Album Review

ALBUM REVIEWL.A. WITCH Play With Fire on Sophomore LP

This year, Girls Rock Santa Barbara has developed The Summer of Love Internship, its first ever paid internship for teen girls and gender-expansive youth, which allows the organization to continue to provide a safe, collaborative environment in which to encourage lifelong skills like positive peer...

Girls Rock Santa Barbara

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ALBUM REVIEWMicrowave Solidifies Lyrical Superiority on Death is a Warm Blanket

It’s inevitable that your favorite bands will eventually release an album that challenges you in some way. Georgia band Microwave’s newest release, Death is a Warm Blanket, is certainly one of those albums for me. Their 2016 LP, Much Love, a heartrending thirty minutes of beautifully written and...

Sophia Vaccaro

ALBUM REVIEWPharmakon Leaves Us Unsettled with 'Devour'

Pharmakon is Margaret Chardiet, a native New Yorker who sprang onto the local underground experimental scene at the tender age of seventeen. That, however, is the only tender thing about this noise project. A founding member of the Red Light District Collective in Far Rockaway, she has always been...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWSheer Mag Grows Into Their Sound on 'A Distant Call'

Philly four-piece Sheer Mag has returned with their highly anticipated sophomore record, A Distant Call. On it they double down on their infectious take on '70s arena rock and power pop that they brought to us on previous releases, but with a more refined finish; still they combine these classic...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWGold Child Shines on Self-Titled Debut

A “self-proclaimed student of country music’s golden age,” she names legends Patsy Cline and Emmylou Harris as major...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWMabel Falls Flat With High Expectations

Like many, I sat down to listen to emerging UK pop artist Mabel’s debut full-length High Expectations with just that, high expectations. The songstress comes from remarkable music industry stock, the daughter of Swedish singer-songwriter and rapper Neneh Cherry and British songwriter and producer...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWThe Heartfelt Nostalgia of Tony Molina's Tapes from San Mateo County

Bay Area indie artist Tony Molina has always had either foot in two worlds, which is perhaps the only obvious observation one might make about him. He maintains deep ties to the punk and hardcore scenes in which he cut his teeth, having played with bands like Healer, Caged Animal, and Bone Sickness...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWMountain Man - Magic Ship

For years they hid from us. Like the hermetic enigma their name conjures, Mountain Man headed for the hills after releasing their hypnotic 2010 debut, Made the Harbor. The siren-like harmonies of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amilia Meath faded into the mist; Meath resurfaced four...

Desdemona Dallas

ALBUM REVIEWWillow "The 1st"

Willow Smith isn't afraid of discourse. Over the last five years, Willow has made the internet rounds again and again, for waxing poetic about prana energy, extolling the virtues of underground quantum mechanics classes, and calling herself a "light worker." All of which could induce eye-rolling,...

Ashley Prillaman

ALBUM REVIEWYumi Zouma "Willowbank"

Yumi Zouma photo by Aaron Lee It's only been a year since New Zealand’s Yumi Zouma debuted with Yoncalla, a polished batch of ten disco-infused indie pop tracks. But the Kiwi quartet have already returned with follow-up Willowbank, a subdued collection of dreamy songs that explore the fundamentally...

Mandy Brownholtz

ALBUM REVIEWCommon Holly "Playing House"

It is how we pantomime maturity, and begin to learn self-preservation, domestic upkeep, and the treatment of others. From pretending to prepare a meal, to sweeping the tree house, this form of...

Madison Bloom

ALBUM REVIEWShilpa Ray Triumphs Over NYC With 'Door Girl'

New York, the city that never sleeps, takes an especially hard toll on those who make its endless nights possible: the waiters, the bartenders, the ticket takers who silently put up with endless shit from drunken idiots. The service industry is favored by artists who need to pay their bills, but at...

Emily Daly