It’s Sonic Youth at its most psychedelic, though not in the flower power sense that term can evoke. It’s fitting that during this period, they once headlined the Terrastock Festival, which highlights neo-psychedelic underground artists from all over the world.

While Red Balloon might not be breaking new ground, it offers comfort and solidarity—and in the summer of 2022, more than two years since the world shut down, this might be most necessary of all.

There is something understated and slightly eccentric going on here and that can throw people off and have them mistakenly thinking this is not substantial and worthy of attention, but to dismiss this and overlook it is a grievous error. This album is a lovely hidden pop gem.

It’s as if all of these songs are the equivalent of a nutty tossed-off filler track that might close side one of an album as a joke. None of the songs are developed beyond the point of cartoonish posturing and none have much to recommend them musically.

With a voice as powerful as hers, it is a wise choice, as is listening to this album. At only 10 tracks and 39 minutes, it leaves you wanting more, so the logical choice is just to play it again and be mesmerized another time.

There is always an intimacy and an emotional immediacy to what they do as a band, but more often than not it stays too much in that one place, their comfort zone. It causes an album like this to come across like a collection of demo tracks by a very accomplished band that lays out their aural plan, but doesn’t ever fully color in all of the spaces available to them. It doesn’t evolve into what it could be.

The Smile’s looser creative approach offers a new light and welcoming side to Yorke and Greenwood, all while showcasing the enduring creative chemistry behind two of their generation’s most celebrated musicians.

It’s a good album, but not a great album; a chance missed perhaps. Laessig and Wolfe are covering some important, personal themes here, but you wonder if the glare from the dancefloor glitterball blinds the heart and soul of the record just a little too much.

It’s an album that radiates warmth and is lighter in tone than their previous outings but it is in many ways a typical Warpaint album, one that can mesmerize, seduce, and confound in equal measure. As with previous albums, Radiate Like This does make demands on the listener to do just that, actually listen, and requires some patience before it fully reveals itself.

The collective boasts no shortage of remarkable musical talent and vision, and one longs to love the album based on this alone, but Peacock Pools is simply too middling to merit such passion.

Endless Rooms is mostly fashion free with impeccably arranged, tight guitar lines and is a solid, and sneakily good, record that intrigues and entertains a little more with every spin.

A Bit of Previous is just that—an exercise in self-awareness by a band too intelligent to sell out, but certainly not impervious to the spell of nostalgia.

While not quite in the same bracket as the ground breaking Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, *Happiness Not Included provides a welcome - if mature - diversion to the horrors and evils that surround us. [Dec 2021 - Feb 2022, p.154]

You can do a whole lot worse than Unlimited Love, its main sin homogeneity rather than insufferableness.

It’s a passionately fearless and honest body of work, one that pays no heed to the prevailing and increasingly regressive backward looking indie rock trends. Indeed this is undoubtedly a forward-thinking album full of vibrancy and excitement, one that engages the head and the heart from a band who have always strived to do both, and it succeeds on pretty much every level.

There’s plenty to recommend this latest offering. Bound together with a rather intoxicating blend of intimacy, inconsistency, and immediacy, this is the sound of a band coming home.

There is immensely evident craftsmanship that runs through the album, and a newly revitalized soul that, for all its beauty, And Nothing Hurt missed. If it turns out that Everything Was Beautiful is the last Spiritualized project we ever get, it is an unexpected gift that lives up to the best of Jason Pierce’s storied career.

The further experimentation of “tap” and the display of raw emotion on “happy accident” prove more successful than i don’t know’s more down tempo moments, even when those mirror the album’s themes more closely.

Taken as a complete album experience, it’s a little too all over the place to measure up to their most focused work, and its robust length is pretty intimidating. But as a smorgasbord of strange sonic shape-shifting, it’s a pretty fun listen.

Flying by in 21 minutes, these 13 songs here will have you playing them on repeat for hours and will get stuck in your head when you’re not listening.

Not everything gels perfectly, but considering how much ground he covers both musically and lyrically, Bejar almost never falls completely off the horse. With no rules or self-imposed boundaries, per se, music with an experimental bent can often end up like one big unfocused mess. That doesn’t happen on a Destroyer album.

At 15 songs, Bronco is dense. It’s also incredibly addictive. At every turn on Bronco, Peck’s megawatt voice soars. His extensive range glides easily from bass to falsetto, and there isn’t a moment his voice, phrasing, and incredible gift for melody doesn’t captivate.

It’s a sumptuous album that plays to her strengths whilst allowing her to branch out as an artist and in doing so she is able to add more depth and texture to her iridescent soundscapes.

He’s “hip” to everything, but seeking his own brand of freedom, and his ability to connect with so many different influences and filter it all through his own matrix and have it come out like a concoction that is an extension of his person is a sublime artistic gift indeed.

At its heart, TILT is an intentionally joyous, escapist experience and even with the band’s proclivity for OTT campiness, they also prove that fun doesn’t have to be dumb. As Confidence Man might put it, if this doesn’t get you on the dancefloor, then “move aside and let others enjoy the ride.”

Appreciating a sense of the dramatic marked by emotive gestures is a pre-requisite for embracing this band. What it provides is a powerful and uplifting musical statement.

While Chloë and the Next 20th Century doesn’t quite measure up to the best of his impressive catalogue, lacking in some of the more unique traits that make those albums so special, even a slightly weaker Father John Misty album is still pretty damn good.

This is rock music from the year 2064. And it’s absolutely glorious. There’s an infectious energy that permeates throughout the album, as he transitions frantically from musical passage to musical passage.