Pianos Become The Teeth - Wait For Love

Score: 3.1 

The fourth record from Baltimore-based self-described "post-rock", "post-emo" band is too much a cliché of the genre itself to ever be taken that seriously. It's sadly affecting to see a band who already knows how to play the game underestimating the listener's capacity to appreciate innovation and creativity in this way. What's worse though, is that the album feels consistently and poignantly boring the whole time. Is it too early to call Wait For Love the weakest rock album of the year? Maybe not.

Tracks I like the most: Bay Of Dreams

Tracks I like the least: Fake Lighting, Bay Of Dreams, Bloody Sweet, Manila

Artist: Pianos Become The Teeth

Country: United States

Album: Wait For Love

Released: 16/02/2018

Genre: Indie Rock, Emo

Length: 46:15

Orphans Of Doom - Stranger Worlds/Fierce Gods

Score: 7.2 

Kansas-based doom metal band Orphans Of Doom mix up post-rock and sludgy structures to create pretty interesting and suffocating songs, for the better or worse. The linear tracks make it difficult to tell the album apart and differenciate the individual pieces, but it's an overall compelling experience that drops out tar, magma and gore all at once. Expendable if you're not into the genre and would like to give it a try, but edgily important if you're a metalhead.

Tracks I like the most: Mythical Sleep, Excension

Tracks I like the least: Pleasure Delayer

Artist: Orphans Of Doom

Country: United States

Album: Stranger Worlds/Fierce Gods

Released: 26/01/2018

Genres: Heavy Metal, Doom Metal, Post-Rock, Sludge Metal, Stoner Rock

Length: 40:00

Hailu Mergia - Lala Belu

Score: 8.4 

In a world full of individualism, cynicism and a constant sense of paranoia, it's so refreshing, important and life-assuring to see there still are records like the Ethiopian accordionist Hailu Mergia's latest release that are there to remind us we're closer than we all think. It's a fantastically uplifting collection of odes that go beyond time and space and blossom as furiously as seamlessly. Lala Belu has the power to save lives and change the world; if we just stopped and listened...

Tracks I like the most: Tizita, Addis Nat, Anchihoye Lene, Lala Belu

Tracks I like the least: Gum Gum

Artist: Hailu Mergia

Country: Ethiopia

Album: Lala Belu

Released: 23/02/2018

Genres: Jazz, Accordion, World Music

Length: 39:28

Tyga - Kyoto

Score: 3.0 

It's hard to think of an artist as consistently disappointing as Tyga, and that conception doesn't weaken with the addition of his sixth album, Kyoto. Irrelevant, lost and exhilaratingly ridiculous for the vast majority of its endless 52 minutes, the rapper throws nonsensical, misogynistic and even self-pitying verses that rub childishness, but at times the project reaches incredible levels of cringe and disgust. To say the least, both the artist and the record feel admirably awful.

Tracks I like the most: Temperature, Leather In The Rain

Tracks I like the least: Come And Ball Wit Me, Boss Up, U Cry, I Need A Girl Pt. 3, Train 4 This, Hot Soup, Faithful

Artist: Tyga

Country: United States

Album: Kyoto

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Hip Hop, Rap, Trap

Length: 52:11

Portal - Ion

Score: 8.1 

Australian metal band returns after a couple of years and adds a wonderful record to their already prolific catalogue. They resist classification and they defy all that's established by bringing the best and scariest from their sounds and senses of texture. It's a truly horrifying album that will make you shake with fear and awe the whole freaking time.

Tracks I like the most: Esp Ion Age, Phreqs, Phathom, Olde Guarde

Tracks I like the least: Spores

Artist: Portal

Country: Australia

Album: Ion

Released: 26/01/2018

Genres: Death Metal, Black Metal, Avant-Garde Metal, Progressive Metal

Length: 37:01

Tiny Moving Parts - Swell

Score: 7.3 

It's another good step for the Benson, Minnesota-based emo band, and surely fans will be more than pleased. But for us outsiders, Swell is indeed a collection of angry, creative and pushing songs that fall under the same spectrums and redundancies after a couple of minutes. In its own unpredictability, it turns out being unsurprisingly straightforward.

