John Amen
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Articles by John Amen
Album Review: Deafheaven – At Work In The Fields Of The Bomb EP
[Roadrunner; 2026] Throughout their oeuvre, finding the perfect paradox has been Deafheaven’s driving impulse. Rage and shimmering texture. The fluorescent ugliness of the world contrasted with a celestial beauty. Their debut, 2011’s Roads to Judah, brimmed with aggressive shrieks and growls, blowtorch riffs, and sledgehammer drums, though many tracks included dialed-back segments, passages that tilted toward shoegaze and/or a darkly psychedelic sound.
Album Review: They Are Gutting A Body Of Water – KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II
[Julia's War/ATO; 2026] There’s something thrilling about the mixtape. From the Stones’ proto-template Exile on Main Street to FKA Twigs’ Caprisongs to Cindy Lee’s “adjacent” Diamond Jubilee to Klein’s Sleep with a Cane – these albums capture a spontaneity, expansiveness, and sense of experimentation that might not show up on a more conventional or studio-centric LP. Add to the list the new release from Philadelphia-based They Are Gutting a Body of Water, the 29-track Kool Faith / Loosies II.
Album Review: Cameron Winter – Live at Carnegie Hall
[Partisan/Play It Again Sam; 2026] In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell described “the tipping point” as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire”. Tipping points occur in all domains, including politics, science, medicine, and, of course, the arts. In the 2020s, tipping-point dynamics seem compressed. The arc between obscurity and hyper-visibility and, in turn, back to relative obscurity is more quickly completed.
On Dopamine Chamber, Fontaines D.C. are left fumbling for direction
Their follow-up, 2024’s Romance, veered in a pop direction as the band forged cleaner, chorus-and-reverb-washed mixes. On such irresistible pieces as “In the Modern World” and “Favourite”, singer Grian Chatten dialed down his tortured persona, exuding a lovelorn charisma, the set built around exemplary hooks and an expansive, open sound. Together, these two albums spotlighted the quintet’s versatility and ambition.
Gilla Band Embody Current Zeitgeist with a Noisy and Agitated LP
Over their three-set oeuvre, the Dublin-based Gilla Band have trafficked in jagged, lurching, fragmented noise forays. Singer Dara Kiely—juggling wry observations, glossolalic confessions, and meme-like nonsensicalities—operates as a hyper-vigilant trickster, gyrating amidst the artifacts of contemporary life. If Kiely fleshed out his agitated persona on 2022’s Most Normal, he cranks the panic volume another notch or two on the band’s new album, Pugnello.
Album Review: Protomartyr – Hotel Usona
[Domino; 2026] Detroit-based Protomartyr are no stranger to the bleak depiction. 2020’s Ultimate Success Today stands out for its anxious laments regarding climate crisis, problems related to egoic clinging, and the ineluctability of death.
Julia Jacklin finds new shadows beneath the familiar glow of The Gem
Afterwards, you reflect: they looked and sounded pretty much the same. Most of what you talked about you'd touched on before. And yet, something felt different. There was, in them, a subtle but definite energetic shift. The experience is similar while listening to Julia Jacklin’s new album, The Gem. “Brand New”, for example, is built around a guitar-heavy, folk-rock mix that resembles various tracks from 2019’s Crushing.
ALBUM REVIEW: With 'The Old Beloved Path,' Jake Xerses Fussell Returns to a Minimalist Approach
While Jake Xerses Fussell occasionally slips original tracks into his recordings, he mostly adapts traditional songs and instrumentals, giving obscure compositions a contemporary treatment. This is the case with his sixth album, The Old Beloved Path, as well. The significant shift from recent work is that he largely returns to a stripped-down approach, dropping the synths, strings, and ambient enhancements used on 2024’s When I’m Called and 2022’s Good and Green Again.
