STACK #189 Jul 2020

REVIEWS MUSIC

Courtney Marie Andrews Old Flowers I just want to give Courtney Marie Andrews a big hug. On her new album Old Flowers , this Arizona-raised Nashville- based artist shares the most heartbreaking and soul revealing year of her life. This is a break-up album, a collection of stories blossomed from the end of a nine-year relationship, revealing her heartache, loneliness and acceptance of self. Musically minimal – featuring only three musicians with the main focus on her amazing voice – you can’t help but be captivated by Andrews' raw, natural vulnerability. Majestic melancholy from the heart, alas a broken one. (Fat Possum/Inertia) Denise Hylands

Margo Price That's How Rumors Get Started Margo Price was just what country music needed when she released her debut album Midwest Farmer's Daughter in 2016, followed by 2017’s All American Made . Album number three brings the same matter-of-fact songwriting and attitude, which makes Price an artist who needs to be heard: she's a strong, outspoken woman, similar to Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette who led the way. Recorded at LA EastWest Studios ( Pet Sounds, 9 to 5 ), That's How Rumors Get Started was co-produced with good friend Sturgill Simpson, who pulled together a rocking all-star band with the aim of making this the in-studio equivalent of Price’s live “sky-high and scorching rock and roll show" – and that is what you get. (LomaVista) Denise Hylands

Julianna Barwick Healing Is A Miracle

Healing is a Miracle is the especially apt title for Julianna Barwick's latest LP. Barwick's sublime music has always energized and soothed. Her radiant arrangements of vocals and sound are also nothing short of supernatural. Here, Julianna extends her singular work with an

album inspired by the human body's natural ability to heal itself. The artist offers a set of delicate, intricately layered compositions for the spirit to hear and the body to feel. Joining Julianna are friends and collaborators Mary Lattimore, Jónsi and Nosaj Thing. The latter, an acclaimed producer from Barwick's new home of Los Angeles, lends a slow beat-driven pulse to the final, gentle moments of the record. (NinjaTune/Inertia) SimonWinkler

Yaeji What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 Although it's hard not to see

HAIM Women In Music Pt. III

On their third full-length album, HAIM have figured out both who they are and how to mess with it. Opener Los Angeles is the perfect example: a breezy East Coast love letter from the LA rockers themselves, far from a Sunset Boulevard rock parody it’s coated in rubbery bass lines and smoky saxophone, sounding less like an exaltation of the city’s noise as much as longing for it. Later, on All That Ever Mattered , they draw horror movie melodrama out of a relationship breakdown with a jittering drum machine under guitar and vocal wailing. At its core, WIMPIII is enough HAIM to satisfy Forever fans, but it’s equally a redefinition of what “enough HAIM” means. (Universal) Jake Cleland

everything as a response to our current pandemic predicament, there's certainly a timeliness to Yaeji's new mixtape. Emphasising the difficulty of domesticity and self-care, it fits effortlessly into the popular rhetoric of celebrating doing whatever you can in unprecedented producer's boisterous party anthem raingurl , that makes What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던 a decidedly inward turn, and it extends to the music as well: swaddled in itchy electronic fuzz, insectoid clicking, paranoiac whispers and echoes, it describes a particularly interior universe, closely studied and indelibly felt. (XL/Remote Control) Jake Cleland times. Coming off the global success of the NYC-via-Seoul

박혜진 Park Hye Jin How Can I

World-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking once ran an experiment involving champagne, balloons and party food. He held an intimate gathering for time-travellers, but didn't send out invitations until after it had finished. Nobody came. But if they had, you know that at

least one of the guests would have brought 박혜진 Park Hye Jin's How Can I with them to soundtrack the night. It's a timeless collection of spacious dance grooves that draws on the traditions of techno, footwork, and pop to create a wholly new and unique set of sounds. 박혜진 Park Hye Jin wrote these new tracks during a period of travel and discovery, moving through the dancefloors, airport lounges and city streets of Europe, North America and Australia. This sense of widening horizons flows across the EP, a transporting set of flawless drum programming and memorable melodies. (NinjaTune/Inertia) SimonWinkler

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