Tracks I like the most: Applause, Caution, It's Too Cold Tonight

Tracks I like the least: Malfunction

Artist: Tiny Moving Parts

Country: United States

Album: Swell

Released: 26/01/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Emo, Punk

Length: 31:57

Fischerspooner - Sir

Score: 5.8 

After nine years, one of the most influential electroclash bands returns with as much fire but with far fewer production twists and qualities. The record usually drowns in its own propulsion and lingers in evitable somber passages it rarely comes out from. After an interesting yet warped first part, Sir dissolves and never again returns to shape. The elements were there; it just didn't happen this time.

Tracks I like the most: Stranger Strange, TopBrazil, Everything Is Just Alright

Tracks I like the least: Discreet, Strut, Try Again, Oh Rio

Artist: Fischerspooner

Country: United States

Album: Sir

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Electronic, Electroclash, Experimental

Length: 47:00

Superchunk - What A Time To Be Alive

Score: 8.3 

The eleventh album from indie rock veterans might arguably be their most transcendental record to date. The band has hardly ever sounded this raw, this visceral, this worried. All the elements mingle and add to the album's centerfold: to protest against a demonic system and all the ones who make the Earth a worse place to live in. What A Time To Be Alive, the title, is one of the few ironies and wordplays used in this project, since the band opts to be direct and straightforward in their speech and, by doing so, they may have conjured the most urgent, necessary and important album of the year.

Tracks I like the most: What A Time To Be Alive, Break The Glass, I Got Cut, Reagan Youth, All For You, Black Thread

Tracks I like the least: Dead Photographers, Cloud Of Hate

Artist: Superchunk

Country: United States

Album: What A Time To Be Alive

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Punk-Rock

Length: 32:22 

American Nightmare - American Nightmare

Score: 7.9 

Boston classic hardcore band American Nightmare returns after fifteen years fresher and sharper than ever. With just nineteen minutes of music they are able to convey a solid message and express their fears, anger and wittily cynical conceptions of the world around us and our future as a race and society. Gloomy in extremes, yes, but deliciously macabre and precise too to be fair.

Tracks I like the most: The World Is Blue, American Death, War, Colder Than Death, Dream

Tracks I like the least: Lower Than Life

Artist: American Nightmare

Country: United States

Album: American Nightmare

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Hardcore Punk, Post-Hardcore, Melodic Hardcore

Length: 19:40

American Pleasure Club - a whole fucking lifetime of this

Score: 7.2 

The Baltimore-based rock band attempts and succeeds at creating an indecipherable, indescribable album that travels through time, space and mood on a young adult's head and tries to describe all the obstacles, perceptions and thoughts he may have. Somewhat disjointed and all-over-the-place as it is, a whole fucking lifetime of this is a worthwhile adventure that caresses and cherishes life as much as it damns and ridicules it.

Tracks I like the most: this is heaven & id die for it, all the lonely nights in your life, seemed like the whole world was lost, the sun was in my eyes

Tracks I like the least: just a mistake

Artist: American Pleasure Club

Country: United States

Album: a whole fucking lifetime of this

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Experimental Rock

Length: 35:21

Marlon Williams - Make Way For Love

Score: 8.0 

New Zealand singer-songwriter Marlon Williams' sophomore album is reminiscent to the old rock ballads from the 1950s in the way that it feels breezy and loose, mourning and melancholic. The record truly works when the artist lets his demons go out and have conversations that bring their darkest thoughts and realizations about what love and company mean on their most archaic, celullar forms. Make Way For Love, as an inevitable consequence, feels as revelatory and dangerous as heart-breaking and relatable.

Tracks I like the most: What's Chasing You, Party Boy, Can I Call You, Love Is A Terrible Thing, I Know A Jeweller

Tracks I like the least: Make Way For Love

Artist: Marlon Williams

Country: New Zealand

Album: Make Way For Love

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Alternative Country, Indie Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Indie Rock

Length: 39:08

P. Adrix - Álbum Desconhecido

Score: 7.8 

Angola-descendant, Portugal-born and England-based electronic producer working under the name P. (Produtor: producer) Adrix presents a collection of alien, wobbly and oddly catchy tunes on Príncipe Records, the record label in charge of making portuguese traditional rhythms and artists known to wider spheres. The tracks feel fresh and urgent, even schizophrenic at times, but there's also a precious attention to mood, texture and minimalism. Álbum Desconhecido mumbles between dreamy nightmares and romantic wildness and it's all the more enjoyable for embracing all its contradictions and imperfections.