Emma Ruth Rundle Releases a Brilliant Career-Defining Set
These Killing Times Errant Child Emma Ruth Rundle’s latest album, These Killing Times, marks the integration of the artist’s divergent leanings (metal, folk, ambient). Distorted, doom-laden soundscapes à la 2016’s Marked for Death (and Rundle’s subsequent collaborations with Thou) are crossed with airier acoustic settings reminiscent of 2021’s Engine of Hell. Well-vetted adornments, informed by 2022’s EG2: Dowsing Voice, enhance the project atmospherically.
Album Review: Billy Strings – So Much For Goodbye
[Reprise; 2026] The internet rendered the hybrid approach an inevitability, as people have greater and immediate access to a variety of music. Many contemporary artists in their 30s or under hail from diverse backgrounds, influenced by hip-hop, metal, alt-rock, and Americana, as well as electronica and the DIY zeitgeist. Case in point: the 33-year-old bluegrass phenom Billy Strings.
ALBUM REVIEW: Nicole Atkins Addresses Modern Life While Honoring Her Heroes on 'Drama'
Nicole Atkins commented recently that she strives to “write modern songs that could be part of the Great American Songbook.” Indeed, the influence of various artists from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s can be heard throughout her oeuvre. Drama, like previous work, blends tried-and-true pop approaches and lush production treatments, the neo-crooner addressing love, loss, and the 21st-century malaise.
Chat Pile are exquisitely brutal on the bleak Who Loves the Sun
The 10-song set plunges into a relentless and riveting attack of hardcore, metal, and punk that serves to condemn not only end-stage capitalism but also, and more pressingly, the human curse of greed. If previous work lamented the state of the world – homelessness, disease, injustice – Sun damningly goes to the source, lamenting the fundamental nature of the human heart and, in terms of vocals, spotlights Raygun Busch at his most spellbindingly savage.
Brandon Flowers Revisits the Americana Playbook with Compelling LP
Bruce Springsteenian Romanticism is exemplified via “Born to Run”. The conflict between yearning and earthly circumstances is palpably evoked. The “town [that] rips the bones from your back” symbolizes family, DNA, conditioning, and emo-cognitive wiring. The impulse to “run” points to the craving to transcend who we are and where we live: the life we were born into.
ALBUM REVIEW: Po’ Ramblin’ Boys Bring Contemporary Flair to the Bluegrass Playbook
With their latest album, Po’ Ramblin’ Boys navigate another set chock-full of drawls, twangs, harmonies, and foot-stomping rhythms. Welcome to the Club, like previous projects, honors the quintet’s heroes — Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, among others — while effusing a contemporary flair, the Tennessee-born band reveling in next-level interplays, infectious melodies, and tongue-in-cheek lyrics.
Jungle Are Brilliant at Mixing Vintage and Contemporary Sounds
The 1970s canon is part and parcel of Jungle’s musical wiring. Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang, Ohio Players, and Sly & the Family Stone, among other acts, are undeniable sources. With their 2014 self-titled debut, however, they also showed innovation, with fresh melodies, basslines, and vocals, and an electronic leaning in line with the 2010s zeitgeist (EDM, house, dark R&B). In this way, their calling card struck a balance between derivation and originality.
Arca Is Inspired and Disciplined, Crafting Her Most Integrated Set
When Singaporean artist Yeule released their second album, 2022’s Glitch Princess, they resembled a space traveler orbiting the globe, assessing the conditions on planet Earth. With their next two albums, 2023’s Softscars and 2025’s Evangelic Girl Is a Gun, the traveler landed, then embraced a life on the blue orb, though traces of that otherworldly orientation remained. The merging of an alien persona and hyper-catchy songcraft made for rich paradoxes and a compelling gestalt.
