With brash young indie bands like Geese and Lifeguard; the magazine got fearless rock storytelling from Wednesday and Craig Finn; we’ve got the underground rap poetics of Billy Woods and the radical clubland beats of Pink Pantheress.
Some of these artists are rookies, some are legends — the 86-year-old soul queen Mavis Staples rules right next to the teenage kicks of Sombr. There’s comeback kids like Justin Bieber, who rediscovered his swag. Hayley Williams made her solo move, the Clipse proved hardcore never dies, Jeff Tweedy shared his hard-won Zen wisdom, Tyler Childers raised hell. We’ve got pop ingenues from Addison Rae to Olivia Dean.
They ’ve got melancholy brunettes, sad women, West End girls, man’s best friends.
On Lily Allen, ‘West End Girl’ which just today is going to be released on a butt plug shaped USB,
Rolling Stone declared Lily Allen’s West End Girl the “most brutal album of the year,” due to its masterful portrayal of modern love and loss amid revelations of butt plugs, condoms, and a husband who is quite possibly a sex addict — all set against honeyed pop scores. Here we find Allen, nearly 20 years after her debut, Alright, Still, delivering her most ruthless music yet, an odyssey of betrayal and heartbreak, a work where musical storytelling is laid out in its barest and sharpest form. —Charisma Madarang
