Owen Maxwell

July Talk – Remember Never Before (Toronto) As one of the most chemistry-rich rising rock bands right now, July Talk have managed to keep the hunger and off-centre ferocity that made them so fun in the first place. Even with some more straight shots at radio-ready material in the mix here, [...]

Margo Price – Strays (Aledo, IL/Nashville, TN) Somewhere between her strong vintage sound and her alt-country approach, Margo Price has returned again and again with albums that bridge a guttural rock feeling with something more lyrically nuanced. While this is Price’s most traditional [...]

Grace Ives – Janky Star (Brooklyn) It’s rare to get a proper synth-pop album now that balances the homemade feel we got so much of in the early 2000s and yet feel as polished as most modern radio material. Grace Ives manages to straddle these two aesthetics on her latest record, all [...]

#10: Melody’s Echo Chamber – Emotional Eternal (Aix-en-Provence, France) While we also got a lost album from Melody Prochet that is a wonderful throwback to her earlier sound, we were taken to a new world on her newest record this year. Cerebral, tonally hypnotic and a rare time where [...]

SZA – SOS (St. Louis, MO) As she proved already on CTRL, SZA is a master at the duality of delivering great vocal takes for singles and creating entire worlds on her own albums. Though the bloated runtime of this record does leave a couple weaker moments in the mix, the production here is [...]

Run The Jewels & Various – RTJ CU4TRO (Atlanta, GA/New York City, NY/Various) While Meow the Jewels, showed Run The Jewels could turn self-parody into something musically complex, RTJ CU4TRO provides a retooling of their finest work that has a lot of replay value. With a solid mix [...]

Weyes Blood – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (Santa Monica, CA) With all the good faith behind her from Titanic Rising, Weyes Blood had a lot to live up to for her follow up, and she stuck the landing with true majesty. Stirring and unpredictable at times, this takes everything from [...]

Dragonette – Twennies (Toronto) Though mostly known for electronica over everything, Dragonette has continuously charted a great course into broader indie-pop waters over the years. With a lot more depth in their keys and that same sense of fun in a lot of the writing, Dragonette has [...]

Tropical Gothclub (aka Dean Fertita/Hello=Fire) – Tropical Gothclub (Royal Oak, MI) Between his various stints in the Dead Weather, Queens of the Stone Age and playing with Iggy Pop, it’s truly been a while since Dean Fertita has put out his own record. With a new project name, Fertita [...]

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Changes (Melbourne, Australia) With such a constant turnout in recent years, it’s been great to see King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard start to return to more focused, yet unpredictable efforts. Short, but ultimately a strong record for the [...]