Dusted Magazine's Scores
- Music
For 3,082 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
53% higher than the average critic
-
5% same as the average critic
-
42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.1 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: | Ys | |
---|---|---|
Lowest review score: | Rain In England |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 2,474 out of 3082
-
Mixed: 574 out of 3082
-
Negative: 34 out of 3082
3082
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
The three singles—“Home,” “Never Come Back” and “You and I” ... follow the trajectory of Caribou’s previous and most successful commercial album, Our Love, in the conjunction of dance, R&B and psychedelic electronics, and will likely capture the same level of attention for it. Yet there is also much to like in the quieter, more contemplative cuts where frail, gorgeous shreds of melody reside in intricate electronic settings.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Mar 4, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Two side-long compositions make up this tranquil, contemplative album, each divided into three A, B, and C tracks. ... Consider it more a tribute to filling in the quiet spaces that have arisen unexpectedly out of chaos and disappointment, but which are, themselves, very peaceful and beautiful.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Mar 3, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Mar 3, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Companion Rises is straight-down-the-middle Six Organs, not as loud and abrasive as the first Hexadic disc, not as reticently wisp-y as the older folk-derived records. It tucks its wilder, more distorted guitar forays into the interstices of verses, so that the steady jangle of acoustic guitar runs into tempestuous squalls of sound.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 21, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
McCraven lays down a lush musical backdrop that allows Scott-Heron’s words to have emotional impact.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 20, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
That Allen is able to continue to do this 45 years on from when he first introduced us to Sailor, Spanish Alice, Jabo, and Chick is as moving and mystifying as that big Texas sky.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 20, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While it doesn’t wield the heft of a Hop Along release, Likewise demonstrates Quinlan’s adept melodic sensibility and enviable vocal delivery. It’s a short, sweet collection, easily digestible and ripe for revisiting.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 18, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Your response to Be Up A Hello will depend on your tolerance for Squarepusher’s virtuosic onslaughts. It can be as exhausting as it’s exhilarating. If there’s a sameness to the BPM readings of the up-tempo tracks a deeper listen reveals the layers that are buried beneath the frenzy and show Squarepusher has lost none of his edge.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 13, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
“Why is this happening,” a listener might wonder as the music jumps from one notion to the next? “Why not? Now hold on,” would be the response, if anyone were of a mind to put such matters into words. ... Sometimes the music coheres into a tight, catchy chant or a propulsive passage, but these moments end before you’re ready. Perhaps the freedom not to keep doing what you’re doing, and not to have to make sense while you’re doing it, is the point?- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 4, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Mind Hive is concise yet full of restless intelligence, musical ideas and willingness to push boundaries. Taut, tense, not a wasted note, moments of great beauty, 35 minutes of Wire contains enough to fuel a multitude of pretenders.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Feb 3, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Have We Met is Destroyer at its inscrutable, poetic best, its elegance poised on a rip-tide of violence.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 30, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If Fisher and co feel wrung out at times it’s not through lack of commitment or creativity. No one said fighting the good fight would be easy and There Is No Year lands enough punches to win at least a TKO decision.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 29, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Modest reservations aside, this is more top-drawer stuff from Shauf, as we’ve come to expect. Drink deep.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 29, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s all very nice and a bit surprisingly, like your grandma’s favorite stew with some unexpected new spices in it. For an impromptu gathering of talents, Bonny Light Horseman feels very lived in. Here’s hoping it’s not a one-off.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 29, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The elements of Eddy Current Suppression Ring have always been very simple, yet they congeal in a primal, supremely compelling way. However, this time around, they’re still fundamental, but perhaps a bit less urgent, especially early on in the disc- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 28, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s a solid, heartening release to be found in Countless Branches. It’s a shame that Fay and Dead Oceans didn’t take the opportunity to tease it out.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 21, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s clear that she’s going for something beyond mere sonic anxiety. What this record succeeds so well in doing is bringing you into a very particular feeling of emotional velocity.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 13, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even though two thirds of the songs here land somewhere between the 7th and 8th minute in length, they practically feel like pop songs in comparison. By the time the gently shimmering “Afterlight” winds down Saariselka’s first record it’s clear that even in relatively accessible form this is lovely, head-spinning stuff, perfect for contemplating the night stars.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jan 8, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s another high point in an increasingly strong discography, one that demands more than just mild praise.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 18, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s a shame that all of Water Weird isn’t as emotive as its second side. Most of the tracks are head nodders if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing. For anyone seeking something that digs a little deeper, let the second side soothe your inner space.