The SoundBite

Max Bloom  -  Pe rfum e When Daniel Blumberg left Yuck in 2013, he shattered what many critics considered one of the younger more promising rock bands touring. Yuck's self-titled debut remains a cult classic, one that even when it came out, sounded like it was coming from a band both self-assured and fully in sync. Yuck opted to push onward and lead-guitarist Max Bloom emerged as the group's frontman. But the critics were right and Bloom, while talented, never captured much of what made Yuck special.  Perfume  marks Bloom's proper debut and while eschewing the Yuck namesake, Bloom is able to fully come into his own. While there are glimmers of Bloom's distinctive guitar tone throughout,  he has effectively traded in Yuck's angst for his own weary relationship drama.  Perfume  shines as more than an artistic statement - a songwriter's climactic rebound. ~8.5

  Jessie Ware -  What's Your Pleasur e On Jessie Ware's fourth album, the singer steps away from the melodrama of her previous work, instead reinventing herself as  the  preeminent club-ready disco star (next to Robyn).  What's Your Pleasure?  is the kind of album that demands the listener reassess every release that came before it. Ware has never sounded this fun and never exuded as much charisma and confidence. In crafting her new persona she has produced a dance album that evokes the future and the past, a testament to a half-century of trends and genres, linked together by one singer's dramatic exuberance. ~9.0

Dehd -  Flower of Devotio n Chicago DIY guitar rock is rarely this transcendent, and rarely this bubbly. Dehd, known for their minimal arrangements took their sophomore LP into the studio and in the process, separated themselves from all the pop-first, lo-fi, indie freshmen whose aesthetic necessitates their sound (and vice-versa).  Flower of Devotion  is effortless in its execution; a sunny, crystalline tour through salad days led by a group more experienced than they let on. ~9.0

Bonny Light Horseman -  Bonny Light Horseman For something as straightforward as a debut from a folk supergroup, Eric D. Johnson,   Anaïs Mitchell and Josh Kaufman find a surprising amount of depth and beauty together. Although the three musicians have had their fair share of strong projects over the years, none of them are exactly at their peaks. Maybe that's why Bonny Light Horseman works so well, in its side project ethos it's expectedly low risk, in its collaborative nature it's forced to be egoless. For all its dinner party perfection, it works just as well as road music or Spotify algorithm fodder, and even after accepting all the cliches, Bonny Light Horseman have made an album that transcends generational preference, an album of timeless warmth. ~9.0

Quelle Chris / Chris Keys - Innocent Country  2 An improvement in almost every way over the original: two artists more refined and more comfortable in themselves and their collaboration, and a batch of songs that rank among the best in either catalog. While the two Chris' keep the laid-back charm of the original, their discipline strips the project of any filler, the result? The best rap album of 2020. ~9.0

Fleet Foxes -   Shore Robin Pecknold and company may have been testing the water on their adventurous reunion album Crack-Up but only three years later the Fleet Foxes have shifted towards the other extreme, crafting the most radio-friendly, Brian Wilson-loving, lockdown album. It nevertheless shares a lot with Crack-Up; album packaging, runtime, and most importantly the confidence and weight of modern Fleet Foxes record. Pecknold is 4/4 in his unbelievably beautiful discography, and with this being his worst outing so far, that's saying something. ~9.0

James Yorkston and the Second Hand Orchestra – The Wide, Wide Riv er Scotla nd’s James Yorkston has been quietly releasing his written work over the last twenty years, whether it’s his steady solo career, his work as a part of Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, or the two books he’s written. Yorkston’s work always maintains a calm, knowing confidence; the sound of a writer who found his voice before laying it down on tape instead of marking his progression through his discography. In his strongest moments, Yorkston’s knack for storytelling and his willingness to yield time to his collaborators and arrangements works in tandem to elevate the entire album; at his worst Yorkston’s songwriting and brightest moments are hampered by boring and unimaginative compositions. This dichotomy has been prevalent on nearly all of his work, for every great album i.e.   Moving Up Country  and  Roaring the Gospel , Yorkston we get a  When the Haar Rolls In  or a  I Was a Cat From a ...

