Wild Flag — a quartet of the past decade's most celebrated indie-rock goddesses — is releasing a self-titled debut album on Tuesday that is the most anticipated "supergroup" collaboration of the year... at least "among a particular strain of NPR-listening indie-rock obsessives," says Jessica Grose at Slate. Wild Flag is comprised of Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss (two former members of Sleater-Kinney), Rebecca Cole (The Minders), and Mary Timony (Helium, Autoclave, and the Mary Timony Band). The record is already being praised as "the year's first four-star album." In a year packed with heralded releases by Bon Iver, R.E.M., and Kanye West and Jay-Z, is Wild Flag really the best so far?
Yes. It's "a debut for the ages": This "combustive mix of indie-rock veterans" has made "one of the year's best albums," says Greg Kot at the Chicago Tribune. The songs are carefully constructed, but they never sound "stable or static." The album veers from evoking '60s-era girl groups to the "new-wave kicks of the Cars," and teeters "on the ledge of chaos, of mayhem fighting melody for control."
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