Album Reviews

Over a decade ago, Lily Allen burst into the pop mainstream with “Smile,” a cheery song that wrapped its withering indictments of a straying lover in Jackie Mittoo keyboards and skipping-stone grooves. The combination of Allen’s voice – which, thanks in part to Mark Ronson’s retro-minded production, brought to mind …

“You should see the wall of ambivalence I’m building!” sang Austin Brown on his band’s 2013 stoned ‘n’ starving slacker-rock breakthroughLight Up Gold. The band sure don’t sound ambivalent now. “Allow me to ponder the role I play/In this pornographic spectacle of black death!” co-leader Andrew Savage hollers on “Violence,” …

On his first album, John Prine sang “I am an old woman, named after my mother/My old man is another child that’s grown old.” The song was “Angel From Montgomery,” and he wrote it when he was 22, best he can recall. But he was an old 22: An Army …

On the fifth Breeders album, the songs are all cinematic movement – hiding, escaping, screaming in the meadow, running for the exit. Such is life as the Breeders‘ Kim Deal, a rock genius with a powderkeg of bittersweet melodies and fearless emotions forever ready to blow, but often without a …

Like Brits did with U.S. punk, Swedes Klara and Johanna Söderberg repurposed Davis Sisters-style country harmony on their 2012 breakthrough “Emmylou” into a bright new thing, laying into notes like they were tunnel-boring through glaciers. Producing their fourth set, folk-rock impressionist Tucker Martine (Neko Case, My Morning Jacket, Sufjan Stevens, …

Here are two great indie-rock songwriters getting together to spool out autumnal guitar prettiness and converse about life, art and whatever. As collaborators, they’re a perfect match: Kurt Vile is a master of zoned-out fingerpicking and droll longhaired jive; Courtney Barnett is a Dylanesque image ninja who can turn everyday …