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 11, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s overkill. Gangsta rap parodies itself better than any outsider ever could. Homeboy Sandman is so far inside his self-referential bubble that he can’t see his target is already in on the joke.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 9, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Occulting Disk is not a record to approach lightly. Often it seems deliberately constructed to hold the listener at arm’s length daring one to submerge oneself in its frozen depths.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 9, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When guests appear on a few songs (Maxo Cream and Ohgeesy among the standouts) it appears that Greedo is actually not bad, but only on hooks. His hooks are catchy, melodic and even smart in a dumb way. Most songs are just that, hooks stretched for two minutes. If verses and hooks stand for meat and bones, Netflix and Deal is bones only. Thanks but no thanks.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 9, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Fireraiser Forever! is an often galvanizing collection. Feck and Evans cast an acerbic but humane look at contemporary life and the band is in fine form. Their indie garage sound is nothing new but fans of this kind of scrappy raw sound will find plenty to like.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 3, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As a listening experience it’s akin to viewing a water color painting, its delicate hues no doubt appealing to anyone attuned to such subtlety. But to someone aching for a little more conviction, grit and risk, it may prove frustratingly listless.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Dec 2, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
These cuts have a lively, volatile energy that reflects the fact that they were improvised and captured mostly in single takes with minimal overdubs. You can hear the two musicians thinking about how their instruments can sound and work and reflect on each other in the moment, untethered by conventional expectations for guitar and drums.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 21, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ordinary moments are distilled into liquid bits of musical clarity, surrounded by a rich but muted palette of sounds and let fly into the world. It is rare for songs so soft and confiding to sound this sophisticated.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 21, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The album is set in a place that’s warm and brightly illuminated. But it’s there, just outside the circle of light, just out of sight, and it makes Oldham’s place even more lovely for the respite it brings.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It is damned good, a concise exercise in muscular rock and roll whimsy that, while not quite knocking Bee Thousand off its perch, is perfectly in line with the steady stream of quality guitar rock that Pollard has been churning out for decades.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 18, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If you’d said in 2014 that by 2019 Earl Sweatshirt, a scrawny kid from Odd Future, would be one of the most well-regarded hip hop artists, nobody would have taken it seriously. But after 2018’s Some Rap Songs, it has become evident that it’s true, and the new EP proves it.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 15, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the most part, Birgy’s excitability lends the album an infectious charm. Ultimately, Mega Bog deserves to be appreciated alongside similarly talented proponents of the absurd, such as Aldous Harding and Cate le Bon. Dolphine is a strange and affecting listen; the sound of a free-wheeling afternoon in the sun curdling into early-evening shadows.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 13, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s all rather good in a discombobulating way, where the monotonic tension of, say, the Pop Group, meets lavish, emotion-harboring flourishes reminiscent of Orange Juice and even, in a couple of places, the Joe Jackson Band. You can’t get too comfortable even being uncomfortable, because Omni likes to mix it up, the jitter and the sway.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 8, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Up on High will sound like nothing much the first time you listen, but stay with it, because the songs are soft and unassuming, but excellent, and they’ll catch you in the end.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The usual and worn out horrorcore lyrics resemble now parts in “found poetry,” left to their own devices. They are no longer pastiches made by humans but cosmic shards of meaning. The tracks recorded with Benny the Butcher and Elcamino (“La Mala Ordina”) and with La Chat (“Run For Your Life”) are hints at what’s possible when our-worldly lyrics paired down with otherworldy music.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Nov 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Stir ends in relative quiet and serenity with “Path to the Peak,” little flares of guitar anarchy quickly sluiced over pensive bowing. The dialogue here, as elsewhere, is fluid and intuitive, as each player hears, contemplates and reacts to what the other proposes, not in synchrony but in understanding. They move gracefully over a landscape that is always shifting under them.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 29, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Overall, the album has an over technical, over clean vibe. All three musicians play very well, and they’ve obviously gotten more intuitive and engaged with one another. But it’s too much skill and too little viscera for my taste. Despite a continuous onslaught of face melting solos, Anthropocosmic Nest feels a little cold.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 23, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is world weary pop, but it’s completely uncynical. Reserved and melodramatic at the same time, it doesn’t worry about the incongruities, satisfied to be both wilted and very alive.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 22, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
You hear none of that struggle here. She has labored and sweated and stressed to make a record that is completely devoid of these characteristics. It might have reared up out of a clam shell like Botticelli’s Venus.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 21, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
