The Useless Critic 2.0

In case you missed Eurovision this past weekend - and if you're an American, you likely did - there were some truly talented acts among those competing for this year's prestigious title. There were some pretty boring acts, and there were only a few of truly strange contestants this time around (bummer).  Sweden's act Tusse was pretty talented; his joyful and uplifting track "Voices" was actually one of the few that seemed rather memorable to me. Turns out he's releasing it in French - which makes sense, as Tusse is Kongo-Kinshasa born. Tusse is enormously popular in Sweden from what I can tell, having won both Melodifestivalen (Sweden's precursor to Eurovision) and Swedish Idol. He's a talented guy, and I'm sure we're just seeing the start of what is bound to be a long and prolific career.   (you might not be able to watch this outside of Sweden so, see below) The French version of "Voices" is available for streaming here .  Also, whi...

Not even that far off from "Chemtrails Over The Country Club" being released this past March, Lana Del Rey dropped three new singles off her upcoming project, "Blue Banisters." They include the title track, "Text Book," and "Wildflower Wildfire." All three songs seem to merge the worlds of "COCC" with "Norman Fucking Rockwell," specifically Lana's mouthful of a track "Hope is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me To Have But I Have It." They also seem uncharacteristically more confessional than most of Lana's catalog to date, specifically "Wildflower Wildfire," which alludes to a conflict with her mother. She even starts the track with "Here's the deal," readying to show more of her backstory than she ever has in her decade-plus-long career. The three songs are gorgeous - especially "Text Book," which has a haunting quality to it (she mentions "Black Lives Matter" i...

And now for something a bit more chill that might bring you back to bobbing your head circa 2010, check out "How Ya Been?" by London-based producer Modern Modern Life (aka Frank Colucci).  "How Ya Been?" is about missing someone, and was recorded during the beginning of the COVID lockdowns … when we were all probably missing someone(s) in some way or another. Modern Modern Life has earned comparisons to electronic artists like Bonobo and Caribou, and only a few seconds into this track proves why.  You can expect Modern Modern Life's debut EP "The Hard Copy" to enter the world June 3rd. 

Just released yesterday, Will Stratton's newest album "The Changing Wilderness" is the first cohesively excellent album for me from this year so far. It's pensive, somewhat melancholy, stripped down - but beautiful in a way that makes it hard to forget. Although Stratton describes himself as a "disciple of Nick Drake," I found that his seventh album called to mind the very best of Iron & Wine.  "The Changing Wilderness" may have had its debut in May, but it sounds like it might be better suited for the cooler air of autumn than the hopefulness of spring. Stratton is a singer-songwriter who, in the past, has thrived more off introspection than attempting to commune with the macro world outside himself. In "The Changing Wilderness," he set out to deviate from that pattern. No where in the stark 40 minutes the album lasts is this more apparent than "Infertile Air," which imagines the guilty conscious of an ICE agent.  But intro...

"I'm halfway through this party and I hate everybody," is one of the many lyrics in the deadpan "Chocolate Cake" that is just ... classic, as soon as you hear it. The latest single from Aussie Ali Barter (who also sang that song "Ur a Piece of Shit," which gives you a sense of her vibe) seems to be about something that is not actually chocolate cake, but you can merely take the song at face value and still have a good time with it.  This song is the title track off her newly released EP, which shares the same name as it. Recording, as you would imagine, hit a curve because of COVID which forced things to go remote, but that didn't damper the nerve of the project as a whole. Said Barter about the motif behind "Chocolate Cake," “Most of the songs on this EP are about looking for answers in the wrong places, and about trying to find something that takes me out of my head. Searching for a chocolate cake in a hardware store is a parable for my...

Unexpected but probably not entirely surprising news - they were long due for a comeback anyway - beloved Norwegian acoustic duo Kings of Convenience has returned. In 2009, they released "Declaration of Dependence," and that was the last we heard from them in terms of new music (officially, at least). Until this past week.  "Rocky Trail" is their new single off their upcoming album "Peace or Love" (which sounds very classic Kings of Convenience right out the gate) and it seems to pick up precisely where "Declaration of Dependence" dropped off. And it's a welcome return, a friendly track that sounds familiar and warm. For me personally, it's one of my standout tracks of this year thus far, but I was such a big fan of theirs for a long time, so I'm biased.  They even brought back Canadian indie legend Feist to duet on two tracks ("Catholic Country" and "Love is a Lonely Thing") for a lovely return to form, as their v...