This week, we're bringing you four new reviews of albums spread across the wide sea of indie and alternative and revealing its many variations. Check them out below!

- Lucy Talbot Allen, Music Writing Director

Big Thief - Two Hands

I can always count on Big Thief to calm me down. Their songs have a power that just washes over me, filling me with a sense of warmth. Their fourth album, and second this year, Two Hands, feels more poignant than ever, primarily because it seems so set in reality. The production and lyrics are so raw. Like always, Adrianne Lenker writes lyrics like beautiful poetry. They’re abstract, never revealing too much, just the right amount for us to get what she means. Throughout the album, the band seems to look at humanity and the chaotic power we don’t realize we have in just our two hands.

The soft drums and simple guitar plucks of “Rock and Sing” open the album. With production that sounds like a lullaby and Lenker’s swaying voice, the song seems to rock us back and forth to sleep. But that’s just the beginning. “Forgotten Eyes” addresses homelessness, reflecting on the way people treat the homeless as lesser. Lenker sings, “And the poison is killing them, but then so am I / As I turn away.” Lenker isn’t afraid to delve into subjects like these. “The Toy” takes on gun violence; “Shoulders” reveals an experience with domestic violence and the fears and delusions of love that come with witnessing it.

The song “Replaced” discusses the air of mystery one places around oneself to hide their despair. Lenker repeats a stunning metaphor: “‘Cause the unlit moon would rather hide / Be replaced by the mystery of the stars.” Lenker encourages the song’s subject to remember the things they used to enjoy and all the breathtaking moments they had that made them appreciate life. Big Thief brings the album to a close with “Cut My Hair,” a song about reassurance – the desire to be pretty, the desire to feel safe, the desire to feel like yourself. Lenker sings about the constant effort to not listen to any bad news, and instead enjoy the present moment of calm and happiness.

Two Hands definitely deserves to be listened to a million times and then one more. It has the perfect sounds to add to your autumn and winter playlists. Big Thief never disappoints. The tracks on this album feel timeless. They’re never going to lose their power. To me, Big Thief has made one of the best albums of the year.

- Sienna Estrada, DJ

RIYL: Phoebe Bridgers, Julia Jacklin, Adrianne Lenker
Recommended Tracks: 1, 2, 6, 7, 8
FCC: Clean

Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Knocked Loose seems to have been an overnight success. The midwestern hardcore band burst into the scene just three years ago, with their 2016 debut Laugh Tracks, which helped the band fast become one of the most relevent modern hardcore groups around. The album itself, along with Knocked Loose’s intense stage presence and their famously dangerous and chaotic mosh pits, hyped up the scene for one of the most anticipated heavy releases of 2019.

Knocked Loose’s sophomore LP, A Different Shade of Blue, is not only a worthy successor to Laugh Tracks, it exceeds in every way and offers more of everything— a bigger and better everything at that. This is a compelling record. It pushes every musical element to the extreme: the riffs are heavier, the breakdowns are gnarlier, and the sound is bigger. This album punches the listener smack in the face, with ear-piercing shrieks, guttural growls, and chaotic rhythm. It’s a free-for-all structural mess, ignoring anything traditional, full of energy and intensity. A Different Shade of Blue is a dark album, heavy and confident.

The breakdowns in A Different Shade of Blue are definitely a highlight. The album is filled with buildups paid off by satisfying breakdowns, punchy fast sections contrasted with heavy breakdowns, making for one of the dirtiest, nastiest hardcore records released in too long. This record has more energy, more malice, more unease, more dirt, more punches, more violence, and more relentlessness … reminiscent of a Knocked Loose mosh pit. Enter if you dare.

- Amber Kroner, DJ

RIYL: Counterparts, Converge, Every Time I Die
Recommended Tracks: 2, 3, 7, 10
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 3, 4)

100 gecs - 1000 gecs

Although it was released at the end of May this year, when “money machine,” the first single from 100 gecs’ debut album 1000 gecs came on my Spotify Discover playlist it sounded like deliberations directly from the future. And yet, while 100 gecs’ sound is like nothing I had heard before, it is also entirely familiar.

