The sound of Tune-­Yards is at once organic and meticulously constructed. The songs from on I can feel you creep into my private life, like those on 2011 breakout Whokill, share a common DNA. Often, they begin with a low-fi, glitchy and sometimes out­ of­ tune sample that…

“In the night/ I feel clean/ when the darkness swallows me/ I escape/ From the blue/ Like the steam coming off the pool.” Deep-seated anxiety and loneliness have always dwelled within the lyrics of Porches’ Aaron Maine. While these lines display much of the same, they signal a revelatory…

There’s no point in denying it: Rock music has been usurped. While the reasons for this are tenfold, the lack of overt originality within the scene has remained a detractor from the style’s ongoing relevance within popular culture—especially in contrast to all the boundary-pushing within the hip-hop community. Indeed,…

After releasing 2015’s Shockwave Supernova, legendary shred lord Joe Satriani began to feel his highly conceptual prog-rock opuses becoming impersonal—battling the fantastical characters he conjured with his acrobatic riffs for ownership of his personhood. This epiphany fueled Satriani’s pursuit of music about “a human being, two feet on the…

My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James is showing his love for some classic songs on his latest album, Tribute to 2, which is due out this week. The 11-song album covers everyone from Sonny and Cher to Irving Berlin. Tribute to 2 Jim James Dec. 8 Right out of…

U2, “Songs of Experience.” After a much-ballyhooed delay, Songs of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, has arrived. And thank the gods of rock and roll: it’s very, very good indeed. I need to sit with an album for a while before ranking it in the pantheon of U2 albums, but…

If we as listeners have anything to learn from Björk’s decades-spanning career, it’s that her music is not something you can punctuate or spin simply as background music—that would be a slight against her prestigious artistry. In fact, her music mandates a complete surrender of the senses in order…

When the eighth and final Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings album is released Friday, a full year will have passed since Jones was lost to pancreatic cancer. Soul of a Woman Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Nov. 17 As a surprise to many, the Augusta, Georgia-born, Brooklyn-raised songstress had…

Like most, my first experience of Memphis singer-songwriter Julien Baker happened through the opening lines of her groundbreaking debut single, “Sprained Ankle:” “I wish I could write songs about anything other than death.” These words met me at a most vulnerable point and ensued to gradually devastate every fiber…

Singer-songwriter Margo Price seemingly burst onto the country music scene out of thin air two years ago, but of course that wasn’t true. Listening to her songs about tribulations, loss, mistakes made and realizations unmet, it was clear she’s had her hat in the ring for years. All American…