Avant-Metal’s Lords of Terror: Fantômas’ Eponymous Debut at 25
Fantômas stand as one of the most audacious music projects of the 1990s. You almost wonder if the quasi-mainstreamish Faith No More held Mike Patton back.
experimental rock
Melvins’ ‘Tarantula Heart’ Marks Their Strange Trip
Melvins are masters of their craft, still able to make songs that stand with their finest work precisely because they’re never trying to recapture that past.
25 Years of Tom Waits’ ‘Mule Variations’
With Mule Variations, Tom Waits tamed his vaudevillian guises and showed that he was aging gracefully, while retaining his integrity towards his artistry.
Avalanche Kaito’s ‘Talitakum’ Is a Jagged, Electroacoustic Dream
Avalanche Kaito’s Talitakum is one of the most intriguing albums this year so far. It’s a work of futurist folk-rock and a mixed-media sculpture.
What Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ Got Right About Music Streaming
Wilco’s net-streaming experiment with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was part of the utopian promise for technology’s future, and it worked.
Kim Gordon’s ‘The Collective’ Is an Addictive Mix of Sounds
Who had Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon making a collection of trunk-rattling near hip-hop and industrial noise on their 2024 bingo card?
Can and Damo Suzuki Shimmer Brightly on ‘Live in Paris 1973’
Part of a recent series of archival releases, Live in Paris 1973 provides an indispensable glimpse of Can and their lead vocalist, Damo Suzuki, at their peak.
Brian Eno’s ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’ After 50 Years
Brian Eno’s approach captured the best of what we wanted from punk, new wave, prog, glam, and classic ’60s pop and channeled their excesses by relying on chance.
‘Walls Have Ears’ Captures Sonic Youth’s Abrasive Adolescence
Drawn from recordings of UK shows in 1985, Walls Have Ears is a wild, unvarnished listen that gets back to the difficult, defiant essence of Sonic Youth.
Animal Hospital’s ‘Shelf Life’ Is Intense, Layered Maximalism
Under the moniker Animal Hospital, Kevin Micka unspools a potent mix of instrumental tension and experimentalism on his first full-length album in three years.
Just ‘Kids’: Lou Barlow and John Davis of the Folk Implosion Return
John Davis and Lou Barlow revisit the song, album, and soundtrack that helped make the Folk Implosion a seminal trip-hop-indebted indie-rock success story.
Gold Dime Make a Torrent of Beautiful Noise on ‘No More Blue Skies’
Gold Dime’s No More Blue Skies can be loud, fast, and urgent but will also disarm you and create a deeply unsettling atmosphere. It’s well worth the wait.