Album Review

Chris Portka has named his record The Album Everyone Wants. Which is a bold move. Most people don’t want any album at all. Most people want, I don’t know, a sandwich, or functioning public transit. But Portka is nothing if not audacious, and it fits: this is the most collaborative, ambitious, and frankly bafflingly sincere […]

Some albums arrive with a quiet confidence, and some storm into the room, waving their arms, demanding you listen. Jordan’s The Tunnel + The Light somehow does both. It isn’t shouting, but it radiates urgency, like someone leaning across the table at 2 a.m. to tell you a story they have to get out, because

Monach’s debut album is a project born from the wreckage of toxic relationships and the long shadow of mental health struggles, the record is an act of catharsis that manages to balance the intimacy of confession with the visceral charge of punk energy. It’s not a fresh-faced “here we are” but a bruised, oddly triumphant

I’ll admit: I didn’t expect to still be thinking about Lauren Ash’s music a couple months (has It really been that long?) after she dropped her first rock singles. At the time, “Cool Story, Bro” and “Dumpster Fire” seemed like interesting tracks that I knew I had to keep tabs on. So when news came

There’s something deeply funny about an album called Wish. Not “Dreams” or “Visions” or any other word you’d expect to be plastered across a Spotify mood playlist. Just Wish. Small. Scrappy. Half a thought. Which is exactly what makes Freidrich$’s debut so compelling: it refuses to dress itself up as anything bigger than it is.

After four years away, Mike Masser is back, and apparently the man didn’t spend that time crocheting or birdwatching. No, he made 5, an album that opens the door by kicking it clean off the hinges. This isn’t a polite return to the scene. It’s the kind of record that stomps into your living room,

There’s something inherently funny about an album trying to be both sprawling and intimate. Like, imagine someone handing you a shoebox filled with postcards and saying, “This is the Odyssey.” That’s Circle the Dream. It wants to be a folk record, a prog record, and a diary all at once, and instead of collapsing under

Imagine locking yourself in a dimly lit room. Not for dramatic effect, but because it’s 3AM and turning on the light feels like too much responsibility. That’s the emotional ecosystem Nate G cultivates on me myself i, a self-produced dive into solitude, self-awareness, and the unbearable tightness of being alone with your own thoughts for

LARJIMAR’s Metro Subterráneo is the sort of album that sounds like it should have been just another half-baked SoundCloud experiment. It’s the kind of thing you click on, hear a half-finished beat and some vague crooning, and never return to again. Instead, it lands as a surprisingly coherent, strangely hypnotic project. It takes Afrobeat grooves,

Do you ever wonder what happens when a musician perfectly executes an idea into an art? Like it just leaves you in awe, wondering how it’s possible to turn a mere idea into something so vast, grand, and epic? Codemachia’s Gladius Æternus is the exact manifestation of that. Gladius Æternus is more than an album,