Fungi served as Bjork's latest muse in her new album, 'Fossora'
Bjork's Fossora peers down into the soil, in a love letter to fungi. "Bubbly and fun" is how she describes her new album.
Music Reviews
Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 'Cool It Down' is an exhilarating yet unhurried return
The band's first new record in nine years confronts environmental ruin and pandemic-era isolation, but ends at a vantage of hope — one that sounds like it took all the intervening time to reach.
'Searching in Grenoble' showcases the unique style of jazz pianist Mal Waldron
Nobody sounds like Waldron, a fact proved by a new 2-CD recording the artist made during a 1978 solo concert. Searching in Grenoble is a good introduction to the pianist's compelling sound.
'Words & Music' offers 15 demos Lou Reed recorded as a fledgling artist
Reed died in 2013. A new collection, recorded in 1965, captures the earliest-known versions of some of the Velvet Underground's best known songs, including "Heroin" and "Pale Blue Eyes."
Lambchop's long and winding road
Kurt Wagner's Nashville collective has always been an expression of absolute possibility. The Bible, his best album in a decade, points that instinct at life's most inescapable truth.
Makaya McCraven's 'In These Times': A musical marvel made by meticulous process
On his new album the drummer, composer and self-described "beat scientist" makes music by way of an elaborate hybrid method combining improvisation with careful editing. It sounds like magic.
A review of Space Force's new anthem, 'Semper Supra'
The Space Force has released their new anthem, "Semper Supra." NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Stephen Thompson from NPR Music to review it.
Jake Blount's 'The New Faith' is a cautionary, clarifying Afrofuturist tale
On Blount's new concept album, the singer, scholar and multi-instrumentalist reimagines field recordings of spirituals to tell a story about a time after the climate crisis has destroyed the earth.
The uneasy confessions of Alex G
As a songwriter, Alex Giannascoli has long taken a mutating, playfully distorted approach. But on his new album, full of songs about morality, he astutely focuses every magic trick in his discography.
Codeine's lost album 'Dessau' feels like a ghost
Scrapped and shelved until now, Dessau mirrors a particularly fraught moment for the slowcore band.