Nia Archives Brilliantly Expands Jungle and Revels in Hooks
Emotional Junglist Islands With her debut LP, 2024’s Silence Is Loud, Dehaney Nia Lishahn Hunt, aka Nia Archives, emerged as the official torchbearer of neo-jungle. Skittering snare beats and booming bass parts defined the tracks, as did an assortment of strategically placed media and music samples. While Hunt’s vocals were distinct, she served as a DJ or MC as much as a singer. The album felt like a dance-club playlist cum pop montage garnished with dabs of shoegaze and moody rock.
ALBUM REVIEW: The Revivalists Explore Difficult Issues Via Catchy Sounds With 'Get It Honest'
With their sixth album, Get It Honest, the New Orleans-based octet The Revivalists continue to mine bluesy, classic, and Southern-rock templates. Produced by Rich Costey — who also helmed their last album, 2023’s Pour It Out into the Night — Get It Honest reiterates the band’s eclectic bent and pop attunement, brimming with singalong hooks. On previous albums, vocalist David Shaw often swung between confidence and doubt, defiant swagger contrasted with burdensome remorse.
ALBUM REVIEW: Punch Brothers Go All Instrumental on 'The Unsung Adventures,' Still Carrying the Torch
Punch Brothers’ first three albums, particularly 2010’s Antifogmatic and 2012’s Who’s Feeling Young Now?, stand out for their innovative arrangements; instrumental virtuosity, particularly founder Chris Thile’s mandolin fusillades; and riveting interplays, pushing the bluegrass genre to new heights. With 2015’s The Phosphorescent Blues, produced by T Bone Burnett, the group balanced their instrumental acumen and songwriting ambitions.
Album Review: Show Me The Body – Alone Together
[Loma Vista; 2026] Show Me the Body’s last two albums, particularly 2022’s Trouble the Water (as well as the Corpus mixtapes from 2017 and 2024), felt like they were recorded in a dry basement filled with smoke and smelling of pesticides. The result was a murky, punk-industrial vibe, mixes brimming with thorny and clangorous textures.
Album Review: $quib – Erring
[Halcyon Veil; 2026] Broadband internet, easy access to DIY recording technology, video-game soundtracking, and the ubiquity of stimuli – in the world, in our screens, in our heads – inevitably gave birth to hyper-, digi-, and glitch- core, each of which can be grouped under the broad umbrella of maximalism. Which is still proliferating: notably, the volatile gash will release at least you know what you’re laughing at in September; Hakushi Hasegawa’s Honest Feeling Album comes out in late August.
Album Review: SML – Spontaneous Music Live
[International Anthem; 2026] With their first two LPs, SML – Anna Butterss (bass), Jeremiah Chiu (synthesizers), Josh Johnson (saxophone), Booker Stardrum (percussion), and Gregory Uhlmann (guitar) – recorded various performances in various cities, then bolted to the studio à la Makaya McCraven, adding overdubs, making modifications, and applying effects.
Album Review: YHWH Nailgun – Magazine
[4AD; 2026] Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies are designed to prompt artists in such a way that they can break away from habits, overcome blocks, and move into fresh creative spaces. While these strategies lean philosophic (“Emphasize the flaws”, “Honour thy error as a hidden intention”), they can also be practically applied (“No guitars”, “Use only major chords”).
ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Heavy Thrill,’ Caleb Caudle Mixes Country and Pop Sensibilities
With his seventh album, Caleb Caudle tackles such themes as ageing, feeling like a misfit, and navigating the ups and downs we all endure. His first self-produced project, Heavy Thrill occasionally lacks the depth and mystery that a more strategic use of studio options might render. That said, his drier and restrained production puts the focus on his voice and pop-inflected melodies, spotlighting his gifts as a singer and a songwriter.
All Them Witches creatively reconfigure their inspirations on House of Mirrors
Led by guitarist Ben McLeod, the quartet forged an opus brimming with Zeppelin-esque blues-rock tones, Sabbath-like doomy textures, and spacey interludes a la Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree. Singer Charles Michael Parks, Jr. added sonorous vocals, reveling in apocalyptic storytelling and anxious diarism.