Described by Complex Magazine as an “anarchic assault on the ears,” the St. Louis-bred electronic duo (Dylan Brady and Laura Les) appear to filter familiar themes of popular genres through a lens of synthesizers and autotune. Their tendency towards bubblegum bass and liberal use of kitschy sound effects, demonstrated most clearly on “gecgecgec,” draws immediate similarities to PC Music. Brady’s close work in the past with AG Cook affiliate Charli XCX explains why songs like “ringtone” and parts of “800db Cloud” feel as though they would be right at home on her latest album, Charli. But to label 100 gecs as merely a spinoff of the PC Music cohort or even the rock-electronic fusion popularized by Sleigh Bells would be doing a disservice to their nuanced incorporation of punk, dubstep, ska, country, trap, and more into a modern context. There really is no way to categorize the genre bends of this album.

Lyrically, there is admittedly a lack of depth. Lines like “I might hit the weed, I might hit the boof / I'm addicted to Monster, money, and weed, yeah” and “got a check and I spent it / Money got me feelin’ like a dentist” would feel at home in a lyrically shallow vein of modern rap music. However, there are occasional standout moments of witty clarity, as shown in the entire “money machine” intro, which includes taunts like “[your arms] look like lil’ cigarettes / I bet I could smoke you” and “you talk a lotta big game for someone with such a small truck.”

Overall, the album’s 23 minute runtime promises nonstop bops throughout. Each song boasts endlessly creative production and some of the catchiest beats I’ve seen cohesively in one album. The concision is intentional here -- a full 40+ minutes might cause your ears to bleed or at the very least might lose its charm. In fact, everything about the album seems to not take itself too seriously. A good summary of 100 gecs’ work more generally is their Spotify description, which states that “they destroy the competition with their army of lethal bangers.”

- Barbara Rasin, DJ

RIYL: Blink-182, SOPHIE, Charli XCX, Sleigh Bells
Recommended Tracks: 2, 8, 9
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 2, 9)

Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka has been on the rise for the past few years, an ascent I’ve followed lightly from the release of “Love and Hate” to his introduction into the mainstream with the theme song of the HBO show Big Little Lies. His exploration of sadness has always interested me in its deep, raw but always constant way. In his new album, Kiwanuka, he continues this exploration of darkness, but this time expands on these emotions, giving them more dimension, clarity and range. Beyond that, Kiwanuka taps into a strikingly relevant vein in the year 2019, skillfully touching on a number of societal and personal wounds from racism to his own broken heart. The song “Rolling with the Times” speaks to his intention with the new album, as he has taken a wide step into the Zeitgeist from his last major album. On this wave that Kiwanuka is rolling on, he taps into the rising surrealist world of gentle horror, something that was notably done by Flying Lotus this year in “Fire is Coming,” a collaboration with David Lynch. Where in my opinion Kiwanuka surpasses this Lynchian legacy is in using this parallel world to frame racism in a vaguely dystopian context, mimicking a sort of brainwashing. The song “Hero” is probably my favorite on the album; on it he embodies a black civil rights leader who is murdered, singing from the grave about his sacrifices in the song’s music video. Another notable song, “Final Days,” serves as an anthem to our dying world and an elegy to what we’ve lost as a people: very broad, very vast, very all-encompassing.

Beyond content, the sound of the album feels like it’s strangely merging the sounds of the past with the future. Collaborations with prominent producers such as Danger Mouse and Inflo probably contributed to how current the album sounds: i.e. samples reminiscent of cowboys, fairies, and scratchy TVs, especially notable in the song “Final Days.” In many ways, Kiwanuka claims a very difficult to achieve spot next to Khruangbin on the visionary yet nostalgic psychedelic rock wave with the first song of the album, “You Ain’t the Problem,” progressing into something heavier, yet equally relevant.

Overall, what speaks to me the most about this album is that it reads authenticity at all costs. Kiwanuka sounds very honestly unhappy and is not trying to hide it, something really special in a period of time of when people are expected to gloss over things to make their voice sound optimistic or evolved. When something is authentic it really shows, and it does more to move people in the right direction than anything artificial. I hope this type of honesty can be a kind of anthem for a generation potentially living in the end of times; maybe he’s onto something.

- Maya Elimelech, DJ

RIYL: Liana La Havas, Lee Fields and the Expressions, Kevin Morby, Curtis Harding, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Recommended Tracks: 4, 5, 8, 9, 11
FCC: Clean

NEW ADDS: Big Thief, Knocked Loose, 100 gecs, Michael Kiwanuka