Album Reviews

In “Celebrate,” the latest single to attract the attention of critics and audiences around the world in 2022, Najjah Calibur looks to solidify himself as a breakout heavyweight contender in the pop music underground, and for my money, he does just that and more. Led by a sensitive but muscular …

Slipping into focus ever so gently, the quiet melody that wakes up “Darkstar” is an agent of evocation, but next to the lead vocal Ready, Steady, Die! is going to put down in this all-new single and music video, they’ll soon feel like only one half of the equation here. …

There’s nothing quite as powerful as the rush that comes from hearing an intense collision of melodies within an insular arrangement of beats, and in the new single “So Perfect” from powerhouse pop songwriter Chloe J, the brawn of old school R&B and surreal pop gets a millennial update that …

It’s December which means a lot of familiar holiday music coming back into the fold, and in my opinion, indie artists like Jekalyn Carr are giving us the biggest reason to pay attention to the holiday sounds of 2022. Though not a straight-up pop singer by conventional standards, Carr delivers …

“Light from my grandfather’s gun cabinet washing across my white skin / This is the body is was born in / This is the body I will live in / This is the kind of body it’s okay to stand your ground in / This is the body I will …

“If you can’t keep your hands off the goods now / You’re gonna get it right where you want it / ‘Cause you can’t keep a good woman down now / Welcome to America’s Most Wanted.” This is the lusty manner in which Gabriela broaches the chorus of her debut single …

It’s not everyday you hear a song that stops you dead in your tracks. In the musical musings of singer-songwriter Samia, this is a phenomenon that happens frequently. With the extraordinary success of her debut album The Baby, and supplementary EP releases Scout and Before the Baby, the Nashville-based artist consistently …

Although they play a minor role in the grander scheme of things, the vocals we encounter in the new single “All That’s Mine To Give” from Jim Peterik can hardly be called an afterthought. On the contrary, I think they contribute a lot of tonal definition to the intentionally messy …

Though its cosmetics suggest a campiness I would have never picked up on if I had listened to the single exclusively, there’s something very rebellious about Greg Hoy & the Boys’ “Demons At Night” music video that I was immediately taken with in my initial sit down with the release …

Hard pop as we used to know it in the ‘90s is experiencing a major comeback right now, and you don’t need to look past the music of artists like Pigtails to see exactly what I’m talking about. Pigtails has a voice that would probably work as well in a …

As far as contemporary competition goes, The Dead Daises have seemingly nobody to go up against; all mainstream rock acts are watered down, and all classic rock acts are coming close to washed up… The Dead Daises, entering their tenth year together as a band, have never sounded better. The …

The lead vocal we find woven into the fabric of a subtle melody in “Eat the Bugs,” the new single and music video from The Refusers, is easily one of the lustier and more aggressive elements in the track but were it not conveying as weighty a political message as …