Vinyl ReviewsJoe Strummer’s Lasting Legacy

Matthew Sweet - 100% Fun

Intervention’s pressing reveals a run of aces when it comes to sonics. While many A-to-B comparisons yield a few points in favor of the original pressing, 100% Fun is not one of them. Intervention’s copy slays the Classic Records-licensed 1995 release.

Beach House - 7

Indeed, if Beach House songs were photographs, they’d all be taken in long exposure, which can lend a slightly magical heft to images grounded in reality.

The Breeders - All Nerve

All Nerve, then, barely avoids the nostalgia trap, as it represents a chance to remember the 90s but not live in them.

Matthew Sweet - Altered Beast

By giving the 52 minutes of original-album material the groove space it’s always deserved across three vinyl sides, the music finally enjoys room to breathe and registers a fullness, depth, and vivacity entirely lacking from the thin, constrained-sounding Zoo/Classic Records LP. Altered Beast quite literally sounds like a new record.

LCD Soundsystem - American Dream

While Murphy and cohorts—keyboardist Nancy Whang and multi-instrumentalists Pat Mahoney and Tyler Pope, among others—often remixed vintage dance rock with cutting-edge club gloss, the group always fretted the future and celebrated the here and now, not the yesterday and nostalgic.

David Byrne - American Utopia

When listening to this album I think of this band or music: Often offbeat and wildly experimental, David Byrne’s American Utopia stands as his first proper solo album in more than a decade. Yet he’s been far from missing in action, having collaborated with the likes of guitar sorceress St. Vincent and dance artist Fatboy […]

Julia Holter - Aviary

And while the Los Angeles-based artist recorded a significant portion of the album at home, judging from its clarity, one might assume Aviary had been cut at one of the world’s most famous studios. Each synthesizer tone gets a starring role, and horned instruments such as the trumpet are conversational, as if Holter wanted them to sound human.

Mitski - Be The Cowboy

Be the Cowboy emerges as Mitski’s boldest and most playfully lively album to date, but at its core, it remains a thoughtful work about the games our head can play on us.

Iron & Wine - Beast Epic

At first listen, this lovingly composed collection of folk-pop seems to recall Sam Beam’s earliest work as Iron & Wine. Beast Epic strays from the pastoral and more complicated arrangements that have marked recent albums. Yet impeccably crafted adornments permeate the songs, be they the finely plucked strings of “About A Bruise,” which knot around each other as if woven by a tailor, or the forlorn Western feel of “Claim Your Ghost,” where the guitar shadows Beam’s compassionate vocals.

Jack White - Boarding House Reach

Above all, the biggest misstep here isn’t White’s desire to experiment but the hostile nature in which it’s compiled. White isn’t giving us different. Rather, he’s shoving different down our throats.

Kurt Vile - Bottle It In

Bottle In In is no hurry whatsoever to get to wherever it’s trying to go.

The record’s 80-minute run time, coupled with Kurt Vile’s relaxed vibe, rewards those seeking simple pleasures rather than immediacy.

Laura Jane Grace & The Devouring Mothers - Bought to Rot

Yet Grace proves uniquely self-aware as a songwriter and let’s the audience know her frustrations really owe to a recent break-up. In such a context, her venom comes across as less of a rant and more of an opportunity to blow off some steam. In other words, it’s relatable.

Lydia Loveless - Boy Crazy and Single(s)

For those who haven’t heard Loveless’ Boy Crazy EP, this collection is a must. The title cut, a jangly and chipper ditty, introduces us to a woman seemingly eternally possessed with a penchant for junior high-like crushes. “I wish I was his wife, not really though,” she sings as a rush of feverishly strummed guitars bolt by her. The aforementioned “Lover’s Spat” masks its menacing nature with an idealistic tone. “All the Time,” bolstered by a circular melody and winning harmonies, dials into the sense of addiction that comes from an affair.

Boygenius - Boygenius

When listening to this album I think of this band or music: Rock historians might instantly notice something familiar when picking up the self-titled six-song EP from Boygenius, an act comprised of three of the most exciting young voices in independent rock: Julian Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers. The black-and-white photo on the cover […]

Brandi Carlile - By The Way, I Forgive You

By the Way, I Forgive You is a big, beautiful-sounding album on vinyl, with Carlile’s massive voice occasionally coming across as if captured in a cathedral.

Foo Fighters - Concrete and Gold

The knock on Foo Fighters is that they always make the same record. But the accusation is far from true. Dave Grohl has led the band through a period of slight experimentation in recent years. While Concrete and Gold feels more direct than 2014’s Sonic Highways, several psychedelic and orchestral flourishes illustrate the Foo Fighters continue to branch out from 90s alt-rock and into 70-influenced classic rock.

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

When Lamar toured in support of DAMN., he did so with a staged outfitted with nothing. Flanked by a giant screen, the bare platform often encouraged audience members to look down—or squint, depending on how far back in the arena guests were seated. The design served two key purposes: It forced fans to grapple with Lamar as a human being rather a superstar and underscored the songs of DAMN. needn’t any stage show trickery to heighten the drama.

Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer

Dirty Computer, which ended up garnering a Grammy nod for Album of the Year, among other nominations, isn’t an effort one should bet against. Few works in 2018 so seamlessly melded the topical with the approachable.

Fucked Up - Dose Your Dreams

” … like, say, the Clash’s Sandinista!, a similarly sprawling album with moments of wonder scatter amidst filler, Dose Your Dreamsis likely to only appeal to Fucked Up diehards.”

Low - Double Negative

Like everything on the album, it presents itself as a puzzle that deserves to be unwrapped.

Arcade Fire - Everything Now

Picking up on the dance-oriented vibes of 2013’s Reflektor, Everything Now comes across as another big statement from Arcade Fire. Yet its topicality feels less pronounced than that of the band’s Grammy-winning The Suburbs, which presents various snapshots of a life outside the urban bubble. The Internet is the big subject of interest here—along with […]

Marissa Nadler - For My Crimes

When listening to this album I think of this band or music: One, perhaps, should look at the company Marissa Nadler keeps in order to get a grasp of her enveloping, engrossing take on American folk. For My Crimes, the eighth full-length from the East Coast singer/songwriter now in her late 30s, is her third […]

Father John Misty - God’s Favorite Customer

Josh Tillman’s fourth album as Father John Misty is his most palatable. Whereas 2017’s Pure Comedy shows the singer shifting the focus from himself—or, rather, a caricature of himself—to offer thoughts on our technology-obsessed culture, God’s Favorite Customer finds him in a reflective mood.

Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour

Since her MCA Nashville debut, 2013’s Same Trailer, Different Park, Kasey Musgraves has been hailed as a maverick—a progressive voice in a musical landscape known for its conservatism. Older songs such as “Follow Your Arrow” and “Merry Go Round” take a critical look at the small-town life that many of her other songs hold so dear. The approach made Musgraves seem as something of country outsider, a modern inheritor to Waylon Jennings or Roseanne Cash.

Lucy Dacus - Historian

While the orchestrations come across with a slight professional gloss, Dacus manages to make the work feel intimate—as if its contents are spruced-up bedroom recordings.

Tune-Yards - I Can Feel You Creep into My Private Life

When listening to this album I think of this band or music: The music of Merrill Garbus, who records as Tune-Yards, increasingly seems built on contradictions. Lyrically, Garbus’ worldview remains distinctly American, but musically, she remains the artist who studied abroad in Kenya and brought a host of worldly beats back her with her to […]

Mavis Staples - If All I Was Was Black

Since linking with Los Angeles-based indie label Anti for 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back, Staples has enjoyed a resurgence. It’s a shame she even needed one. Over the decades, Staples crossed paths with everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Bob Dylan to Prince and Barack Obama. By linking her with taste-making producers such as composer/songwriter Ry Cooder and Wilco’s Tweedy, Anti helped give Staples a modern sheen and sought to connect the dots between her work in the Civil Rights era with modern culture.

Pistol Annies - Interstate Gospel

While slightly rawer and rougher around the edges than the solo work of members Miranda Lambert and Ashely Monroe, the Pistol Annies write with honesty and humor about functioning albeit dysfunctional families and romances. Even as they up the sarcasm—witness the family drama everyone avoids at Christmas while downing spiked eggnog on “Hush Hush”—Interstate Gospel delights in nuance.

Joe Strummer - Joe Strummer 001

Yet the major appeal of Joe Strummer 001 relates to how it showcases the less-heralded aspects of the man, portraying an artist with a lust for cinema, a widescreen approach to musical styles, and songs with imaginative lyrics.

Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet - Landfall

Landfall teems with contrasts. The opening tracks, which unfold largely sans Anderson and focus on the violin work of Kronos Quartet, immediately put the listener on edge. They are sharp, piercing numbers, on which strings are quickly struck and notes become drawn out.

Jason Isbell - Live From The Ryman

Live from the Ryman courses with a force that makes it impossible to ignore that these songs are about life in America during a less-than-romantic era.

Loma - Loma

While it isn’t necessary to appreciate Loma, an interesting backstory enlightens and enhances the work—especially as you may start to long for the group to more often vary the pace. Jonathan Meiburg’s band Shearwater was touring with Cross Records. Ultimately, Meiburg asked the duo, who doubled as a married couple, to collaborate on a record. Throughout the course of making the self-titled collection, Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski’s union unraveled. Loma then unexpectedly became a break-up effort, albeit an unconventional one.

Snail Mail - Lush

While Lush isn’t an album that will knock you over with instantly irresistible melodies, it does something even better: Putting the listener inside an artist’s head, and showing how every shifting thought has a guitar note to match.

Lana Del Rey - Lust For Life

Lana Del Rey (real name: Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) has always been playing a character. That’s no criticism. Much of pop remains centered on outsized personalities. With the expansive Lust for Life, she flips the script a little, shifting from the look-what-you-made-me-do role of a femme fatale to a brasher, outspoken personality.

Angel Olsen - Phases

Phases encompasses the past seven years of Olsen’s career, a wide-ranging sweep of a fast-evolving artist.

