FLOOD

The new Ian White–directed film portrays Nick Cave’s post-punk noise act during their fast, furious flame out between 1977 and 1983.

The musician, filmmaker, artist, and taste-maker discusses his debut solo album Outta Sync—and the lifetime of creative projects that preceded it.

Daniel Lopatin’s “speculatively autobiographical” tenth album marries a handful of his past styles, soulful vibes, and sample tricks into one future-forward, frothing, fluid stream of sound.

The jazz saxophonist sets his sights on gospel legend Mahalia Jackson with a holy, avant-garde litany of spiritually enhanced songs equally inspired by Coleman and Mingus.

With the aid of producer Cate Le Bon, the psych-folk songwriter’s Mexican Summer debut swaps crinkly textures for something uncharacteristically glossy.

The band’s surprise-released companion piece to First Two Pages of Frankenstein is the lonely monster’s book’s end—dogeared and bleaker, but somehow more dynamic.

The goal of this reissue of the band’s iconic 1971 LP is to fully present Townshend’s vision for the deity-driven conceptual production it replaced.

The trumpeter-composer formerly known as Christian Scott talks creating new worlds—and more new instruments—with his latest album Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lightning.

On his sixth record, the analog-electronic atmosphere ace returns to the creepy, glitchy instrumentalism and blip-breezy softcore dubstep that got him here in the first place.

The Beasties’ 1998 future-forward, mid-career opus gets expanded into a four-LP box set with rarities, remixes, a coffee table book, and more for its 25th anniversary.

The trumpeter and composer’s posthumous third album seamlessly blends free improvs with a psych-punkish vibe, Latin rhythms, and an opulent sense of string-driven harmonics.

The daughter of João Gilberto takes back her heritage with a tribute to her father that retains the spare, skeletal qualities of her own best electronic-laced work.

Re-released with additional live tracks for its 40th anniversary, the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme’s concert film portrays the band’s command of frenetic rhythm and liquid ambience joined for something uniquely forceful and offbeat.

John Lydon discusses the heavy themes at the center of his post-punk project’s 11th album, End of World.

The new singles/remix collection from the band’s 2009 LP sounds surprisingly modern—glossy in spots, but with a sense of sweaty edginess necessary for the dancefloor.

Kovacs curator Josh Mills discusses his new book Ernie in Kovacsland and the legacy of the early TV and radio figure’s unique comic voice.

Initially scheduled for a 1977 release, this mostly acoustic project is defined by memorably raw melodies and impeccable sequencing—it’s the most potent of Young’s many “almost” LPs.

With her new covers LP alongside Bobbie Nelson out now, the songwriter discusses working with the late pianist, as well as getting her start with the help of another icon of Texas music.

This first-ever all-oeuvre study of the Fleetwood Mac vocalist’s solo music is mystical (of course), fragrant, and funky, all of it aging like fine wine no matter what the vintage.

The vocalist-pianist took no prisoners at her short, sharp 1966 Newport Jazz Festival performance of legend, as can be heard on its first formal release.

The director of the new documentary Have You Got It Yet? and the iconic songwriter discuss the influence of Barrett’s abstract artistry.

The Who drummer Zak Starkey and Happy Mondays vocalist Shaun Ryder discuss bringing the psychedelia of Saturn’s outer rings to your doorstep with their new project.

The Brit-pop quartet play it shockingly and crankily tight, wrenchingly emotional, and wondrously melodic on their ninth studio album.

This collection of Richard’s major-label 45s presents an artist both hungry and haughtily proud, in full-possession of all that made him mighty and unique.

With Basquiat: King Pleasure extending its run in Los Angeles through October, we spoke with the late artist’s sister Jeanine Heriveaux and friend Kenny Scharf about his legacy.

Joining forces with producer Dave Fridmann doesn’t so much surprise as it does add another notch to the nu-jazz saxophonist’s Orion’s belt.

Taken as a conjoined pair of menacing, neo-metal LPs, the aesthetic value of these early-’70s works—newly re-released and sonically punched up—is a meal in and of itself.

Harvey’s first album in seven years is a loosely knotted dreamscape of clanging church bells, thundering drums, and busted-up guitar sounds smoothed over with folk-tronic gauziness.

This collaborative solo record finds the Buena Vista Social Club member at a happy crossroads with his longtime country music influences and something of a freer, silkier sound.

The Scissor Sisters vocalist’s sophomore solo album proves to be an unstoppable force specked with glitter flakes and stardust.

Revisiting the iconic synth-punk duo’s 1988 LP on the occasion of its recent deluxe reissue, Rev recalls how nobody did it like Suicide—except for Bruce Springsteen, briefly.

