It’s as perfect a pop album as you’re going to get this year. The proof is in a finished product where nothing feels out of place or approached half-heartedly. must use during their writing and recording sessions. That belies as precision and care that Caws and co. Yet, this new LP is only the eighth in the group’s history. The music feels so effortless in that way. Listening to You Know Who You Are, or really any of Nada Surf’s albums from the past two decades, there’s the sense that Caws could knock out a collection of tunes with one hand tied behind his back.
The veteran player adds so much more punch and beauty to Nada Surf, as well as a welcome touch of the arch-psychedelia and skittish blues that distinguished his work in Cobra Verde and Guided By Voices. While the band has evidenced a welcome consistency to their work over the years, their last album, 2012’s The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy, and this new LP have benefited from the addition of guitarist Doug Gillard. DantonĮven though New York-based indie pop group Nada Surf is nearing its 25th birthday and singer Matthew Caws is closing in on 50, the pain of heartbreak is still resonating within them. By contrast, Bachmann sounds like he’s just getting started. Few artists manage to get that far, and many of those who do have long since become calcified in terms of style and subject matter. What’s perhaps most impressive about Eric Bachmann is where the album falls in the arc of his career. The singer has changed the way he uses his voice over the years, and what was often a (purposely) strangled yelp in the Archers of Loaf days has become a warmer and more nuanced instrument capable of deeply expressive moments.
Bachmann wrote most of these songs on piano, rather than guitar, and the different approach suits his vocals. These nine songs are among the most intimate he’s written, with lyrics by turns blunt and delicate, underpinned with the candor you’d expect from an old friend given to straight talk. Though he’s released music under his own name before, interspersed among the other projects, Eric Bachmann feels like the start of something new. When that group broke up in 1998, he gave voice to his subtler, more tuneful side as the mastermind and sole continuous member of Crooked Fingers. KearseĮric Bachmann started out as one-quarter of the proudly abrasive indie-rockers Archers of Loaf.
This isn’t just a collection of b-sides: this is Kendrick’s What If version of his own mythology, flaws as alternate histories, unrealized retcons. happily embraces that shared DNA, reveling in the subtleties that set it apart. But that’s precisely this album’s beauty: instead of shying away from the long shadow of To Pimp a Butterfly, untitled unmastered. Each song is time-stamped and untitled, stillborn inside the To Pimp a Butterfly session in which it was conceived. necessarily lives in that album’s shadow. Featuring many of the same collaborators, themes and sonic templates as To Pimp A Butterfly, untitled unmastered. shows that the holes in his willed chrysalis might be more interesting than the beauty promised by the cocoon. His harrowed and ongoing metamorphosis into a butterfly is the narrative he’s chosen and is the story he’ll likely will stick with for the foreseeable future, but untitled unmastered. Kendrick Lamar is a pretty varied guy, as horny as he is existentialist. While Price has faced a number of setbacks to get where she is today, her talent beams golden bright on this album.
To write, sing and relate to your listeners as she does is a rare trio of traits. There have been comparisons to Loretta Lynn, which must be flattering to the up-and-coming singer. Price’s voice is equally as engaging as her writing, going from mournful to exclamatory, oftentimes in the same song. A few months later with the release of Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, there are songs that tug at your heartstrings, and there are songs that encompass the emotions that run the gamut of the human experience from love, loss, confusion, anger, resilience and fear. Margo Price: Midwest Farmer’s Daughterīack in September of 2015, Third Man Records gave a teaser of the forthcoming Margo Price project. From b-side collections to decades-old live releases to new original tunes, here are the 10 highest rated albums that Paste reviewed in March. 2 album of 2015) and classic, canonized musicians releasing a range of standout works. March saw modern acts (namely, the artist who created our No.