Buck Meek - Two Saviors Big Thie f has only been around for five years or so, but in that short time frontwoman, Adrianne Lenker has built the band into one of the most consistently astonishing groups playing today, while simultaneously dividing her time between maintaining an almost equally great solo career. Her bandmate and ex-husband  Buck Meek , often offers backing vocals and guitar to those Big Thief projects but has expectedly, been consistently outshined by Lenker. In that respect this solo outing serves its purpose: after hearing the difference between Lenker’s solo material and Big Thief’s discography, Meek’s  Two Saviors  helps fill in the gaps. As with many solo stints, Meek keeps things casual, focusing on his songwriting, singing, and guitar work instead of broader album theatrics. The sound is homespun, with a breezy pace that evokes the charm of a demo reel without sacrificing quality production and song structure. This is best exemplified by “Two Moons (...

The Kills – Little Basta rds The Kills have  never been an album band. They’ve never been able to captivate and distinguish themselves over the course of an entire record from start to finish, but they’ve also never really been a singles band either. Only a few tracks throughout their career; “Kissy Kissy”, “Black Balloon” “U.R.A. Fever” etc. have experienced wider success, and these songs owe more to their respective albums than to the group’s sound as a whole. Maybe that’s part of the reason The Kills have always struggled with breaking into wider renown; although they have nearly defined the definitive “Kills” sound, they seem to thumb their nose at any other label. When The Kills first got together at the turn of the millennium, they began making the music they were familiar with: singer Alison Mosshart, pulling from her New York punk roots, and Guitarist Jamie Hince from British Rock. Together they were late arrivals to the garage rock boom, releasing their debut, 2003’s ...

The Killers – Imploding The Mi rage Th e Killers first few albums are undeniably a product of their times, tied to their cultural presence and both amplified and limited by nostalgia. Since their initial hiatus in 2010, the band has struggled with balancing their arena clout with an honest desire to expand and improve upon their formula. This issue has bogged down The Killers most recent work: the ridiculous  Wonderful Wonderful  and the forgettable  Battle Born . Both projects attempted to push the band into newer, and often more generic territory, both to diminishing returns. While the band’s commercial success has remained absurdly high, it’s hard to determine how much of that is built upon the bedrock of their original “classic” album s. When it came time to record their newest record  Imploding the Mirage , the band was faced with filling the void left after the departure of founding guitarist David Keuning a few years earlier. The solution: bring in some collab...

The Avalanches - We Will Always  Love You Twenty  years ago,  The Avalanches  released their near-perfect debut,  Since I Left You . A groundbreaking entry in sampling and plunderphonics, the album was heralded by fans and critics as an immediate classic. But the Melbourne group, content only with perfection, spent over 11 years working on a follow-up and after lineup changes and more sample clearances, finally released  Wildflower  in 2016, cementing their career as more than just a one-hit-wonder.  We Will Always Love You , their third album, is just their latest achievement in flawlessness, a record that continues the sound that is undeniably The Avalanches. Don’t be discouraged by the lack of gestation time. Although their newest release came to be in less than half the time of  Wildflower , that expeditiousness serves a change of recording technique, not a drop in quality. Instead of finding and clearing as many as 900 samples (the amoun...

Sigur Rós - Odin's Raven  Magic It’ s been seven years since Sigur R ó s’ last studio album,  Kveikur , and in that time the band has remained notoriously quiet. While it seemed unlikely that any of the group’s members would be producing  any  music amongst the worldwide lockdown, we still managed to get a new album from lead singer and guitarist  Jónsi Birgisson  and something of a return from the group itself.  Sigur R ó s’ “new album” was, in reality, an almost twenty-year-old recorded orchestral piece from a project they conceived at the height of their creative and popular success. Odin’s Raven Magic  takes its name from a piece of Norse mythology in the Edda, an ancient Icelandic poem. The story goes that Odin, upon seeing signs of impending disaster, sends his ravens to find out what’s going on, only to return empty-handed – at which point the god’s hold a giant banquet. That may sound confusing and unfortunately, this is the type of a...