I’ve always been intrigued by St. Vincent’s music but never fully engaged. Everything she produces is extremely stylized, but the substance often seemed a bit lacking. Evidently, Annie Clark’s 2012 collaboration with David Byrne did her much good, as “Digital Witness” has an immediate and profound impact with its bracing funk syncopation and paranoid social commentary. If […]

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This hit last week, but I’m still obsessing over it. I always assumed Arctic Monkeys would be difficult to cover because so much of the band’s appeal rests in Alex Turner’s cadence, but CHVRCHES do justice to Turner’s slinkiest riff to date with this ethereal interpretation. Or maybe it’s just that I could listen to […]

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You think you’ve got game, and then you meet Drew Harkins and you throw the game away because you just can’t win. Deerhunter, Monomania (4AD) Pick your favorite review of this album: a.) Monomania is a willfully inscrutable/abstruse nocturnal garage pastiche of shopworn indie standards, pieced together meticulously from a post-nothing fakebook, delivered with mesmerizing […]

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Logan K. Young is the Editor in Chief at Classicalite.com. ALBUMS: Body/Head, Coming Apart (Matador) Lonnie Holley, Keeping a Record of It (Dust to Digital) Because Oxford American needs to see him. Wolf Eyes, No Answer: Lower Floors (De Stijl) Richard Youngs, Summer Through My Mind (Ba Da Bing!) Because Ba Da Bing! captured him […]

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The Pixies — now with 100 percent more Paz Lenchnatin! — released to their website yesterday a new EP. The oh-so-cleverly named EP-2 is the follow-up to last year’s abysmal EP-1. (Which, if you’re anything like me, you were able to block from your mind with repeated listens to “Distance Equals Rate Times Time.”) If […]

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1. Lorde, Pure Heroine (Universal) I’m fairly certain I would not have surmised my most listened to album of the year would have been written and recorded by a 16-year-old girl from New Zealand. I guess it proves I’m not utterly dead inside that I can still be this taken aback. Pure Heroine is an […]

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Robert Howell is a professor of philosophy at SMU. His latest book is called Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity and is available at Amazon. Now that you are good and intimidated, below are his thoughts on a few records from the past year. ——————————————— I seem to be the only person who doesn’t like […]

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