1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Grime's relative nonimpact on America isn't puzzling: With its disorienting beats, unfamiliar slang, and melody-averse choruses, the U.K.-born genre has always felt forbiddingly local. Wiley only occasionally departs from that script on an album he's threatened will be his last.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Returning to the Black Francis moniker he used when fronting the Pixies, Charles Thompson has fittingly made an album that sounds more like the Pixies than any of his previous solo efforts.  The outer-space-fixated "Captain Pasty" opens behind a rumbling surf guitar, then plows forward at a breakneck pace.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Having split with Sony after insisting that her second album be a double-disc set like her first, this New York singer/songwriter/pianist knocks out her third, a brisk nine-song set that plays like the breathless first act of a stage musical decrying American fascism.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Some years back, James Ford and Jas Shaw made two albums of dreamy Britpop in the group Simian. And despite their second act as a dance-oriented production unit, a twee undercurrent still runs through this debut album. Former Simian singer Simon Lord offers an operatic slice of electro-house balladry on "I Believe," and the Go!

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Rob Crow and Zach Smith are perfectionists, and each Pinback album results from years of obsessive labor in their San Diego home studio. Their previous three albums were marvels of sublime prog pop, and there's more of the same here, with the stately piano and rarified vocal harmonies of "How We Breathe." But for a band defined by its

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

With his downy afro and thrift-store gear, this 22-year-old singer looks the part of a bohemian soul eccentric. And on the first track of his debut, Michael delivers a true incense-and-beads anthem: "We All Want the Same Thing" is a clever let's-just-all-get-along party cut, powered by a chugging slide guitar vamp and a sprightly Lupe Fiasco rap.