10,000 Years Esox Lucifer Turns a Fish’s Latin Name Into a Warning
10,000 Years’ Esox Lucifer wraps existential dread in sci-fi and horror across the Swedish trio’s most ambitious record yet. Full review.
What Spotify’s AI Persona Badge Actually Changes
Spotify’s AI Persona badge targets synthetic identities, starting with the biggest accounts. Here is what it changes, and why the royalty math stays put.
The Roaring Waves Is What Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery Sound Like Proving Nothing
Eight years in the making, The Roaring Waves is Genesis and Marillion’s guitarists choosing friendship over display. Full review.
Besvärjelsen Till Glömskan Ad Oblivionem Is a Record About Losing Your Own Habits
Besvärjelsen’s third album was written as Lea Amling Alazam confronted her own creative process. Full review of Till Glömskan Ad Oblivionem.
Mastodon’s Marrow Deep Turns Two Deaths Into Their Best Album in Years
Written after Brent Hinds’s death and Brann Dailor’s loss of his mother, Marrow Deep is Mastodon’s most emotionally direct record. Full review
Those Who Ride With Giants Serene Trades Grief for Trust
Serene, Those Who Ride With Giants’ fourth album, is the first MJ Callaghan record built on relief instead of grief. Full review.
How Phoebe Bridgers Turned Six Years of Fame Into an Album About Watching It Happen to Someone Else
Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend is out now via Dead Oceans, six years after Punisher. Reviewed: grief, fame, a vocoder, and a perfect critical score
Why Panda Bear and Sonic Boom Kept Their Best Album Off Streaming Entirely
Panda Bear Sonic Boom A ? of WHEN is deliberately absent from streaming. Harp, steel drum, pedal steel, mariachi. A thesis with a record attached.
How If These Trees Could Talk Turned Three Guitars Into an Orchestra Section
If These Trees Could Talk The Hidden Hand. Ten years of silence, three guitars arranged like an orchestra, one Aphex Twin cover
Why Emptiness Spent Twelve Years Finishing a Sentence Nobody Else Would Have Started
Emptiness Nowhere Speaks completes a riff left unfinished in 2014. Recorded live after four years of rehearsal. Reviewed.
