Album Reviews

Adam Granduciel, the main man behind the War on Drugs, is a decent songwriter, a passable singer, and a good musician. But what he and the band really excel at is a kind of indie-rock interior design: politely anthemic middlebrow guitar romanticism that drifts and builds gorgeously, luxuriating in cozy …

On “Tierra,” one of the most arresting moments of Bomba Estereo’s new album Deja, vocalist Li Saumet offers a bleak list of crimes against the planet: “They took away the sea, sky, and wind,” she sings. “They took the wind from us, they burned the jungle, they sold the lands, …

In the current crop of reggaetoneros, Rauw Alejandro has set himself apart as a modern day song-and-dance man, a performer defined by his natural showmanship and rigorous onstage choreography. With his second album Vice Versa, the Puerto Rican singer takes reggaeton into the future, flexing his versatility as he incorporates …

Over the past half a century, Bruce Springsteen has played down-on-their-luck working men, wide-eyed youngsters growing up too quickly, local-circuit rockers who can only dream of playing stadiums, Cadillac ranchers tearin’ up the highway for cheap kicks, and on and on in his songs. Although he was playing roles in …

Chloe and Halle Bailey were barely teenagers when their YouTube cover of Beyonce’s “Pretty Hurts” became a viral hit, winning the attention of the pop superstar herself, who signed them to her Parkwood label, featured them on the Lemonade visual album, and took them on her Formation tour as her …

“I make soulless electronic pop,” Lady Gaga once said. “But when you’re on Ecstasy in a nightclub grinding up against someone and my music comes on, you’ll feel soul.” That kind of contradiction — between the mechanical and the spiritual, between isolation and connection, between escapism and meaning — is …

For the first couple years of her career, Rico Nasty worked to develop her “sugar trap” style — melodious, Lil Yachty-indebted sing-song flexes on top of beats that sounded like souped-up versions of the Barney theme song. Her career trajectory changed course one night in late 2017, during her first-ever …