What We Heard: June 2018
In What We Heard we highlight a few choice quotes from our writers regarding albums that stood out from this month, and provide you with a playlist of this month’s best songs (featured in the “Favorite Tracks” section of each review).
“The lurid whimsy of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton, both multi-instrumentalists, recalls that of CocoRosie, freshly spun through a meat grinder of electronica. In pop that spurs as much as it glitters, their output suggests the nightmarish emotions and changes of growing up, without falling victim to too many obvious tropes. . . The ambition of I’M ALL EARS alone is enough to mark Let’s Eat Grandma as major up-and-coming players amongst even their more established art pop colleagues.” — Sienna Kresge on Let’s Eat Grandma’s determined and sonically ritch leap forward I’M ALL EARS
“REDEMPTION is Rock’s most accessible and wide-ranging project yet, but he’s still not afraid to get down and dirty. With previous Jay Rock records, he was more interested in introducing the listener to his relatively air-tight ego, with a persona defined by gangbanging and street hustling. But now, through tragedy, he isn’t afraid to poke holes in the life he was previously living.” — Mohammed Ashton Kader on Jay Rock’s re-energized next step, REDEMPTION
“. . . In the more than half-a-decade they took off from being a recording act, the band grew up and learned to reconstruct the musical barriers they destroy, all the while remaining steadfastly eclectic. KAZUASHITA is a shocking and beautiful psychedelic trance of an album, and is by far the most rewarding experimental music I have heard in a long time.” — Ted Davis on Gang Gang Dance’s fascinating neo-psych return KAZUASHITA
Other Notable Recommendations:
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever and their guitar-heavy formal debut HOPE DOWNS
Melody’s Echo Chamber’s long-awaited multilingual psych project BON VOYAGE
Death Grips’ continued world beating on YEAR OF THE SNITCH
Father John Misty’s search for meaning on GOD’S FAVORITE CUSTOMER
Trent Reznor’s best work in years on Nine Inch Nails’ BAD WITCH
