Jeff Lawton

Phosphorescent, AKA Matthew Houck, has been releasing solid records of sun-soaked country-rock and ethereal folk hymns for the past ten years. With Muchacho, Houck touches on all of his greatest strengths—riffs, harmonies, sing-alongs, dirges—and the end result is his first front-to-back great album. From the heartbroken piano that graces “Terror in the Canyons (The Wounded […]

People tend to listen to music that fits their mood. If you’re happy, you listen to happy music. Sad? Throw on Elliott Smith. And now that The Flaming Lips have released The Terror, we all have something to soundtrack a horrific existential meltdown. The Terror follows in the haunted, proggy footsteps of 2009’s Embryonic, but […]

There have been plenty of excellent albums released so far in 2013, but The Knife’s Shaking the Habitual feels like the first really important one. It’s a beast at 94 minutes, with nearly a half-hour devoted to ambient drifting or jittery experimentalism, but what makes the record significant is its activist tone, fearless creativity and percussive […]

Animalia is the moniker of Jill Krasnicki, a Toronto-based artist (by way of Tasmania) who made some noise last year with her debut EP, To the Waking, the Shaking & the Volatile. Her latest release, A Wave to Wash the World Away, reveals an impressive knack for crafting urgent folk songs complimented by flourishes of […]

Make no mistake; a new album from Justin Timberlake will always be a landmark event. But after a seven-year wait, I’m disappointed to say The 20/20 Experience is a mostly hit-or-miss affair. Obviously, there won’t be many better songs in 2013 than blissful lead single “Suit & Tie,” and other tracks such as the disorienting […]

AMOK is the debut album by Atoms for Peace, a supergroup fronted by Thom Yorke, featuring producer Nigel Godrich, rap-rock pioneer Flea and others. The album’s sound will be familiar for anyone who’s followed Yorke’s career since Hail to the Thief, as it deals mostly in squiggly guitars, buzzing synths and busy percussion. From the […]

Four years on, people have seemingly forgotten the buzz surrounding chillwave, a faux-genre that splices sunshine R&B with dreamy vibes. With Anything in Return, Toro Y Moi (AKA Chaz Bundick) is forcing everyone to remember. A marked improvement from 2011’s somewhat spotty but still pretty great Underneath the Pine, this record signifies Bundick’s undeniable arrival […]

Yo La Tengo is a band of old pros. We have faith that they’ll forever release solid records because they’ve done so for more than 20 years. Fade kicks it up a notch, though, by sounding like the group at its most condensed: soft-spoken, jangly and droning. The album’s narrowed focus is refreshing, and while […]

Deftones’ brand of nü-metal has always straddled the line between genuinely exhilarating and unintentionally funny, and Koi No Yokan continues this dance. The band’s calling card is Chino Moreno’s voice, which is a sort of whisper/wail that echoes Fred Durst and Kevin Shields in equal parts. The record’s high point is “Entombed,” a synth-laced stunner […]

For years Solange Knowles struggled to escape the shadow cast by her older sister, unable to achieve the same mainstream success. Now that R&B has been heralded by tastemakers as the most hip of all genres, Solange has reinvented herself as one of the movement’s indie figureheads. Her new EP, True, has the fingerprints of […]

Often a year-end EP release serves as a cleansing of inferior material. This is thankfully avoided with Dirty Projectors’ About to Die EP, as the art-rock band continues its evolution into more melody-friendly terrain. Since the sunshine-pop title track was already a highlight on the magnificent Swing Lo Magellan, it’s easily the best song here. […]