Posts by Rebekah Tweed

Ariana Grande is one of the two primary inspirations for Girl, the sophomore album from Girl Ray, out now on Moshi Moshi. The North London trio of Poppy, Sophie, and Iris (they don’t bother with last names) will be the first to tell you that this full-length follow-up to 2017’s then-teenaged Girl Ray’s earnestly twee […]

Do No Harm is an enveloping pastoral plea for peace from superb and meticulous record label Keeled Scales’ newest signing The Deer. After starting as a solo project for vocalist and frontwoman Grace Rowland, the Austin five-piece has found its stride, finding itself as at home on festival stages as in the multiple studios where […]

Québécois indie rock 4-piece Corridor is Sub Pop’s newest signing, pushing the Seattle imprint’s current ratio of international artists to over 20% of the roster. The Montreal quartet has the distinction of being the first Francophone signing in the label’s 33 year history, and with the worldwide release of Corridor’s third album Junior (except in […]

All Mirrors, Angel Olsen’s fourth full-length album, out now on Jagjaguwar, belongs in the canon of essential break-up albums, but more Exile in Guyville than Rumours or Blue. It wasn’t so much her own heartache that Olsen studied and mined for the album, but the act of facing herself and the self-acceptance and forgiveness she […]

Sargent House’s steadfast goth goddess Chelsea Wolfe goes intimately acoustic on her 6th album, Birth of Violence, retreating to her scarcely-lived-in home to record in the Northern California wilderness and departing from the densely churning bombast of 2017’s punishing Hiss Spun, instead snapping back to the acoustic equilibrium of her earliest days; nonetheless she keeps […]

Lana Del Rey just released her 5th major label full-length, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, produced by the supernaturally ubiquitous Jack Antonoff. It feels unbelievable that she already has so many albums to her name, all of which reached the highest couple of spots on the Billboard 200. Since 2011’s rocky blog-drama-fueled emergence, as attention has shifted […]

“can’t wait to quit music and never talk to anyone ever again also i wanna live on a damn farm” – Jay Som Anak Ko, the second proper album from Melina Duterte’s expansive dream pop project Jay Som, out now on Polyvinyl, followed the runaway success of Everybody Works, which seemed to require of Duterte […]

Hotel Last Resort, the 10th album from playfully abrasive folk-punk institution Violent Femmes, is a quick enjoyable listen of mostly two and a half minute songs. Singer/guitarist Gordon Gano’s vocals are front and center, the heart of the tracks – one of the band’s strongest assets if you’re into that sort of thing (which, if […]

Darkly whimsical multi-instrumentalist Erin Elizabeth Birgy has been excavating art-pop gems as Mega Bog for her devoted coterie of fans for nearly a decade. On Dolphine, Mega Bog’s fifth album and first for Paradise of Bachelors, Birgy has created a collection of eleven ethereally shimmering oddities comprising an oracular guide into a hazy aquatic underworld […]

The most important thing to know about Dylan LeBlanc’s Renegade is that it’s absolutely beautiful. Lush, velvety and gorgeous enough to rival anything I’ve heard this year, this ten-track collection of charmed Americana recollects songwriters like Tom Petty, Townes Van Zandt, Fleet Foxes and Fleetwood Mac. While Renegade has its stand-outs, it also possesses the […]

When Australia’s Charlie Collins was still just a precocious pre-teen, she jumped onstage at a local pub for a guerrilla performance of the classic country songs she had spent her childhood absorbing (Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Emmylou Harris). As Australia’s country music capital, Collins’ hometown of Tamworth was an ideal environment for steeping […]

In a seemingly parallel universe from fellow Atlanta native Lil Nas X’s country-rap juggernaut “Old Town Road” topping the charts for the seventh straight week, 21-year-old Faye Webster drops her 3rd full-length album Atlanta Millionaires Club on Secretly Canadian. Webster, a consummate ATLien whose passions include the Braves, yo-yo-ing and photography, lives and breathes southern R&B […]

Adrianne Lenker’s family escaped a cult when she was just 4 years old; with the release of Big Thief’s third album, U.F.O.F., Lenker has solidified her place at the helm of a cult of her own. Adrianne Lenker makes believers out of everyone. A brilliant songwriter and cubist-style lyricist, deconstructing an experience from multiple angles, […]

“For a musical group to come along like this is very rare — a swirling double helix of truth and love-male and female-earth wind and fire. When they play, I feel it very deep in my DNA and it registers — we are all the same.” – Jim James Leaving a smartphone behind for the […]

Emily Reo’s albums are frequently described as kaleidoscopic, her densely layered and warped pop creations blossoming and bursting with complex twists and fiery vocals, her classically trained voice expanding and robotically folding back on itself through deftly-applied vocoder. On her third full-length, Only You Can See It (Carpark Records), Reo gives this bright kaleidoscope treatment […]