With his fourth studio album, Archy Marshall painstakingly sculpts lyrics to sound like hastily made emotions—but they mostly come off as refrigerator-magnet wordiness.

Rather than attempting the corny “duets album” trend, this cosmopolitan take on earthen classics is an aptly communal sharing of sociopolitics and human interest rhetoric.

The band pushes through the immediacy of life’s end like they were kicking in a green room door on this statement of mourning, which rages with no time for subtlety.

The soundtrack to Alma Har’el’s 2021 concert film is a magnificent, elastic set of renditions of Dylan’s most beloved (and least played) mini-epics of ache, revenge, and recall.

With breezy R&B melodies and roomy Afrobeat arrangements to guide her, Monáe turns from robotic sci-fi to the earthly influence of Fela Kuti for her latest loll through Wondaland.

Even when highly orchestrated with the help of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Warwick’s early singles have a certain raw quality to them allowing each song a subtle edginess.

The Goldfrapp vocalist is bound for the dancefloor on her debut solo outing.

On their ninth album, the Malian outfit moves further through their exploratory desert-blues aesthetic by interlocking their groove with the sounds of American country music.

We spoke with Kevin Rowland about the iconic new wave outfit’s first album of original material in over a decade, arriving July 28 via 100% Records.

Capturing Marc Almond and David Ball’s recent reunion tour celebrating 40 years of their debut disc, the pop icons span the distance from the dark electro of their origins to their more recent socially aware songwriting.

With their fourth LP, the D’Addario brothers have moved the needle from the hammy, theatrical rock-outs of their past to something more earnest and plainly emotional.

To celebrate its 20-year anniversary, this reissue package includes a 27-song live set from 2003—as well as the remastered sounds of a scabby record that all but blew out your CD player.

On their first record in 24 years, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt balance the bedsit-melancholic intimacy of their earliest character studies with the chill club music of their later work.

34 titles to keep an eye out for at the first post-pandemic slam dance.

Ahead of his performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall this weekend, the Brazilian-born musician talks returning to his longtime home of Los Angeles.

Already clarion-clearly produced for (mostly) ship-in-a-bottle precision, the 2023 reissue’s sound is bracing nearly to a fault, with what was rushed in its original release subtly made right.

The Daft Punk member’s orchestral debut saws and soars its way into a nearly nirvana-like state.

On their latest full-length, the Manchester funk-punk group reinvent their skeletal dance-floor groove to concoct something sunshiny and frisky without denying their aggro past.

This four-album set collects some of the most ferocious career-spanning moments from the art-prog act recorded at a live session in London.

The now-50-year-old iconic LP—and its rarely heard Wembley live show recording—represents progressive rock at its most endearing, embraceable, and enduring.

The radically caffeinated and overheated emcees’ new duet album achieves a cohesion that could only be described as alchemical magic.

Shame, sex, death, and family all wriggle through Del Rey’s new album as if pouring mercury through a sieve, with Jack Antonoff’s light orchestration designed to make it all go down easy.

Adam Bhala Lough and Ethan Higbee’s 2009 documentary on the producer and toaster is now streaming on Criterion Channel, and available physically through Factory 25 and Vinegar Syndrome.

The sonic sparseness of the band’s fifteenth album—and first since the passing of co-founder Andrew Fletcher—is a welcome retreat from their more conventional forays into universality over the past decade.

This massive collection of re-recorded hits offers genuine surprises as to how the band sees themselves and their material, making for their best new old album in some time.

Pine talks transforming the fictional group into a real band of sorts, and choosing aptly emotional ’70s-centric needle drops for the series’ Fleetwood Mac–ish drama.

The Long Island–based trio’s Möbius-stripped voices in tandem with Prince Paul’s seamless sampling are what make their 1989 debut one of hip-hop’s foremost GOAT contenders.

Dedicated to her gauzy Los Angeles’s sunny days and noir-ish nights, Miley’s eighth LP is her most consistent, evenly handed record to date.

In addition to live recordings and rarities, this two-vinyl, four-CD package features a remastered version of the pair’s 1998 collaboration Painted by Memory that will break your heart with each spin.

Retitled “Mr. Fear, So Long,” the collaborative rework reanimates the single with “alien funk.”

The iconic Chicago house duo discuss their trajectory from their early major-label releases in the late-’80s to the two records they’ve crafted since reforming in 2021.

The Berkeley troubadour’s once-lost 1977 solo disc is full of weary songs both beautifully plainspoken and warmly character-driven.

Damon Albarn dampens some of the project’s kinkier oddities in favor of symmetry and sleekness on his latest star-studded recording.

Label head JC Chamboredon discusses the profound impact the composer and electronic music legend has had on the label his father founded in 1978.

