There's a certain magic in each album from The New Pornographers. The Former Site Of delivers more exquisitely-constructed indie rock, with gorgeous harmonies, heady guitar riffs, and ear worm choruses. The band's storytelling has never been finer, with each track chronicling moments of personal and and global extremes in vignettes that feel pulled straight from literary fiction. Come for the infectious melodies, stay for the deeper dive into human behavior. This one is packed with hit after hit.
Ryan Bingham's latest album sits nicely in the tradition of rootsy, restless Americana. They Call Us The Lucky Ones is for endless highways and lonely country roads, an exploration of the dreams we've been sold, the longing for connection, and the search for home. These tales of love and loss, drifters and outsiders, are perfectly suited for Bingham's gruff voice. An album that feels urgent yet timeless, melancholic yet hopeful.
The transcendent, deeply affecting power of music is on full display in Other Lives new album, Volume V . Recorded in a former church, the album has a soaring, cathedral-like sound, fusing Americana with chamber pop, spaghetti western, and soaring symphonic sounds. This is a swooning, lovely album with moments of almost unearthly beauty.
Ostensibly a popstar, Spanish singer Rosalía is so much more. Her new album, Lux , is intellectual, experimental, and one-of-a-kind. Recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, arranged by Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning contemporary classical artist and composer Caroline Shaw, and with a cast of collaborators including Bjork, Yves Tumor, fado singer Carminho, flamenco singer Estrella Morente, Spanish singer/composer Sílvia Pérez Cruz, and American regional Mexican music trio Yahritza y su Esencia, you know this album's going to be special. Rosalía sings of faith and heartbreak, with lyrics in her native Spanish and Catalan, plus Arabic, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Portuguese, Sicilian, and Ukrainian. Unexpected, soaring, and stirring, this is the cinematic modern-classical-meets-experimental-pop-with-religious-undertones album of your dreams.