One of this queer anarchist sludge/black metal duo is a Romantic screamer who’s enough of a formalist to get them on Metallum, the other a post-rocker who wails about sorrow and death to America: perhaps they’d be unbearable apart, but such is the magic of bands that they complement each other’s picture of human experience quite tidily (“Woe”, “Ruins”, “Desolation’s Flower”)
“She’s not EDM, IDM, electronic, footwork or post-footwork”, says her PR, and if on this minor work she also isn’t anything she hasn’t previously been on a Jlin album (one song’s even called “Derivative”), that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve her Pulitzer nom (“Duality”, “Obscure”, “Derivative”)
Proficient Irish folkies with an uncanny lead singer and as good an ear for atmospherics as anyone—if some fellow low attention spanner makes an edit where everything fades out after four minutes, I’ll happily upgrade this (“Go Dig My Grave”, “Newcastle”, “Netta Perseus”)
Kris Davis: Diatom Ribbons: Live at the Village Vanguard
Terri Lyne Carrington, Trevor Dunn, and turntablist Val Jeanty return from the studio Diatom Ribbons, guitarist Julian Lage joins, and the saxists among others are absent; the interplay can be a bit abstract at times, but on the second disc they do rock out politely, and Davis sometimes takes it upon herself to manufacture gratuitous beauty (“Endless Columns”, “Bird Suite, Pt. 1: Kingfisher”, “Bird Suite, Pt. 2: Bird Call Blues”)
Princess Chelsea: Everything Is Going to Be Alright
Like her former New Zealand art-pop (emphasis before the hyphen) group the Brunettes, she takes the Shangri-Las vocal/backing discordance and makes the ambiguities explicit: “when you’re with me, I feel like I could die” etc. (“Time”, “We Kick Around”, “The Forest”)
PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old World Dying
The tortured pwoet’s department (“A Child’s Question, August”, “Lwonesome Tonight”, “Prayer at the Gate”)
Carly Rae Jepsen: The Loveliest Time
There’s no desperation for a hit, just structurally sound bops sure to please her loyalists, and only the most crotchety critics might suggest she could be aiming a little higher (“After Last Night”, “Psychedelic Switch”, “So Right”)
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society: Dynamic Maximum Tension
Impeccably fabricated big band music that lacks Ben Webster threatening to slash the composer’s jacket (Matt Holman’s treated trumpet on “Ferromagnetic” might scuff it a little), yet, the half-hour one notwithstanding, it’s very listenable, and their tribute to the Band is touching (“Last Waltz for Levon”, “Ferromagnetic”)
Mark Linkous’s brother does an admirable job pasting this together so that committed fans have one last album; casuals might appreciate Mark’s knack for a tune and be moved by the directness with which he admits he fucked it up (“I Fucked It Up”, “Evening Star Supercharger”)
A. Savage: Several Songs About Fire
Plus several more without fire (“David’s Dead”, “Elvis in the Army”)
Inspired by Live Through This, though since this is the 2020s she sings her medical similes and murder plots with a tinge of artfully attenuated self-pity; the results are smart and strong and Courtney would eat her (“Veronica Mars”, “Sepsis”)
hmph
I agree with you down the line, but I'm hoping the upcoming JLin will be sharper.