Hop Along – Bark Your Head Off, Dog

I’ve liked Philadelphia indie rockers Hop Along for a while now, but I think I’ve only recently cracked the code as to what makes them special. And that’s that on first listen they seem like the most typical amalgam of what an indie rock band would be expected to sound like: the crunchy guitars, the sneaky rhythmic patterns, the token lady lead singer surrounded by bearded bandmates. But when you actually listen to them closely, there are a lot of things that make Hop Along less than typical: the odd song structures, the leftfield brazenness, and a lady lead singer whose explosive vocals are far more raw and uncompromising than pretty much any lead singer going right now. Continue reading →

Kacey Musgraves – Golden Hour

Sometimes, there are albums that are so easy to love that you don’t really have words to sufficiently describe your feelings for them. But, I suppose that gets at what is remarkable about Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, as it aims to capture a feeling that so many songs fail to. Which is a kind of love song ensconced in calmness. The other Kacey Musgraves albums I’ve heard seem to have a kind of slight neuroses to undercut all of Musgraves’ pangeant girl charms. And here, she seems completely comfortable with being herself, while also comfortable with the idea of falling for somebody that gets her, even if she doesn’t entirely get why. Continue reading →

Frankie Cosmos – Vessel

Frankie Cosmos’ Vessel is the kind of record I feel obligated to write about (since the last Frankie Cosmos album was my #3 album of 2016), but I’m not sure what to write about it. There really isn’t anything particularly different about it from the minutely awesome The Next Thing. Greta Kline’s songs here are just as simultaneously hushed and pulsating as ever, while she still seems quite overwhelmed by the world outside her bedroom, with little desire to do much else other than write a concise, poppy song about it. Continue reading →