Tracks I like the most: Bola De Cristral, Ovni, Abertura Da Roda

Tracks I like the least: Sonhos

Artist: P. Adrix

Country: Portugal

Album: Álbum Desconhecido

Released: 23/02/2018

Genres: Post-Kuduro, Batido, Experimental Electronic, Post-Trap, Drum And Bass

Length: 21:49

Poliça and s t a r g a z e - Music For The Long Emergency

Score: 4.2 

American band Poliça teams up with s t a r g a z e to add another record to the already-full list of Trump-era failed protest music albums. Music For The Long Emergency is mostly underwhelming and mediocre in size, but at certain points it reaches epic proportions of failure. It's the clumsiest way I can think of of mixing baroque pop songs with rebellious lyrics and noisy details. Its content might have good intentions, but its execution leaves a whole lot to be desired.

Tracks I like the most: Music For The Long Emergency (if I have to pick the least bad)

Tracks I like the least: Marrow, Agree, Cursed

Artist: Poliça and s t a r g a z e

Country: United States

Album: Music For The Long Emergency

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Electronic, Baroque Pop, Experimental

Length: 38:06

Loma - Loma

Score: 7.1 

The debut full-length album from the Texas-based indie/dreamy rock band is a sparse, new take on the alternates of ambient and lush landscapes. It carries a lot of mysticism and potential, but the same features that at times make it an interesting record are the ones who diminish it at others. Curiously, Loma transcends when it doesn't rely on spaciousness and self-indulge but on cooperative singing, skittling instrumentation and concise speech.

Tracks I like the most: Dark Oscillations, Relay Runner, Jornada, Black Willow

Tracks I like the least: Shadow Relief

Artist: Loma

Country: United States

Album: Loma

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Dream Pop, Ambient, Experimental, Indie Folk

Length: 45:17

Everything Is Recorded - Everything Is Recorded By Richard Russell

Score: 4.8 

XL Recordings frontman Richard Russell's debut album as Everything Is Recorded feels more like a collection of sloppy collages than a proper album. Sampha, Obongjayar, Kamasi Washington, Syd, Giggs, Wiki, Rachel Zeffira, South Korean band Infinte, Peter Gabriel, Owen Pallett, Scritti Politti's Green Gartside and even samples from Gil Scott-Geron and Grace Jones appear throughout the record, sometimes in excessively repetitive ways and almost always in completely underwhelming, uninspiring forms. It's weird to see a producer who's been in charge of concocting some of the best albums in recent years delivering such an adrift, messy and insipid musical work. It is also a pity.

Tracks I like the most: Close But Not Quite, Show Love, Mountains Of Gold

Tracks I like the least: Wet Looking Road, Purify - Interlude, Be My Friend, Everything Is Recorded

Artist: Everything Is Recorded

Country: United Kingdom

Album: Everything Is Recorded By Richard Russell

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, R&B, Soul, Hip Hop

Length: 38:05

Zaki Ibrahim - The Secret Life Of Planets

Score: 7.7 

The South African/Canadian singer's second full-length album is an empowering, rich display of not only her marvelous voice that feels lushed with texture and passion, but also her and her production team's advantageous decisions in order to elevate the songs that swing and play between sexy, futuristic R&B, whispery soul and shy yet ruthless pinches of jazz and electronica. The result is a solid, fun and complex collection of odes and chants to the cosmos and every thing living on it.

Tracks I like the most: Get There, Love Made Naked, Dangerous, Do The Thing Right

Tracks I like the least: Galileo, Binary, Pt. 1

Artist: Zaki Ibrahim

Country: South Africa/Canada

Album: The Secret Life Of Planets

Released: 31/01/2018

Genres: Alternative R&B, Soul, Jazz, Electronic

Length: 50:32

Ought - Room Inside The World

Score: 7.0 

The Montreal-based post-punk band Ought returns and delivers its most somber record to date. The singer's voice is still as razor-blade sharp and creepy and the musical interplays pay off the slow dissolutions and developments from the tracks. But after an excellent first part, the work starts to falter. It's as if the group has gotten dried out of ideas and the work was left up incomplete or, at least, not-fully-finished.

Tracks I like the most: Disgraced In America, Disaffectation, These 3 Things, Desire

Tracks I like the least: Brief Shield, Pieces Wasted, Alice

Artist: Ought

Country: Canada

Album: Room Inside The World

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Post-Punk, Experimental Rock, New Wave

Length: 40:11

Merlin - The Wizard

Score: 8.6 

The Kansas-based metal band returns with their most ambitious album to date. In an attempt to fuse doom atmospheres and ponderous, drony instrumentation with jazz, Merlin succeeds at all levels. They display a fantastically-written and executed concept album that transports you to an ancient, magic era fulled with magic, wisdom, chaos and revolution. They repeat the sentences that form the lyrics to the extent of delirium and do so as confidently as they do master their abilites to conjure up cerebral, bold and pretty entertaining rock songs. As its description suggests, The Wizard arises from the abyss and surpasses time and space. This record might be the most forward-thinking and jaw-dropping piece of heavy music you'll hear all year long.

Tracks I like the most: Abyss, Gravelord, Tarantula Hawk, The Wizard Suite

Tracks I like the least: Golem

Artist: Merlin

Country: United States

Album: The Wizard

Released: 26/01/2018

Genres: Heavy Metal, Doom Metal, Progressive Rock, Drone, Jazz, Stoner Rock, Psychedelic

Length: 39:44

Hovvdy - Cranberry

Score: 7.3 

The duo's sophomore album continues to sedate in the most charming possible way with its lo-fi lullabies that are as breezy as convoluted, and as dreamy as bittersweet. The band plays on a monochromatic palette for most of the record, and that single colour that is shown will make you fall asleep in just a couple of minutes. Whether that comes from immersion or boredom will depend on you approach and preferences to music or, why not, on your current mood.

Tracks I like the most: Brave, In The Sun, Petal, Float

Tracks I like the least: Quitter

Artist: Hovvdy

Country: United States

Album: Cranberry

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, Bedroom Pop, Lo-fi, Pillowcore, Indie Rock

Length: 33:18

Holy Motors - Slow Sundown

Score: 6.9 

Estonian rock quintet Holy Motors arrives on Bandcamp via Wharf Cat Records and delivers a somber, sultry album that swells and swirls into guitar distorsion and reverb and cements stories that might well fit into a post-apocalyptic sci-fi western movie. The only hindrance these songs have is that their own slowpaceness traps them and keeps them away from going beyond the surface. It's as a rootsy-yet-spacey ride full of texture and mood that doesn't even let itself have a chance to be an adventure.

Tracks I like the most: Honeymooning, Signs, Sleeprydr

Tracks I like the least: Ghost Of Heart

Artist: Holy Motors

Country: Estonia

Album: Slow Sundown

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Experimental Rock, Noise, Shoegaze

Length: 31:59

Lalalangue - Ululations

Score: 6.7 

Buffalo, New York-based jazz rock quartet Lalalangue throws its debut full-length album and while it surprises with its fusion of contemporary jazz with rock, pop, soul and R&B, the results are a bit too mellow to break new walls or establish the band as something truly admiring or outstanding. For the rest, it's just an arguably pleasant experience.

Tracks I like the most: Sunsick, Smoke Stack'd, OKKO

Tracks I like the least: What We Langue For, To Be Honest

Artist: Lalalangue

Country: United States

Album: Ululations

Released: 01/02/2018

Genres: Jazz, Rock, Soul, R&B

Length: 39:13

Field Music - Open Here

Score: 8.2 

The seventh album from the English art pop/rock duo continues their classically neurotic-yet-charming approach to music and artistic expression and, this time, it even feels the more coherent to it, considering the state of unrealness and paranoia we've all been living with these past years. Each instrument serves a clear purpose: to lush up cleverly-written songs that urge for mea culpa and abet for self-liberation. To say the least, the Brewis brothers have once again achieved a wonderful record.

Tracks I like the most: Time In Joy, Count It Up, Share A Pillow, Checking On A Message, Find A Way To Keep Me

Tracks I like the least: Cameraman

Artist: Field Music

Country: United Kingdom

Album: Open Here

Released: 02/02/2018

Genres: Indie Pop, Progressive Pop, Art Pop, Art Rock, Funk

Length: 39:39

U.S. Girls - In A Poem Unlimited

Score: 8.5  

The sixth album from Meghan Remy under her moniker U.S. Girls might be her most accessible work to date, but that's not to say the content she presents is easily-digestible. Raw lyrics seem to portray different women, each a protagonist of a song, reacting to some kind of men violence or misbehaviour. They're all accompanied by truly amazing music that's as psychedelic as charming and dance-inducing. The melancholy, the masochism, the wrath, the fury and the lust for a revolution that's surely about to take place make In A Poem Unlimited one of the most necessary, in-your-face, radical records of the year, and position the artist herself as a key figure in the alternative pop and the female voices worlds.