The archival label’s founders discuss the long road to this weekend’s anniversary festivities in LA, with Codeine, Unwound, Karate, and more set to take the stage at the Palace Theater.

The loud, bass-bin rattles of the sequel to their 2021 LP sound like a party among old friends and new, mixing cutting-edge noise-rock R&B with old-school shoegaze and synth pop.

On the series’ 17th installment, listeners are transported to the sound of desire, a Dylan reconnecting and reconnoitering with a curt and surly muse.

The Mississippi garage rockers move past lo-fi toward a more soulful and power-chord heavy sound on their Patrick Carney–produced fifth album.

The Atlanta rapper has taken up the mantle of prog-psychedelic, live-band hip-hop, and the results are as outwardly wily and avant-garde as they are insular and introspective.

Like a short story writer moving into the novel’s narrative form, the East Coast rapper has figured out how to expand his dreamy sensibilities without losing his intimate sleepy qualities.

The Italian rockers’ third effort is the slick, chic, and over-stuffed meal in which to portray their fullest flavors.

The first EP from Deftones’ Chino Moreno and Far’s Shaun Lopez in nearly a decade never ceases to thrill, even in its quietest measures.

On their second bite-size studio release since 2013, the space-age surf punks are angrier and more propulsive-sounding than in their past, and with that, more bluntly direct in their execution.

This live box set showcases newly made medleys that result in razor-sharp glam-rock cuts with complex melodic curveballs, crushing metal-pop guitar work, and the chemistry of a close-knit, veteran bar band.

The guitarist/vocalist with two new albums examines his time with Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, The Gun Club, and The Cramps.

20 collections that defy the streaming age.

Padded with interviews and commentary, the real draw of Criterion’s 4K digital master is the inclusion of full versions of the avant-garde films excerpted in the doc.

The guitarist discusses the therapeutic jams of his sophomore solo LP under the outlet Hundred Watt Heart.

30 titles to keep an eye out for at this Friday’s annual post-turkey crate dig.

Beyond its golden coloring reflecting Coltrane’s sunburst spirituality, this reissue highlights the intertwined holy path shared with her late husband conveyed in the cosmic music she crafted in his wake.

This no-fat, all-funk debut EP is like a hard, wet kiss planted unexpectedly on your lips.

The twin neo-metal LPs incorporating bits of blues, country, punk, and classical into their tunes finally arrive together in one large package with three times the bombast.

This 5-LP collection spanning 1981 to 1990 shows that the Sheffield group were way ahead of the curve when it came to the innovations made in the name of future-looking synth-pop.

Mogwai, Man Man, IDLES, and The National are among the artists contributing chilly, distant remixes as part of this historical, 46-song overview of the krautrock duo’s original albums.

It’s the vocal textures and potent poli-sci lyricism that move all the needles on the NYC hardcore innovators’ third and most maximal album.

Capturing the mesmeric vibe and stretched compositional prowess of The Beatles and George Martin circa 1966, this lavish heavy vinyl kit meets the new expectations set by the epic Get Back.

Re-released 21 years after its debut, the producer and composer’s power-pop turn is a decorous affair with a personal and personable backstory.

His first solo album of vocal-based song since 2005 is mostly oddly beautiful and vaguely over-obvious in the lyric department, the latter strange for an Eno effort.

With Criterion Collection’s new 4K HD digital restoration out now, we revisit the industrialist nightmare of the 21st-century noir horror film.

Confusing expectations again, Rundgren’s latest seems to outstretch its long arms to accommodate guests rather than interacting in a duet setting.

Producer Larry Klein welcomes an elastic jazz ensemble to manipulate the subtle majesty of Cohen’s music for a murderer’s row of vocalists on a varied, often less-than-obvious selection of tracks.

On this lost 1957 classic, the rarity of Mingus compositions for sextet fly to the fore in vividly colorful and aptly tuned dedication to friends and fellow masters.

The psychedelic R&B of the DC songwriter’s clattering new album rings out righteously in the name of refreshed contentment and love lived to its fullest.

The debut collaboration between the two experimentalists courses through one’s evolution of self-expression while pursuing the tenderness of community.

Languid, jamming, and psychedelic, the group’s second LP of 2022 is more elastic than its immediate predecessor, and more spacious than anything since Californification.

This multi-disc collection serves to remind us that Strummer was never looking to re-make The Clash, but rather to confound the expectations of his audience and expand his own horizons.

Removing the classicism, glam-goth density, and commitment to bleeding-heart Brit-punk of previous recordings leaves nothing behind on the songwriter’s third LP.

Keith Morris’ latest hardcore-punk outlet expands outward from their rough, fast exterior without losing their fury or favor in hardcore branding.