wake" turns a walk outside into a story of triumphant self-resolve, and the Walden-indebted "Advanced Falconry" is a love song so bare and ... | More »
Machinedrum
Vapor City Ninja Tune
As the name suggests, much of Vapor City, the second album from EDM whiz Travis Stewart's Machinedrum project, is bathed in aural fog. But where 2011's Room(s) messed with hyper, drum-machined-driven Chicago footwork, here the rhythms veer toward rolling drum and bass breaks, and the mood is a lot more relaxed. Drums underpin samples that loop and build and vary with purpose — see "Baby It's U," which Stewart distorts and smears into ever-more-lovelorn shapes. He makes th... | More »
Eric Clapton
Give Me Strength: The '74/'75 Studio Recordings Polydor/PDG
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs was Eric Clapton's Icarus flight. His next three albums – 461 Ocean Boulevard, There's One in Every Crowd and the live E.C. Was Here – were outpatient clinics, where he rebuilt himself and his music after a fierce heroin addiction. This five-CD set collects those LPs with outtakes that spark in ways the official releases didn't. There are variants of Clapton's mellow new singer-songwriter alter ego. A solo acoustic take on 4... | More »
R Kelly
Black Panties RCA
On his past two albums, R&B's most shameless lover man abandoned his shtick in favor of lovelorn, PG-rated retro soul. But the 2011 throat surgery that saved R. Kelly's voice clearly also reignited his libido, because on Black Panties, he stops lighting candles and starts dipping his wick. "Gonna go down on my knees/And ask that pussy to marry me," he sings on "Marry the Pussy," a deadly serious, gorgeously sung, heavily detailed cunnilingus proposal that will delight fans of Ke... | More »
Neil Young
Live at the Cellar Door Reprise
This handsome solo acoustic set overlaps a few songs with earlier entries in Neil Young's official bootleg series. But there's no shortage of standouts, including a handful of aching After the Gold Rush tracks and rare, unplugged versions of his electric Crazy Horse signatures "Cinnamon Girl" (on piano here) and "Down by the River" (on acoustic guitar). Best of all may be the Buffalo Springfield songs "Expecting to Fly" and "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong," the latter with a lengthy ... | More »
7 Days of Funk
7 Days of Funk' Stones Throw
The former Snoop Dogg (here calling himself "Snoopzilla") joins L.A. producer Dam-Funk, whose rubbery tracks are marked by an off-kilter grace more intimate, cooled-out and Californian than his ancestors in Parliament or Zapp. And while Snoop's voice is an easy match for the sound – both are low-key but hard-hitting – most of the tracks don't quite cohere. Exceptions include "Hit da Pavement" and the Steve Arrington collaboration "1Question?," which is as vital and ... | More »
The Velvet Underground
White Light/White Heat: 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition Universal
What a testament to Lou Reed: his vision, his guitar, his sheer will to stomp on people's nerves. This superbly expanded White Light/White Heat was in the works long before the man's death, but you couldn't ask for a more fitting tribute. It's the Velvets' loudest, meanest, most ear-corroding moment — and for many fans, their best. The Velvets cut the album in the New York of 1967, but they sound a million miles away from the Summer of Love. You can hear Reed an... | More »
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