'Headlights' by Alex G
★★★
"If you are under 35 and enjoy indie rock, Alex G is close to a household name," said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. "If you are over 50 and not particularly invested in new music, you may not have heard of him." His 10th studio album, which arrives 13 years after he found a big audience at age 19, is also his first on a major label, but as always, "you get a feeling that this is music he needs to make." While the opening tracks "have the bright, chiming sound of R.E.M. in the early '90s," his music still "feels of and for the internet," shifting from breezy acoustic instrumentation to warped electronics that sometimes distort his nasally voice. In short, the album "has all the immediacy and eccentricity that have carried him this far." The polish that label money buys "doesn't corrupt Headlights," said Ian Cohen in Pitchfork. Even when he calls on a string section, Alex G is merely expanding his range. At 32, he is also a father for the first time, and while you sometimes hear the money he spent to make this album, "you always hear the love even louder."
'Don't Tap the Glass' by Tyler, the Creator
★★★
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"Don't Tap the Glass is Tyler, the Creator switching off the anxious side of his brain and allowing simple pleasures to guide him," said David Renshaw in The Fader. A surprise release that arrives just 10 months after his chart-topping Chromakopia, the 10-track set aims to put bodies back on the dance floor and comes with Tyler explicitly demanding that it not be listened to while sitting still. "Traversing G-Funk, bouncy R&B, Miami bass, jungle, and everything in between," it's the Grammy winner's "most don't-overthink-it record in years." And "at a breezy 28 minutes," it's also his tightest. Despite its brevity, Don't Tap the Glass is another sign that Tyler is "on a generational roll right now," said Aaron Williams in Uproxx. Who else gets to play so fast and loose with release schedules? Or "so wildly experiment with sonics?" Veering from '80s L.A. freestyle on "Sugar on My Tongue" to "Zapp-like funk-R&B" on "Sucka Free," he has whipped up "a living museum of Black music from the past four decades." If only "more artists were allowed to be like Tyler, the Creator and just...create."
'Sex Hysteria' by Jessie Murph
★★★
Jessie Murph's sophomore album "has even more sass and swagger than her impressive 2024 debut," said Jem Aswad in Variety. A "precociously talented" singer and songwriter who sings with a twang but is "absolutely not a country artist," the 20-year-old from Alabama follows in Amy Winehouse's footsteps by making music steeped in the sound of 1950s and '60s torch singers and girl groups. At the same time, "the flow and attitude of hip-hop are so deep in her DNA" that even her sung verses "hit like rap lyrics." The "brooding" title track, a rock ballad, "doesn't just set the emotional tone for the album; it is the tone," said Caitlin Hall in Holler. While the album includes a top-20 hit in "Blue Strips," which feels like "post-apocalyptic country pop," many of Murph's new songs "wrestle with self-worth, heartbreak, and survival," and the title song "exposes the mess of needing someone who you know is bad for you, just to feel anything at all." Characteristically, "it doesn't try to resolve the hurt." It just sits with it, "which in Murph's world is sometimes more powerful."