Album Review: Iceage – For Love Of Grace & the Hereafter
[Mexican Summer; 2026] In his book of teachings Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, the monk Shunryū Suzuki stresses the importance of open-mindedness, curiosity, and wonder, qualities that can over time become obscured by judgment, preferences, and limiting standards or criteria. In art, the so-called ‘return to basics’ is similarly designed to connect or reconnect one with inspiration or an essential creative process.
ALBUM REVIEW: With ‘Fondness, Etc.,’ Shakey Graves Reembraces His Lo-Fi Roots
Alejandro Rose-Garcia, a.k.a. Shakey Graves, launched his career in 2011 with the DIY exemplar, Roll the Bones. His next album, And the War Came, crept toward higher production values, still toeing a lo-fi line. With Can’t Wake Up, Graves constructed a well-produced, fully instrumented, and rock-leaning sequence, and showcased his gift for sonic texturing. With 2023’s Movie of the Week, he further experimented with studio options and, in terms of songcraft, forged his most eclectic templates.
Josiah and the Bonnevilles Display Craft and Vision
In 2008, Josiah Leming appeared on American Idol, after which he landed a contract with Warner Bros., resulting in 2010’s pop-inflected Come on Kid. Leaving Warner, he went his own way, embracing a folk sound and releasing Josiah and the Bonnevilles’ debut EP, Cold Blood, in 2016. Later albums, such as 2021’s Motel Mayday and 2023’s Endurance, underscored Leming’s aesthetic potential. His new album, As Is, however, is distinctly his “arrival” set.
Album Review: Portrayal of Guilt – …Beginning Of The End
[Run For Cover; 2026] With 2021’s Christfucker, Austin, Texas-based Portrayal of Guilt honed the eclecticism hinted at in earlier releases. While sustaining an elegantly ferocious stance, the band made use of chamber-leaning sparseness, punk-inflected riffs, new-wave licks, and dynamic rhythmic shifts. Singer (and guitarist) Matt King demonstrated a gift for nuance, veering tonally from unbridled aggression to profound despair.
Lip Critic return with certainty on Theft World
Track after track unfolded with cacophonic relentlessness, the band driven by a make-or-break sense of urgency. The pace and pitch of the set were impressive, as the band went all-in, holding nothing back. With their new album, Theft World, that blend of hardcore, maxi-pop, and nerd-hop is still the band’s calling card. But they’ve taken their foot off the accelerator a bit. They’re not coasting, they’re simply surer about themselves and their abilities.
ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Goodbye Blues,’ Kiki Cavazos’ Stories and Voice Are Timeless
Following two independent sets, including the enchanting Early Mountain Songs, Kiki Cavazos releases Goodbye Blues via Brooklyn-based Jalopy Records. Her new songs, much like previous tracks, are memorable for their mythic narratives, detailed imagery, and hard-won wisdom. Most notable, however, is Cavazos’ timeless voice, which evokes the essence of what it is to be human and to experience the rush of beauty and the ache of impermanence.
Album Review: Antropoceno – No Ritmo da Terra
[Longinus Recordings; 2026] Lua Viana’s work under the Antropoceno moniker – the debut, Natureza Morta, and now second release, No Ritmo da Terra – merges transportive rhythms, metal-leaning guitars, and ambient elements (plus some shoegazey textures a la her alternate vehicle, sonhos tomam conta). Really, though, these albums are memorable for their energetic reconciliations.
Fidelity is infused with Yaya Bey’s sincerity
Still, even with albums such as 2024’s Ten Fold, Bey demonstrated an affinity for smooth and soulful R&B. Her last LP, 2025’s do it afraid, showed her moving more deliberately in that direction, her vocals dreamy, the album’s instrumentation textured but unintrusive. Despite the occasional grumble or passing complaint re: the tortuosities of romance, the set exuded a notably positive vibe.
ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Total Dive’ Brown Horse Balance Originality and Derivation
Brown Horse’s first two albums, 2024’s Reservoir and 2025’s All the Right Weaknesses, established the band’s presence in the world of country rock. With their latest set, Total Dive, they further hone and occasionally perfect their MO. The mixes are more lushly arranged. Patrick Turner’s vocals are consistently nuanced. Enchanting melodies emerge throughout the sequence. Total Dive exudes remarkable presence and allure, as Brown Horse find a charged balance between derivation and originality.
Album Review: Irreversible Entanglements – Future Present Past
[Impulse!; 2026] With 2021’s Open the Gates and 2023’s Protect Your Light, Irreversible Entanglements achieved their rangiest sound, moving between free-jazz odysseys and precisely crafted, occasionally spacey interludes. Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, retreated slightly from the confrontive stance taken in earlier Irreversible Entanglements projects and her solo work (she hadn’t yet recorded the blistering collaboration with Sumac, 2025’s The Film).
Album Review: Avalon Emerson & the Charm – Written Into Changes
[Dead Oceans; 2026] Avalon Emerson’s debut, & the Charm, highlighted that the touring DJ and producer was already well-steeped in pop, electronica, and the sultriness (if not the melodic and rhythmic tilts) of R&B. While & the Charm was a memorable calling card, Emerson’s follow-up, Written into Changes, marks the musician’s consummate arrival. Whatever Emerson takes on, she embodies, making it her own.
ALBUM REVIEW: With ‘Future Soul,’ Tedeschi Trucks Band Range Far and Wide
Over five albums – including their bluesy debut, Revelator (2011), the socio-politically charged Let Me Get By (2016), and their magnum opus, I Am the Moon (2022) – Tedeschi Trucks Band synthesized their eclectic bents and honed their songcraft. With their sixth album, Future Soul, the band continue to integrate broad affinities, offering a sequence that is ambitious in scope and easy-going in tone.
Album Review: Kim Gordon – Play Me
[Matador; 2026] As an artist, Kim Gordon is no stranger to ennui and the weight of the mundane. The theme of the contemporary malaise is central to her solo work, going back to 2019’s No Home Record. Going back further: while her erstwhile band Sonic Youth often veered into wistful depictions of the quotidian, it was Gordon, mostly, who kept the band tethered to a certain zeitgeist fatigue, employing anti-glam imagery and deadpan yet mercurial vocals.
ALBUM REVIEW: With 'Watterson Hall', William Clark Green Embraces a Mainstream Sound
With his seventh album, Watterson Hall, William Clark Green blends old-country stances and new-country sounds, addressing such subjects as love, partying, and feeling down but keeping your chin up. Throughout the fifty-minute set, Green acknowledges the inevitability of hardships while insisting that life is a gift we should never take for granted. His songwriting skills and talent for delivering an engaging hook are on full display.
Tanya Tagaq: Saputjiji review - needed exposure to a stark and moody hellscape
It found her transitioning from relatively minimal and euphonic work to more complex sonic layering and grittier gestalts. The albums that followed – 2016’s Retribution, the 2019 EP Toothsayer, and 2022’s Tongues – made further use of Animism’s templates, Tagaq employing noise and confrontive poetry to address the blights of corpocracy and colonialism.
Album Review: Remember Sports - The Refrigerator
[Get Better Records; 2026] The sign of maturity, someone at some party years ago joked, is when angst ferments into ennui. With their latest album, The Refrigerator, Remember Sports graduate from the youthful restlessness displayed on earlier sets, including 2014’s Sunchokes and 2015’s more pop-oriented All of Something. Teenage trials have been endured, initiations processed. Adulthood hovers like an implacable Sphinx.
Bill Callahan: My Days of 58 review - unguarded, unrehearsed, and unsentimental
A few highlights: in 1995 and 2005, respectively, he released the restrained but incendiary Wild Love and clear-headed yet mercurial A River Ain't Too Much to Love (under the Smog moniker). With 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Callahan emerged as the anxious stoic. 2019’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest dripped with wistful pragmatism.
