FLOOD

FLOOD is a new, influential voice that spans the diverse cultural landscape of music, film, television, art, travel, and everything in between.
Josh Hurst
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Reviews
Caroline Rose, “Loner”

“Loner” could rightly be called a feminist album or simply a human one, weaponizing empathy in an age of despair.

February 23, 2018
Reviews
SHIRT, “Pure Beauty”

SHIRT comes across as a battle rapper; he blazes through “Pure Beauty” in a blur of shit-talking and chest-puffing.

February 21, 2018
Reviews
Hollie Cook, “Vessel of Love”

“Vessel of Love” feels modest and small-scale—the work of a self-possessed singer who’s inspired by tradition but never beholden to it.

February 05, 2018
Reviews
tUnE-yArDs, “I can feel you creep into my private life”

Merrill Garbus’s latest LP doubles down on hooks and polished mainstream sheen without actually jettisoning any of her quirks or peculiarities.

January 12, 2018
Exchanging Ideas with The JuJu

Nico Segal’s Chicago quartet is exploring what jazz music can and should be in 2017.

December 05, 2017
Reviews
U2, “Songs of Experience”

At fifty-seven, Bono remains weirdly obsessed with charting a song on the radio, and hopelessly committed to the idea that rock and roll can still change the world.

December 04, 2017
Reviews
Mavis Staples, “If All I Was Was Black”

Mavis Staples isn’t one to brandish a song like a weapon—not when she’s so good at disarmament—and here she aims to melt swords into plowshares through the cosmic force of neighborly love, wild empathy, and intentional optimism.

November 17, 2017
Reviews
Kelela, “Take Me Apart”

“Take Me Apart”‘s tension between sleek, modern sound and beating-heart humanity reveals what’s always been great about R&B: that it wears its emotions on its sleeve and provides a conduit for deep feeling.

October 13, 2017
Reviews
Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, “Lotta Sea Lice”

The songs of Barnett and Vile are deliberately gnarled and unkempt, and never sound nearly as fussed-over as they probably are.

October 09, 2017
Reviews
Benjamin Clementine, “I Tell a Fly”

On his second album, the Mercury Prize winner is a big star and a total alien on a pilgrimage through hostile lands.

September 27, 2017
Reviews
The National, “Sleep Well Beast”

By keeping it low-key, the stakes on The National’s new album somehow seem even higher.

September 12, 2017
Reviews
LCD Soundsystem, “American Dream”

Seven years after “This is Happening,” James Murphy remains unparalleled at building slow-burn epics from all the fun bits of his record collection.

August 31, 2017
Reviews
Queens of the Stone Age, “Villains”

It’s another great Queens of the Stone Age record that’s simultaneously of a piece with the others and distinct in its character and identity.

August 23, 2017
Reviews
Joe Henderson, “The Elements” [reissue]

For as much as the spiritual jazz movement of the 1970s reached for the stars, the great triumph of “The Elements” is how earthbound it feels.

August 14, 2017
Reviews
Arcade Fire, “Everything Now”

On paper, “Everything Now” is the dourest of any Arcade Fire album, a significant achievement for a group whose debut album is called “Funeral.”

July 25, 2017
Reviews
Big Boi, “Boomiverse”

Is Big Boi underrated?

June 29, 2017
Reviews
Fleet Foxes, “Crack-Up”

This band does delicate beauty so well that the stand-out moments of “Crack-Up” tend to be the ones where they let their hair down a bit.

June 13, 2017
Reviews
Alice Coltrane, “World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda” [reissue]

These are songs that feel like they’re reaching for something; songs that sound like invocations.

May 15, 2017
Reviews
Mac DeMarco, “This Old Dog”

On his third full-length, DeMarco pits the innately good-natured, easy-going tone of his music against a hint of sorrow in his lyrics.

May 11, 2017
Reviews
Feist, “Pleasure”

Leslie Feist is casually virtuosic and quietly adventurous throughout her first record in six years, though you never get the sense that she’s pushing things just to push.

May 07, 2017
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