MGMT | Little Dark Age
A completely welcome surprise, Little Dark Age is MGMT’s return to the pop world. While, in some ways, it is two completely different concepts: the first half being full of sweet pop tunes and the second half a truly exploratory record of muggy psychedelic rock. As a whole MGMT remains moody, retrospective, and have thankfully found out, again, how to write great hooks. Sure the band doesn’t ooze the electricity that they once did, but there’s still a lot of great songwriting and production to digest.
Palm | Rock Island
There seems to be a bit of unfair bias against Palm’s style of idiosyncratic pop music. While some call them self-indulgent, pretentious or even just musical wankers, there’s something to be said for a group so inherently untrained at playing their instruments releasing a record so wonderfully eccentric, restless and completely beautiful. Palm gets kicked around a lot, but if this was a new Dirty Projectors record critics would be falling all over themselves to laud the group. Instead, there’s a lot of “who do these guys think they are?” Do yourself a favor and give this record and this group a fair listen and you’ll be rewarded for it.
Ezra Furman | Transangelic Exodus
On his fifth album, Ezra Furman starts to get really political. This rock & roll odyssey feels really empathetic and completely necessary in today’s climate. A scrappy narrative about inner acceptance Furman takes a confrontational stance on fear, hate, paranoia, with rage and poetry. Throughout this record is a completely wild experience that chimes in perfect harmony with the time that it was released making it immediately recognizable, comfortable, and so very uniquely Ezra Furman.
