Music Reviews

Tigers Blood is songwriter Katie Crutchfield's sixth album as Waxahatchee.

Music & Culture

On 'Tigers Blood,' Waxahatchee is in her anti-eras era

5:01am March 23, 2024

by Laura Snapes

Katie Crutchfield's gorgeous sixth album affirms that real lives are lived not in clear chapters, but as a zig-zag of pitfalls and revelations one can only hope to learn from.

Composer Julia Perry, photographed in Florence, Italy, in 1957 after she won her second Guggenheim fellowship.

Music & Culture

Rediscovering the rigor of composers Julia Perry and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson

4:13pm March 01, 2024

by Tom Huizenga

A new album, American Counterpoints, reasserts the importance of two 20th century Black composers whose work has been neglected.

Music & Culture

'Untame the Tiger' represents a high point of Mary Timony's adventurous career

1:24pm February 27, 2024

by Ken Tucker

The indie rocker's guitar playing conveys a confidence in making music — even when the songs themselves detail doubt and vulnerability. Untame the Tiger is her first solo album in 15 years.

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Inside Long Island's UBS Arena on Feb. 9, Ye commands the crowd at a massive listening event for Vultures 1. His new collab with Ty Dolla $ign is now a No. 1. album.

Music & Culture

At Ye's listening events, true believers rally around a chaotic idol

1:03pm February 19, 2024

by Mano Sundaresan

Kanye West has made stumbling rollouts, toxic comments and blown deals his calling card. But at the launch for his new album Vultures 1, it's clear there's one place where his magnetism hasn't faded.

Howard's vocal malleability allows her to access a whole spectrum of contradictory emotions and gender expressions.

Music & Culture

On 'What Now,' Brittany Howard is a virtuoso in pursuit of a flow state

11:31am February 09, 2024

by Jill Mapes

The former Alabama Shakes leader is in total control of her new album's genre-defying odyssey through this thing called life, evoking the mastery of another do-it-all maestro: Prince.

Music & Culture

New songs by Brittany Howard, Jim Kweskin and Colby T. Helms crackle with energy

1:44pm February 08, 2024

by Ken Tucker

Fresh Air's rock critic recommends three songs that transcend age and genre: Howard's "Another Day," Kweskin's duet with Maria Muldaur, "Let's Get Happy Together," and Helms' "Leanne."

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André 3000's "New Blue Sun Live" tour spent three nights at the Blue Note jazz club in New York.

Music & Culture

Is André 3000 in his jazz era?

3:12pm February 06, 2024

by Hank Shteamer

During his residency of the famed Blue Note jazz club in New York, the OutKast-rapper-turned-flutist showed us why New Blue Sun is both less and more than that question.

Music & Culture

The Paranoid Style blends rock with literary flair with 'The Interrogator'

1:34pm January 29, 2024

by Ken Tucker

The Washington D.C.-based band is led by Elizabeth Nelson, who is also a published music critic. It shows — the music is packed with wordplay, jokes and an undercurrent of serious dread.

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Thom Yorke in his very own wall of eyes, surrounded by deconstructions of the Radiohead bear.

Music & Culture

Can Thom Yorke escape his own voice?

6:16am January 29, 2024

by Grayson Haver Currin

The second album from Radiohead offshoot The Smile is very good. But can its singer ever transcend his role in his revolutionary other band?

Music & Culture

Chick Corea renders Mozart with daring and playfulness on a posthumous new album

1:54pm January 11, 2024

by Lloyd Schwartz

In 2018, three years before his death, the pianist and composer gave a concert in Sardinia that included both Mozart and George Gershwin. A live recording of that concert is now available.

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