Tracks I like the most: Velvet 4 Sale, Rage Of Plastics, Rosebud, Incidental Boogie, L-Over, Pearly Gates, Poem

Tracks I like the least: Traviata

Artist: U.S. Girls

Country: United States/Canada

Album: In A Poem Unlimited

Released: 16/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Synth Pop, Indie Pop, Alternative Pop, Alternative Dance

Length: 37:46

Justin Timberlake - Man Of The Woods

Score: 5.0 

The first album in five years from the pop superstar Justin Timberlake feels muddled and dazed for the most part of its unnecessarily long 66 minutes. The production team usually hits the marks and delivers some great tunes, but the fusion between the singer's classic contemporary pop and the forcefully rootsy country music doesn't always work. The lyrics are often terribly redundant and clichéd, and even embarrassing at times. To sum it up, Man Of The Woods is not as bad as everyone wants you to believe, but it's definitely not as good as it was meant or thought to be; rather than that, it is a compositional mess and a flawed conceptual album.

Tracks I like the most: Midnight Summer Jam, Sauce, Flannel (up to the horrible outro)

Tracks I like the least: Supplies, Say Something, Montana, Breeze Off The Pond, Livin' Off The Land

Artist: Justin Timberlake

Country: United States

Album: Man Of The Woods

Released: 02/02/2018

Genres: Contemporary R&B, Synth Funk, Country, Pop, Americana

Length: 66:04

Harm's Way - Posthuman

Score: 7.6 

The latest release from the Chicago-based hardocre/metal band is raucous and filthy, and even deeper in texture thanks to the addition of industrial, silvery sounds to the already-cathartic songs. After an excellent first part, the latter faints a little in comparison, but it's an overall joyfully rotten experience for the ones willing to do so.

Tracks I like the most: Human Carrying Capacity, Last Man, Sink, Temptation

Tracks I like the least: The Gift

Artist: Harm's Way

Country: United States

Album: Posthuman

Released:

Genres: Heavy Metal, Hardcore, Industrial, Experimental

Length: 33:59

Son Lux - Brighter Wounds

Score: 8.1 

The fifth record from New York-based experimental rock band Son Lux continues to thread their idiosyncratic rebel, monstrous, energetic sound with lyrics that defy the world we were imposed to live in. Lush choirs and a crispy, fragmented voice are paired down with syncopated, tumultuous music to create radical and spiritualized songs. As its title suggests, the trio sounds as wounded and uneased as ever, but this time conjuring up more epic and melodramatic heights. Another one in the basket for them.

Tracks I like the most: Forty Screams, Dream State, Labor, The Fool You Need, Slowly

Tracks I like the least: Aquatic

Artist: Son Lux

Country: United States

Album: Brighter Wounds

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Art Rock, Experimental Rock, Noise Rock, Chamber Pop, Indie Rock

Length: 44:43

Lea Bertucci - Metal Aether

Score: 7.8 

New York-based composer Lea Bertucci gives another step into her vast and promising career experimenting with her alto saxophone and machines like magnetic tapes to prove up to what extent can the organic melt up with the artificial. The results are echoey, saturated, profoundly ancestral and daringly irresistible.

Tracks I like the most: Patterns For Alto, Sustain And Dissolve

Tracks I like the least: Accumulations

Artist: Lea Bertucci

Country: United States

Album: Metal Aether

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Ambient, Electroacoustic, Noise, Drone, Experimental, Avant-Garde, Musique Concrète

Length: 43:12

Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus

Score: 8.4 

On his latest solo release, Ezra Furman battles his demons in a self-deprecating and absurdly vivid manner. The songs are eerie and cynical but, at the same time, they carry a certain mysticism and masochism that make you wonder who's the hero and who's the villain, and that make the artist a compelling, alluring force to follow from the album's first second to its last. In its own instability, Transangelic Exodus is awe-inspiring and equally as charming.

Tracks I like the most: Suck The Blood From My Wound, Driving Down To L.A., The Great Unknown, Compulsive Liar, Maraschino-Red Dress $8.99 At Goodwill, Love You So Bad, Peel My Orange Every Morning

Tracks I like the least: Come Here Get Away From Me

Artist: Ezra Furman

Country: United States

Album: Transangelic Exodus

Released: 09/02/2018

Genres: Indie Rock, Noise Rock, Art Rock

Length: 42:25