No Ripcord

A sumptuously produced record with an enviable hit-to-miss ratio, Middle of Nowhere delivers more than enough drama, humour, and sparkle to solidify Musgraves’ place on the country music throne.

Easter Lily, released on Good Friday, offers the visceral, emotional experience that U2 fans have been yearning for the longest time.

While they try subtle new tricks, like compressing Grohl’s vocals to almost-grating levels amid muddy sound mixing, their attempts at sounding edgy usually land in a pleasant middle ground.

Ultimately, Something Worth Waiting For is an album of good songs with some sequencing and balance issues. Its problems have nothing to do with quality in the traditional sense, but Friko will need to temper some of their maximalist tendencies if they want to seize the indie rock throne.

Consistent, assured, and suitably varied, Brink is a very impressive debut from a band with a bright future. Confuse them with Scouting for Girls at your peril.

While well-intentioned, the EP overall gave me some pause, as it proved that U2 sometimes can’t help themselves to write placid pop rock songs that don’t disrupt their quest for supreme relevance.

We Are Together Again aims to repeat the trick [2025's The Purple Bird], with its earnest country twang and cast of familiar collaborators, but ultimately it lives and dies by the quality of its songs—and they just aren’t consistently good enough.

Of This Earth, like most Shabaka Hutchings albums, dating back to Sons of Kemet, requires full immersion. On his third LP, the jazz polymath takes you on a musical journey that requires both stillness and stimulation.

The sparkling closer “Reverie” and the excellent “Butterfly” deserve special mention, but honestly, side B is uniformly strong. The tragedy of Ricochet is that it follows such a feeble side A.

Sexistential is urgent, direct, and strikingly concise.