ALBUM REVIEW: With 'Let Us Clap' Lamisi Celebrates the Traditional and the Au Courant
Ghanaian activist, poet, and musician Lamisi (assisted by producer Wanlov the Kubolor) merges pop, protest, and an attunement to the ephemeral nature of life. Built around catchy melodies, club-ready beats, and lush textures, Let Us Clap spotlights Lamisi’s affinity for the au courant and reverence for the traditional. The result is a seamlessly eclectic LP, a cross between African purism and Western electronica. Opener “Agul” interweaves dance beats and percussive handclapping.
ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘The Knot’,The Waymores Stay True to Their Roots, Tweak Their Vintage Sound
The Anthology of American Folk Music, produced by Harry Smith and released in 1952, is a stunningly comprehensive document that compiled folk, country, and blues tracks recorded between 1926 and 1933. Including Mississippi John Hurt, Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers, The Carter Family, and Reverend Sister Nelson, among many others, the collection has informed and inspired generations of artists working in a multitude of genres.
Album Review: Mandy, Indiana - URGH
[Sacred Bones; 2026] With their 2021 debut EP and 2023 LP, I’ve Seen a Way, Mandy, Indiana fleshed out their industrial, rave-y, and electro-punk leanings. With their new album, the band revisit their eclectic MO; URGH, however, is more relentlessly amped, frothing with urgency and a banshee-like need for expression, catharsis, and transcendence. From the opener to the closing track, a listener beholds an oftentimes savage and rivetingly textured spectacle.
Blackwater Holylight: Not Here Not Gone review - world weary
Balancing the weight of everyday existence (thunder-y bass, distorted guitars) and the unboundedness of open space (electronic threads, chorus, reverb), it's undeniably doomy. The set still has a pop pull, hypnotic fuzz-waves splashing over Allison “Sunny” Faris’ plaintive voice but Not Here Not Gone is a bittersweet, sexy, seductive listen, a cool melding of the celestial and infernal.
Blackwater Holylight: Not Here Not Gone review - world weary
Balancing the weight of everyday existence (thunder-y bass, distorted guitars) and the unboundedness of open space (electronic threads, chorus, reverb), it's undeniably doomy. The set still has a pop pull, hypnotic fuzz-waves splashing over Allison “Sunny” Faris’ plaintive voice but Not Here Not Gone is a bittersweet, sexy, seductive listen, a cool melding of the celestial and infernal.
John Amen: “The Horror”
Jan 7, 2026 My brother used to say the Tibetan Buddhists with their wild cosmology understood horror, how it blooms beside that proliferating light – expansion, contraction: the shuddering cosmos. Renée Nicole Good, gunned down on Portland Ave in Minneapolis, MN. I watch the video until my eyes hurt. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Trying to convince myself it’s real? Sweep murder into a capsule I can swallow? When Kurtz screamed, The horror!, he voiced the nightmare in the human mind.
Album Review: Lucinda Williams - World’s Gone Wrong
[Highway 20 Records/Thirty Tigers; 2026] With her 16th album, Lucinda Williams continues to interweave the folk, rock, blues, and country templates she’s mined throughout her career. With World’s Gone Wrong, however, her lyrics are as direct as ever, bare-boned, depicting a world plagued by greed and power-hunger, what writer Paul Levy would describe as a “contagious psycho-spiritual disease of the soul”.
Album Review: Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist
[Get Better Records; 2026] Concise, abrasive, rage-filled blasts. Big thrash, hardcore, and punky metal shoved into little jagged capsules. Such is Gylt’s new and approximately 12-minute album, In 1,000 Agonies, I Exist, the follow-up to their 2024 eight-minute EP, I Will Commit a Holy Crime. “Bone Rake” features blowtorch guitars and lycanthropic vocals, pivoting between a loping rhythm and a straightforward grind-and-pound.
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