Office Culture
Enough
(Ruination)
A Brooklyn-based art-pop quartet that refuses to adhere to any particular genre, Office Culture are led by vocalist/keyboardist/songwriter Winston Cook-Wilson. They take cues from off-kilter 1980s pop artists like Talk Talk and China Crisis while also digging into the stylings of Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, and Avalon-era Roxy Music. On their fourth album, they shake things up with plenty of outside collaborators – including Jackie West, Alena Spanger, and Sam Sodomsky, among others – and a slightly more experimental sound.
Stretching out with a CD-friendly run time of 73 minutes, the 16 songs on Enough incorporate glitchy samples, cheesy synth patches, jazz-leaning excursions, and plenty of pop vocal crooning. Highlights include the ethereal, low-key, deeply melodic album opener “Hat Guy”, the tropical vibe of “Secluded”, and the reflective, piano-based “Was I Cruel”. Enough reins in Cook-Wilson’s seemingly endless ambition and benefits from the generous spirit of collaboration. – Chris Ingalls
Sarah Jarosz
Polaroid Lovers
(Rounder)
Native Texan Sarah Jarosz left her more recent New York City home for Nashville and added a twang to her music. Her voice sparkles as the folk conventions of the past have been replaced by pop country elegance. Her songwriting and playing have never been better. Place has always been important to the singer-songwriter’s music. One can hear resonances from her various homes on the individual tracks. She presents romance in the Lone Star state on “Mezcal and Lime”, the lure of Manhattan on “Columbus & 89th”, and hear the Tennessee mountains of “Take the High Road”. These are metaphorical locations whose actual existence doesn’t obscure the fact that they represent states of passion. Jarosz presents a road map to the places one’s heart travels. As Allan Ginsberg used to put it, hers is the lost America of love.
Jarosz’s instrumental skills (mandolin, guitar, clawhammer banjo) have long been appreciated. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Country Instrumental Performance in 2009 when she was just 18 years old for the song “Mansinneedof” from her debut album Song Up in Head. She has only improved as a player, vocalist, and songwriter since then. The 11 cuts on Polaroid Lovers more than prove that she’s “Good at What I Do”, as she sings on the penultimate song. The album is a contemporary masterwork that showcases Jarosz’s continuing evolution as an artist. – Steve Horowitz
DIIV
Frog in Boiling Water
(Concord)
The brilliance of Frog in Boiling Water, DIIV‘s fourth album, is that it answers two questions at once. First, what is to become of guitar-driven indie rock in a computer-driven, post-alternative, post-grunge world? Second, is there a way forward for so-called dream-pop or shoegaze music going beyond merely aping the now-trendy sounds of 30 years ago? Frog in Boiling Water has just enough crunch, melody, and bliss to qualify as something more than the sum of its iconic influences. A lament for the late-stage capitalist era, it manages to both wear its frustration and sadness on its sleeve and radiate a subtle, sublime sense of beauty and, just maybe, hope. – John Bergstrom
Laurie Anderson
Amelia
(Nonesuch)
Laurie Anderson has been amazing, delighting, and occasionally baffling audiences for decades. While Amelia is anything but a traditional album, it has an undeniable appeal that may make for her most accessible work yet. A musical tribute to aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart’s fateful final flight, the record is something of a documentary set to music. Anderson approaches her subject with meticulous detail and a combination of reverence and wonder, combining lyrics, narration, orchestrations, and small ensemble performances.
Fans of experimentally inclined music will find plenty to love here, but anyone interested in Earhart’s adventures will likely be thrilled by Anderson’s highly compelling and entirely successful attempt to musically interpret an important historical event with dignity and eloquence. Laurie Anderson is one of the most artistically significant artists of the last half-century, and it’s only fitting that one of her best records is a tribute to a fellow pioneer. – Chris Ingalls
Christian Lee Hutson
Paradise Pop. 10
(Anti-)
Paradise Pop. 10 gets its name from the population sign in Parke County, Indiana, near where Christian Lee Hutson spent his childhood, signifying how this album felt like an arrival. Finding Los Angeles now haunted with memories, he traversed across the country to New York for a fresh perspective. Hutson also recorded Paradise Pop. 10 in the depths of winter, which lends a washed-out realism to the tracks. Ranging from infectious power pop to Elliott Smith-like laments, Hutson again proves himself a poignant songwriter, weaving semi-autobiographical tales into what feels like a thematically unified short story collection. The tracks are colored with equal parts regret and hope, documenting the winners and losers in love, none more affecting than “Carousel Horses”, which describes two individuals on a course where one was always bound to finish first. – Patrick Gill
Chat Pile
Cool World
(The Flenser)
While many of the best records in heavy music looked within to find inspiration in the struggle to wrestle inner demons, Chat Pile expanded their examination of the horrors of modern life to a global canvas on Cool World. While “Shame” is one of the most accessible songs on the record musically, it is one of the most disturbing lyrically, describing footage of war with unsparing detail, an attempt to break through the numbness many experience over atrocities that aren’t in our communities. Several other songs focus on the fallout of combat, even for the alleged victors on songs like “Milk of Human Kindness” and “Funny Man”.