[One track] is expansive enough to be its own album, indeed, perhaps its own universe. The other is just fine, and you will enjoy it if you like Garcia Peoples’ other new jack jammers like Wet Tuna, Chris Forsyth, Matt Valentine and Steve Gunn. ... One Step Behind takes a giant step forward, right off the edge and into the unknown.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 17, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Little about the album feels predictable, neither the musical texture nor the oblique and sometimes imagistic lyrics. Gordon can be startling at times, and she does it all with a cool (a non-commercial, unreproducible cool, that is) that, as much as anything, makes No Home Record so particular to Gordon.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 16, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Odds Against Tomorrow simply sounds a lot like [the album] Bill Orcutt. The new album’s original tunes evoke the same sense of Americana wrung dry of phony sentiment as its predecessor’s covers. ... The stuttering is gone because Orcutt is ready to show us straight up what he thinks matters.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 11, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The record proves that Lightning Bolt are still very much a force to be reckoned with.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 10, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
At little over the half hour it is a snapshot, but any recording of this Quartet contains multitudes to explore, marvel at and enjoy.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 7, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Maybe it takes a band of Hot Chip’s experience and sonic skill to have both pain and love that are as hard-won and effecting as it is on A Bath Full of Ecstasy; expanding their palette or not, big stars or not, it’s a joy to have them back.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 7, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What makes KAPUTT so exciting is its elasticized unpredictability, the sense that these taut, punched-out firestorms could head in any direction. Anarchy has rarely been so tightly coordinated, nor order so slapped bloody and sore as on this debut.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 7, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Spirit Counsel doesn’t make for an easy listen, but largely because of its length. Moore’s compositional work and tonal explorations remain intriguing on repeated listens.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Oct 1, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s not what you’re expecting from Moon Duo, but it’s nonetheless quite appealing, this magic, glowing sound space that isn’t quite real, but better.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 27, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Picking out parts is really beside the point – the album works as a restless, searching, gorgeous whole. Morris and his band have never been better.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 25, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Fiery Margin shames so many songs being written today, not with reproach, but with example after elegant example of how it’s done right.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 23, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Hold Steady will probably never match the thrill of their first three releases, but Thrashing Thru the Passion is the most enjoyable record they’ve made in thirteen years.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 13, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The decision to work these songs out while camped out next to a mobile recording truck shifts the instrumental balance; the bass is less mobile, handclaps and choppy rhythm guitar set the cadence and overall things move a little slower. And Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who sings over half the songs, has never sounded more world-weary. ... But deep blue sentiments touch deeply, and Tinariwen’s music still has that reach.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 12, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
“Equivalents 5,” a four-note sequence shifts pitches and timbres amidst constantly changing atmospheres. The tune itself never changes, but it doesn’t have to keep the listener engaged. It’s the qualities of the sounds, such as the swelling bass and swirling high end of its predecessor, “Equivalents 6,” that count. Just as Stieglitz’s images of clouds became things in themselves, the tones cease to be means and become ends in themselves.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 10, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ethos is a different and a more complex matter. If you put out your own records and sing about leftist issues, does that make you punk? Maybe they’re trying to do something more essential, to find a version of rock that’s conscious of its History at that same time that it grounds us in the Now. Sheer Mag’s songs do that, again and again. And you’ll want to listen to them, again and again.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Thanks to Sherwood’s production, all nine songs on Rainford are engaging on the macro level; you won’t have to work hard to enjoy them, and you’ll remember how they go later, and the micro; they are, in the classic dub tradition, rich with bizarre surprises.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Sep 3, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Some of the songs work atmospherically; other take shape as more conventional songs. Yet it all proceeds like a pastel colored daydream, faint sounds swirling into mirage-ish structures then melting away into mist. The words are so buried in the mix that you’ll need a lyric sheet to parse them; like the music, they teeter on the boundary between pastoral calm and 21st century angst. They cling to subtle melodies like a fresh coat of dew.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 26, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Tucker brings on an overload of tone, overtone and sonic sensation that swirls and eddies like a rough tide, at times nearly picking you up off your feet and tossing you over.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 26, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Full Upon Her Burning Lips isn’t Earth’s best record. ... However, it might be the definitive Earth record, the one that, in its mystery and directness, comes nearest to whatever it is Carlson has been seeking in the drone and riff for almost 30 years.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 19, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Body and Uniform seem to have found kindred spirits in one another’s daring and ferocious dispositions. The result is an excellent record, innovative and exciting, antically entertaining and deadly serious. Play it often and very, very loud.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 15, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
