Album Reviews

Dolly Parton tends to release records for a reason. Unlike her Seventies contemporary Willie Nelson, who, at a dozen years her senior, records albums for no other purpose than to suit his own whims, Parton’s release schedule over the past half-dozen years has largely served as an extension of her …

Thirty years into a career as one of the best R&B artists of her generation — Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors or not — Mary J. Blige continues to challenge herself and her fans. It’s hard to think of any peers from her early-Nineties peak, whether it’s the …

It’s telling that some of the most memorable moments on the new John Coltrane archival release, A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, don’t actually include JohnColtrane. The original Love Supreme, the saxophonist’s legendary album-length suite of divine praise, featured his rightfully named classic quartet, with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy …

The Eighties are widely regarded as the low point of Bob Dylan‘s entire career, a time when he struggled to find relevance in the MTV era and released a series of tacky, rudderless albums that were savaged by fans and critics. Even Dylan himself refuses to defend his output from …

Carnage would be a broad subject for any artist, especially anyone who has devoted an album solely to the art of the murder ballad. But this is Nick Cave, and in true Bad Seed fashion, there’s a twist: The crime scene here is spiritual rather than corporeal. Carnage, a collaboration …

It’s not too difficult to imagine the impulse behind a song like “CANCELLED,” the second single from the British rapper Slowthai’s new album, Tyron. The track features Skepta and follows a familiar revenge fantasy: our anti-hero MCs versus the proverbial naysayers, who in this case are the online agents of …

Last summer, you couldn’t walk a block in Brooklyn without hearing Pop Smoke’s “Welcome to the Party” or “Dior” blasting out of an apartment or passing car. Now, five months after the 20-year-old phenom was shot and killed during a home invasion — an incalculable loss for New York rap …

Nothing like BTS has ever happened before. The K-pop kings have taken the sound of Seoul to the top of the U.S. charts, without making any of the usual compromises—no crossover songs in English, no novelty hit, no pandering celebrity duets. Even their Halsey collabo, “Boy with Luv,” has her …

For anyone who thought 2016’s American Band would be the most explicitly political record of the Drive-By Truckers career, the quintet has nine new songs that’ll likely convince you otherwise. In 2016, the longtime road warriors found new life with its election year treatise, which saw the band more revved …

Leonard Cohen wrote and recorded until near his final breaths — the work, it was understood, was keeping him alive. Arriving three years after his death, Thanks for the Dance is a surprise, a sort of séance as shiva, a magnificent parting shot that’s also that exceptionally rare thing — …