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ZETH LUNDY

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Scott Walker | Bish Bosch

4AD (2012)
Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music.

By: ZETH LUNDY | November 27, 2012

Bill Withers | The Complete Sussex and Columbia Albums

Columbia/Legacy (2012)
Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am .

By: ZETH LUNDY | October 31, 2012

R.E.M. | Document [25th Anniversary Edition]

Capitol/I.R.S. Records (2012)
Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.

By: ZETH LUNDY | September 19, 2012

Richard Hawley | Standing at the Sky's Edge

Mute (2012)
Richard Hawley's seventh studio album opens with "She Brings the Sunlight," a clouds-parting, hippy-dippy drone explosion that plays like "Tomorrow Never Knows" caught in the echo of a football stadium.

By: ZETH LUNDY | September 04, 2012

Bob Mould | Silver Age

Merge (2012)
Now that he's getting love as a godfather figure from both sides of the indie/mainstream divide (see No Age and Foo Fighters, for starters), Bob Mould is again playing like he has something to prove — or at least an iconography to maintain.

By: ZETH LUNDY | August 28, 2012

Ry Cooder | Election Special

Nonesuch (2012)
Ry Cooder's spur-of-the-moment (or is it heat-of-the-moment?) political album opens like any good political album should, with a rollicking blues song told from the point of view of Mitt Romney's dog.

By: ZETH LUNDY | August 14, 2012

Antibalas | Antibalas

Daptone (2012)
As its simple title would suggest, the fifth album from the Brooklyn Afrobeat torchbearers gets back to basics.

By: ZETH LUNDY | August 13, 2012

Blur | 21

EMI (2012)
Best Britpop band? That’s a question of taste — though if your answer is Oasis, you’re probably wrong, and if your answer is Blur, you’re probably right.

By: ZETH LUNDY | July 24, 2012

Micachu & The Shapes | Never

Rough Trade (2012)
Like her stylistic sista Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, Micachu's Mica Levi makes pixelated, abstract anti-pop that sounds like marionettes jamming in an aluminum factory.

By: ZETH LUNDY | July 17, 2012

Grasscut | Unearth

Ninja Tune (2012)
Grasscut are ascension music: each measure another layer of melody, each minute another swell in forward momentum.

By: ZETH LUNDY | July 10, 2012

Fiona Apple | The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do

Epic (2012)
Long delays between albums, equally long album titles, uncompromising artistic vision, the is-Joni-Mitchell-is-not-Joni-Mitchell question, and that "Criminal" video.

By: ZETH LUNDY | June 19, 2012

David Bowie | The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [40th Anniversary Edition]

Virgin/EMI (2012)
Bowie's greatest album? Depends on the day. Canonically, however, this is and will always be a BFD: an archetype of alternative commercial rock, the primo platter of the so-called glam era; and arguably the best record ever made about apocalypse, interplanetary lust, singer-songwriter role playing, and rock-and-roll-as-alien-outsider stuff.

By: ZETH LUNDY | June 05, 2012

Sun Kil Moon | Among the Leaves

Caldo Verde (2012)
The first thing you'll notice about Mark Kozelek's fifth LP as Sun Kil Moon are song titles that would give Morrissey a boner.

By: ZETH LUNDY | May 22, 2012

The Figgs | The Day Gravity Stopped

Stomper (2012)
These days Mike Gent, Pete Donnelly, and Pete Hayes are involved in enough extracurricular activities (Graham Parker, NRBQ, countless side/session-men gigs) that you could hardly blame them if they closed their two decades-plus Figgs chapter.

By: ZETH LUNDY | May 15, 2012