I is the result, four long, loosely-related tracks that bump and groove and thrum and throb, often hypnotically, sometimes with a lively intensity. As an idea of musical process reimagined, I is always interesting. But as music, it’s uneven.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 9, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The album in hand makes a taut, succinct statement, bristling with angst and melting into melancholy. It is rather good in the mysterious way of rock records; hard to say what it does better than the other records, but it does it all the same.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 9, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Remarkably, the substitution of instruments seems not to have affected Segall’s overall aesthetic much. If you didn’t know, you might not recognize exactly what’s different about First Taste, except that it feels a bit more overstuffed and baroque. Yet whether it’s due to the change in instrumentation or not, there are some diversions from the usual.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 8, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Cross imbues largely electronic textures with vulnerability and emotion in a very effective way, reminding me of Mia Doi Todd’s work with Dntel. In eerie settings that seem not quite real, she conveys something grounded and human, viewed indistinctly through thick banks of fog.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Aug 6, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Across The Field’s lyrics are dead serious, yes, but their tones are ethereal and arrangements spacious, sounding as if they’ve blown in on the keening breeze, to the point where “Carolina Lady” almost melts into air. ... Due to pairing of Louise and Morgan’s voices, Across the Field is never less than lovely.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 31, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
C Joynes and the Furlong Bray have dreamed up a wholly convincing invisible city and utopian alternative musical history of the world. While the beleaguered Havians “do not excel at the musical art”, the Bray boys do, and have created something warm and joyful out of the long ages.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 30, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The songs often seem made up of sharp, conflicting parts, that come together at angles, fitting into the spaces left by one another.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 30, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The mix of autobiographical honesty and imaginative construction elevates Purple Mountains to something more than just Berman’s breakup album or musical therapy session. It relieves the emotions it develops, making the album a stunning achievement even more than a welcome return for Berman.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 29, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
At 69 minutes, I Was Real is a lot to take in. Newcomers are advised to start with W/M/P/P/R/R, the concise, big band counterpart to I Was Real’s occasionally meandering chamber music. Still, I Was Real is sure to puzzle and please whether your devotion to rock and roll and its antecedents is intellectual or physical.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 24, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 23, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s a playful tilt to even the most serious songs, an arms-thrown-up celebration embedded in lacerating criticism. The revolution will not only be televised, but tracked in every conceivable and intrusive way…but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 22, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Johnson only reveals so much. Fruit Bats excel in that sort of space. Johnson sounds less becoming when he lets too much irony in.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 17, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a quiet album that will tell you about the succession of small, resonant moments that make up a day, a month, a life. Sit still for that, soak it in and let it breathe, and you start to see the glow behind the ordinary, not just in Callahan’s album, but in the world itself.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 16, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even given all those evocations and tonal shifts, Old Star feels cohesive. That’s down to the assured musicianship and the precisely engineered sound the band has mastered.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jul 11, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Each artist, individually, brings something impressive to the collaboration. The intersection of these gifts reveals something bigger, an art that embraces experience and vulnerability, but that also relies on studied craft. Whatever confessional comes through does so in an artful but not showy manner that makes this latest album more than just a likeable reunion.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 27, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The result is a collection that transports you to place and time you’d probably never get to otherwise, rocks your body, feeds your curiosity and makes you feel at home. Well done, I’d say.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 24, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Polymer is a summation of everything that puts Plaid rightfully on the same level of their innovative peers like Autechre, Boards of Canada and Two Lone Swordsmen. Creating worlds at once hermetic and immersive, Plaid’s music ticks along at a human level and envelops you in a protective, provocative cocoon.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 24, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All four members of Black Midi are extremely young, wildly competent, knowledgeable about all sorts of music (classical, jazz, free improv, etc.) and willing to go way out on a limb. Schlagenheim is a really exciting start, which could lead in any number of directions.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 20, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
That this focuses entirely on the unadorned piano may feel like a step down from those who embrace his more adventurous works. The instrumental chops heard here, though, stand on their own very well, and reveal another side to Hauschka’s music — and, perhaps, create some ambiguity as to where he might head from here.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 19, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The songs feel pared back and polished and just about exactly right, whether in the gospel-swelling idiom of Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam or in the jazzier, more experimental haunts of Calexico. There’s nothing extra, nothing silly, nothing distracting, these songs are as streamlined as an otter in water, slipping through in cool, frictionless purity.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 18, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
