Spectrum Culture

• Panda Bear: Sinister Grift | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 28, 2025, 6:06 a.m.
Sinister Grift is not an album that’s going to change anyone’s mind about Noah Lennox’s work. It’s too agreeable to inspire hatred, but there isn’t enough here for anyone to fall in love with either.

• Manic Street Preachers: Critical Thinking | Spectrum Culture | March 4, 2025, 6:03 a.m.
As with so much of the Manics’ best work, it’s an album that’s easy to listen to, but that lingers uneasily in the mind; as it should.

• The Murder Capital: Blindness | Spectrum Culture | March 2, 2025, midnight
The Murder Capital’s first two albums, released in 2019 and 2023, were well received, drenched in a kind of Peter Murphy/Bauhaus post-punk, full of intensity and social critique. So the anticipation of their third studio release, Blindness , has been understandably high if tempered with the expectation that not all bands can sustain their ...

• The Weeknd: Hurry Up Tomorrow | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 10, 2025, 6:06 a.m.
Hurry Up Tomorrow feels like Tesfaye’s attempt at summing up everything that was great about the Weeknd as a project, but unfortunately, it’s clear that no one ever brought a knife to the recording sessions.

• Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 13, 2025, midnight
Whenever an artist deviates from what we expect, the first feeling for fans may be apprehension. One may encounter fans on online spaces like Reddit’s Indie Heads having such feelings about Horsegirl’s debut single “2468” off their new album Phoentics On and On.

• Youth Lagoon: Rarely Do I Dream | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 25, 2025, midnight
Rarely Do I Dream pulls so much from Powers’ childhood home movies, to the point where the song should actually open the record, setting us up to know the context behind these fragments first, then get to recontextualize those sounds within Youth Lagoon’s songs.

• Sam Fender: People Watching | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 27, 2025, 6:04 a.m.
Despite notable fame, Sam Fender remains an everyman with deft songwriting and a perspective on the world that feels undoubtedly relatable.

• John Glacier: Like a Ribbon | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 13, 2025, midnight
Like a Ribbon occupies a very specific cross section of hip hop, electronic and alternative R&B, with compositions that leave ample room for cavernous synths and heavy drums. Despite the textural variety on display, the album as a whole retains an intimacy that matches Glacier’s writing.

• Lacuna Coil: Sleepless Empire | Spectrum Culture | Feb. 24, 2025, 6:03 a.m.
Far from becoming complacent, Lacuna Coil go into the night raging.

• FKA twigs: Eusexua | Spectrum Culture | Jan. 29, 2025, 6:04 a.m.
Using classic dancefloor sounds, FKA twigs captures the volatile energy of a night at the club.

• Ethel Cain: Perverts | Spectrum Culture | Jan. 10, 2025, 6:06 a.m.
If Preacher’s Daughter was the sound of someone barely holding things together, then Perverts is the sound of that same person letting things fall apart completely.

• Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes | Spectrum Culture | Nov. 15, 2024, 6:04 a.m.
Michael Kiwanuka has always been most comfortable in the reflective quiet that sits beneath even his rowdiest cuts. Small Changes finally sees him lead with it.