I Moved!

I started this blog one year ago today. In honor of the occasion, I'm giving it a new home. From now on, you can find my reviews here.

Thanks for reading. See you at the new crib (which is still a work in progress).

Consider/Avoid

If the waning weeks of 2011 hadn’t gotten away from me, I’d have given Girls and Los Campesinos! the full B+ reviews they deserve, but my reservations about both records (Girls made a theoretically admirable move towards Big Rock that led them to the actually tedious land of flutes and seven-minute run times, while the unsurprisingly clever Los Campesinos! album was unsurprising in most other ways too) were serious enough that I decided to include both in this final nod to the year just passed. Elsewhere, The Roots affirm my uneasy feelings about concept albums, but still turn in their second admirable record in as many years; Fallout Boy front man Patrick Stump uses his Micheal Jackson impression to put across some disarmingly articulate songs about pushing 30 in the lower reaches of the 99%; and Coldplay, a band I don't hate on for sport, spends the better part of an hour in search of a memorable tune.

CONSIDER

Girls: Father, Son, Holy Ghost (“Honey Bunny,” “Alex,” “Jamie Marie”)

Los Campesinos!: Hello Sadness (“By Your Hand,” “Songs About Your Girlfriend,” “Hello Sadness”)

Patrick Stump: Soul Punk (“Run Dry,” “Coast,” “Bad Side of25”)

The Roots: Undun (“Kool On,” “The OtherSide,” “I Remember”)

A$AP Rocky: LiveLoveA$AP (“Wassup,” “Demons”)

Wild Flag: Wild Flag (“Future Crimes,” “Black Tiles”)

Ryan Adams: Ashes & Fire (“Dirty Rain,” “Lucky Now”)

Phonte: Charity Starts at Home (“Everything is Falling Down”)

The Black Keys: El Camino (“Little Black Submarines”)

Florence + the Machine: Ceremonials (“Shake It Out”)

AVOID

Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto

The Weeknd: Thursday