Tori Amos – Unrepentant Geraldines
Unrepentant Geraldines is personal and political and refreshingly void of marketing gimmicks or befuddling collaborations. Rather, Tori just comes bearing songs straight from the heart/head/hands/Hell. The first single imagines “trouble” as a young woman running from Satan through a swamp of Southern blues. “Giant’s Rolling Pin” addresses NSRA spying scandals with a rollicking fable about magical pies. There’s plenty of classic Tori, stripped at the piano keys: “Wild Ways” is a grenade disguised as a ballad, in which she turns “I hate you” into a love poem, which of course it usually is; “Promises,” a duet with her 13-year-old daughter Natashya, is simply lovely. Read the full review on Exclaim

Chromeo – White Women
The opening seconds of Chromeo’s ‘White Women’ could easily be mistaken for Katy Perry’s gigantic, brilliant ‘Teenage Dream’ single. That’s about the clearest indication required of where this funk duo are headed on their fourth album. They’ve cleaned up – without sacrificing their grubby, crude sense of humour, mind you – and they’re writing the cleanest, most shiny pop songs of their career. Read the full review on DIY

Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Days of Abandon
Brooklyn’s Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the pop vehicle for songwriter Kip Berman and a rotating circle of musician-friends, continues to shift and contort its sound three albums deep into its discography. The first album reflected the group’s early, intimate approach with its small-scale bedroom tape sound. Then Belong came along, and everything got bigger: the guitars took on a heavier crunch, and the massive synths held back only enough to keep from swallowing up Berman’s feather-light vocals. This latest record features yet another evolution for the band, with new members and a slightly different vibe, but is once again centered by Berman’s infectious pop songcraft. Read the full review on Under the Radar