-
David Bazan's multi-part memoirs have blurred memories of his adolescence, but with the goal of being honest and accountable. NPR Music critic Ann Powers sees connections between Pedro the Lion's Santa Cruz and Jane Schoenbrun’s new film, I Saw the TV Glow.
-
Swamp Dogg, aka Jerry Williams Jr., began his career in the 1960s. Now 81, he demonstrates that, in his long career in R&B, soul and funk, country is another road he’s traveled.
-
The British singer Dua Lipa has become one of the world's biggest pop stars. Now, she's back with Radical Optimism, a sort of concept record about moving through life with a more mature and constructive attitude. But it's also a pretty straightforward collection of grievance-free, hyper-catchy bangers.
-
The singer-songwriter's fourth album is her best yet, with crisp, commanding songwriting, shades of '60s baroque pop and melodies that seem to have existed forever.
-
In 1959, Rollins was a few years into one of the great hot streaks in jazz history when he took a three-week trip to Europe. Three hours from that tour are heard on a new Rollins-approved reissue.
-
The Houston-bred artist's new album uses country as a trapdoor into a sweeping genre expression. By adopting the role of the outlaw, she's free to toss all rules into the trash heap.
-
Katie Crutchfield's gorgeous sixth album affirms that real lives are lived not in clear chapters, but as a zig-zag of pitfalls and revelations one can only hope to learn from.
-
The former Alabama Shakes leader is in total control of her new album's genre-defying odyssey through this thing called life, evoking the mastery of another do-it-all maestro: Prince.
-
The surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival, now released as an album, is another exciting evolution in Joni Mitchell's notoriously chameleonic career.
-
On The Ballad of Darren, the band's ninth album (and a surprise after years away), Damon Albarn and company understand the key to aging gracefully is noticing the things your younger self never could.
-
El Kempner turns the force of their wiry indie rock toward collapse, yet the visceral palette of Eye on the Bat has an unexpectedly joyful quality.
-
On the singer-songwriter's 16th studio album Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart, Williams is at her most emotionally uncompromising and astute.