No Keys again has no indelible riffs, but it doesn’t seem to be missing them anymore. Instead Dommengang goes deep into the abyss of buzz and croon and humming mystery and finds something beautiful, maybe what they were looking for the whole time.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 13, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With this album, NOTS continues to reinvent itself in interesting ways that make sense for them. An experiment, an extension, a logical next step that you didn’t see coming, 3 is a significant move ahead for a band that is always worth watching.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 12, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Laughing Matter is a Major Statement in the classic style, which might have been irksome if Wand hadn’t pulled it off. Successful gestures of this sort can serve the purpose of reminding us why those tropes were satisfying in the first place, and if this album doesn’t quite boast the succinct charms of past releases its makes its own, compelling argument to turn on, tune in, and just let it all wash over you.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 10, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The looping phrases of Reward are carefully considered and joined with the precision of mortise and tenon. Her songs have always been like small rooms, though they are no longer drafty and rustic. This is a record of tidy natural sounds. They are not immediately inviting, yet spending time in these well-mannered spaces becomes a pleasure.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 8, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Imperial [is] a pleasure to hear. Sonically, the dark, rich timbres of The Imperial are as wallow-worthy and voluptuous as bar-light or certain kinds of sadness. Like the assuredly crappy hotel from which it takes its name, The Imperial is too run through with exhaustion to want to spend a lot of time with, but it’s perfect for retreating into when you can’t feel right about anything.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 5, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Venom Prison makes songs that are just as musically violent as the stuff their deathgrind peers churn out, often thrillingly so. But the Welsh band lifts the subgenre out of the thematic gutter. ... This is a terrific record.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Jun 4, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In 27 short tracks, Flamagra creates a vivid, memorable collage of L.A. life circa 2019, speaking to both the complicated present and the imaginative future of the city Flying Lotus calls home.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 31, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Brown addresses alienation, identity, the lure of the spectacle, religion but she does so with an oblique approach to words that mirrors Drahla’s approach to their music. If this all sounds very serious be assured that Useless Connections is an album that, above all, rocks.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 30, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is a four-way conversation rather than a competition for attention and the musicians display a depth of mutual understanding that belies the fact that they are playing together for the first time. Urselli’s production gives each instrument room to breathe and the tracks swell and recede at a relaxed pace as layers of guitar, synth and sound effects form palimpsests of sound.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 22, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Rave ‘Til You Cry is a welcome reminder of Raczynski’s skill, his lightness of touch and the sheer exuberance of his music. If it’s exhausting to dance to it’s great to hear and to reminisce about the Battles of Beatdom.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 17, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
I liked it better when Olden Yolk songs glowed with auras around their edges, when they surrounded themselves with a special kind of air that reverberated with songs in the process of becoming.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 16, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
He doesn’t always push far enough; the album’s best when we feel the tightwire of this experience rather than when we suspect an agnostic at play. Religious language and transcendent experience (secular or sacred, if we divide them) come loaded with danger. The more Morby pushes into that space and the more he asks of the listener, the deeper the experience.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 15, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Young Enough is a big pop influenced record that rings authentic and hits every mark both lyrically and musically--an album to dance the pain away.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 14, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s maybe a bit less of the clever wordplay here than on previous albums, but the words, like the music, are sturdy, not over-crowded, unexpected and right. There’s not a cliché on the disc, but the lines lead exactly where they need to go, slipping sideways into standards that are off center enough to matter.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 14, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This Mess Is a Place is considerably more grown up and pop-leaning than any of Tacocat’s previous albums, with lavishly massed vocals and bounce-y hooks, yet it retains an air of joyous subversion, sweet but spiky and smart.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 7, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Dusted Magazine
- Posted May 7, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What unites the songs, if anything, is a breezy insouciance that belies careful construction. You get the sense that, like Yeats’ women, this is an album that must “labor to be beautiful.” It hides the work very well behind a sunny façade, but you don’t get movie-perfect string swells and luminous vintage keyboard lines and cheerful blurts of all-hands brass without a certain amount of forethought. Consider Collins the impresario, taking what his collaborators give him and polishing it to a high gloss.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Apr 24, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All Time Present is a guitar players album, but more than that, a songwriter’s work.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Apr 18, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In the relentless, rampant pursuit and procurement of new musical product, it’s easy to lose sight that a return to and expansion of what’s worked previously can prove just satisfying for both artists and listeners.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Apr 15, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Apr 12, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Not only is Ilana Moctar’s best record, it’s also one of the best Saharan records to reach Western ears, and an early contender for the most exhilarating rock record of 2019.- Dusted Magazine
- Posted Apr 11, 2019
- Read full review