In “Masc”, even those who didn’t go off to fight find themselves at risk among more toxic men, afraid of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. The songs sound like the musical equivalent of a horror film, building atmospheres that explode into massive, repetitive riffs complemented by singer Raygun Busch’s unrelenting vocals. It gives the feeling of being led to the slaughter with no hope for escape and is so of the moment that it is destined to be remembered as one of the key state of the union records of this year that has a chance at a longer shelf-life. It’s not likely humanity’s inhumanity toward itself will become irrelevant. – Brian Stout
Horse Jumper of Love
Disaster Trick
(Run For Cover)
As noted in the advance publicity, Disaster Trick marks a new period of sobriety for Dimitri Giannopoulos, the frontman for Horse Jumper of Love, who quit drinking prior to its recording. The album bears clear traces of this turn. The overall sound leans in a downbeat direction. Assisting on this LP is Alex Farrar, who has produced MJ Lenderman, Squirrel Flower, and Wednesday. The result is a thick, reverb-heavy character on many of the tracks, which suits the somber mood and is deeply satisfying. The second song, “Wink”, might be the best. It has Horse Jumper’s strongest features on display: an unhurried rhythmic pace, a sense of restraint with the vocal delivery, and a fullness of feeling when the chorus rushes in. Similar to peers like DIIV, Horse Jumper of Love are reworking traditions of shoegaze and dream pop rather than purely imitating them. Disaster Trick is their best album. – Christopher J. Lee
Hi Vis
Guided Tour
(Dais)
One senses that this is not your older brother’s hardcore band from the opening self-titled track, comprised of jangly guitars and soaring vocals. London’s Hi Vis incorporate elements of post-punk, Britpop, and neo-psychedelia into their work, and more consistently on their third and best LP, Guided Tour. Singer Graham Sale described the evolution, “For years coming from hardcore, we had pretty clear boundaries—other scenes were separate worlds. Now things are getting more blended, drawing from different places.” Even with blistering numbers like “Drop Me Out” and “Mob DLA”, Hi Vis channel bands ranging from Ride (“Worth the Wait”) to Hüsker Dü (“Fill the Gap”). Hi Vis have arrived during an era of notable hardcore crossovers, like Iceage, Idles, and Viagra Boys; on Guided Tour, they seek to differentiate themselves to the delight of a growing fanbase. – Patrick Gill
Claire Rousay
Sentiment
(Thrill Jockey)
On previous albums like Everything Perfect Is Already Here (2022) and A Softer Focus (2021), Claire Rousay embraced ambient music and field recordings, turning activities as mundane as a trip to a local farmer’s market into a compelling experimental audio experience. On her latest LP, there’s more of a singer-songwriter vibe, albeit one that still leans on these ambient stylings to bolster the songs, especially since the subject matter tends to be personal loss and sadness. Sentiment is a deeply melancholic work imbued with a gentle beauty in the emotions Rousay expresses in the lyrics and the ambient delights that the music provides. The outcome is partially surprising, given the context of Rousay’s previous efforts, but a warm, welcome surprise. – Chris Ingalls
Emel
MRA
(Little Human)
It’s rare to find a pop star who can claim to be genuinely revolutionary, but Tunisian singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi fits both descriptors equally well. Her 2010 song “Kelmti Horra” brought her work to a global audience when it became an Arab Spring anthem, and she’s continued to fight the good fight–creatively–ever since. As Emel, she makes genuinely global music, collaborating with artists worldwide and drawing on an even broader range of sonic styles in massively appealing ways. The new album, MRA (Arabic for “woman”), continues this body of politically engaged work and is perhaps her most expansive release yet.
Emel’s team across MRA is made up of women from the world over, including up-and-coming artists like Malian rapper Ami Yerewolo, Brazilian producer Lyzza, French singers Camélia Jordana, Penelope Antena and Katel, and many others. Each artist brings their own language, perspective, and style to a nonetheless cohesive mix of politically potent tracks. – Adriane Pontecorvo