Protomartyr - Relatives In Descent

Protomartyr can get wordy. The opening track on Relatives in Descent features the following lines: “The night is an accumulation of dark air/The scholar will be forever poor/Gross gold runs headlong to boor/I don’t want to hear those vile trumpets anymore/Call me Heraclitus The Obscure.” And did we mention this is an example of the band at its most topical?

Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels 3

Collaborators and touring partners prior to releasing 2013’s self-titled debut as Run the Jewels, El-P and Killer Mike have become more potent, more pointed, and more explosive with each subsequent release. The trajectory strongly suggests the two veteran and resolutely independent hip-hop artists may be stronger together.

Smashing Pumpkins - Shiny and Oh So Bright, Vol. 1 / LP: No Past. No Future. No Sun.

Shiny and Oh So Bright also still manages to feel like an event, at least when it comes to the vinyl packaging. A handsome, hefty, and graphically attractive gatefold sleeve holds the vinyl and contains a deluxe-worthy 16-page booklet.

Muse - Simulation Theory

Muse on Simulation Theory sounds like it belongs in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s roller-staking musical Starlight Express. There are guitars, but they whiz by in a neon-coated haze, covered and surrounded by blindingly bright synthesizers.

U2 - Songs of Experience

While any album from a rock giant such as U2 comes with heavy expectations, the quartet added to them when Bono stated the band was delaying Songs of Experience. This late 2017 work was initially intended to be a sequel to 2014’s Songs of Innocence, the latter of which remains a tepid ode to childlike […]

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Sparkle Hard

The songs of Sparkle Hard feel like miniature vignettes—some character sketches, and some scenes of modern life, but all viewed with Malkmus’ cynicism, which only gets more to the point with age.

Thom Yorke - Suspiria: Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film

Housed in a gatefold jacket with lyrics and demented scrawls, Suspiria sounds immaculate on pink vinyl. Considering much of the 80-minute work relies on silence and quiet noses, it remains unsettling at how clean and airy everything feels. As one piano lullaby ends, a harsh mix of digital sonics began.

Animal Collective - Tangerine Reef

Animal Collective has good intentions. Climate change remains an urgent subject worthy of more exploration in pop art, but the group takes on the role of dooming alarmists.Coral reefs can let the imagination wander, but Animal Collective instead plays the role of defeatists who infer the reefs’ destruction at the hands of man is already a forgone conclusion

Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel

No-so-hidden reference points abound in Courtney Barnett’s music. But rather than rattling off bands or artists she clearly admires—here, Kim and Kelley Deal of the Breeders make an appearance, for instance—it helps first to explain why Barnett rises above reference points. Her observations and scenarios are relatable to the point of feeling rather common.

Yo La Tengo - There’s A Riot Going On

”Dream Dream Away” feels weightless and fragile, its simple guitar strums giving way to spacey electronic effects and quiet, indiscernible vocals.

Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino

Listeners may miss the band’s hooks and aggression, but the album feels brave. Not just for the risks it takes, but because the abstract structures and relaxed pace seem out to slow the world down even as Turner wonders if he’s still part of it.

Cat Power - Wanderer

e album’s aura evokes that of a modern Western, and it starts strong. The opening title track possesses a ghastly, country-gospel tone driven by Marshall’s hushed-but-assertive vocals, mysterious backing harmonies, and lyrics in which everyone in her world changes.

Jeff Tweedy - Warm

The album, produced by Tweedy with Tom Schick, emphasizes closeness, and the pitch-black backgrounds of the LP pressing allows us to hear simple hand-taps on an instrument with clarity. Songs such as “Bombs Above” and “Warm (When the Sun Has Died)” rank among the quietest on the record. No interference comes between the listener and the twilight guitar notes.

Superchunk - What A Time To Be Alive

For all the loudness, muscle, and wrath on display, an underlying sense of optimism prevails. What a Time to Be Alive trumpets it’s never too late to speak out and always okay to crank up the guitars.

Parquet Courts - Wide Awaaaaake!

What impresses relates to how the band throws differing and conflicting genres at the wall and makes it all feel a part of the same loose, aggressive piece. Perhaps the consistency comes by way or the shaggy, unrefined guitars of Savage and Brown. Or maybe it’s the rhythm, courtesy of bassist Sean Yeaton and drummer Max Savage, that locks in tight like a puzzle. Wide Awaaaaake! knows a soundtrack to a 2018 protest march should revel in diversity.

Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis - Wild! Wild! Wild!

Linda Gail Lewis isn’t shy about her lineage, referencing her more famous—or infamous—brother throughout Wild! Wild! Wild! The old-school rock n’ roll of the album will doubtlessly remind plenty of Jerry Lee Lewis, but that’s just one jumping-off point for Fulks and the younger sister of the so-called Killer. Much of the album is written by Fulks, a Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist whose career has spanned the breadth of roots-focused genres.

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers - Years

Bloodshot Records’ 180-gram pressing is relatively clean, with the only audible pops in the grooves between the individual tracks. It also sounds fairly good for an indie album, with Shook’s voice coming across with pleasing clarity and balance.

Popular Searches

Log in

Reviews by Todd Martens: