![]() ![]() Adele “25” (XL/Columbia) In an era of ever-narrowing niche targeting, it’s an achievement to make the album virtually everyone wants to hear - to be the big-voiced, sympathetic, vulnerable, natural woman who overshadows all the bionic pop superstars and unites a fragmented pop audience. (Read the review | Listen to the Popcast)Ħ. She sounds all alone in unstable realms, wounded but strong - coping. Around her, a string orchestra provides cushioning, cinematic expansiveness and sometimes desperate turbulence, while electronics add flickers of rhythm and startling, ominous swaths of noise. Björk’s voice is constantly exposed, inhabiting some of her most declamatory melodies. Björk “Vulnicura” (One Little Indian) The paralyzing sorrow of a breakup, and the slow recovery that followed, were the makings of Björk’s “Vulnicura,” an album that’s simultaneously emotionally open and meticulously plotted, plush and austere. It’s not a nostalgic reunion it’s a united front, renewed and contentious. Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, which also bristle now with multitracked passages. Once again, Corin Tucker’s lead vocals make her a banshee with a mission, singing about minimum-wage purgatory, fervent iconoclasm and “dread in our own Gilded Age.” And once again, Janet Weiss’s gut-punching beat propels the endlessly wrangling, endlessly interlocking electric guitars of Ms. ![]() Sleater-Kinney “No Cities to Love” (Sub Pop) Reunited for its first album in 10 years, Sleater-Kinney returns as joyfully rigorous as ever, sinewy and ready to grapple.
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