This Week's Releases

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell — The Traveling Kind (Nonesuch/Warner)

This release from long-time friends Harris and Crowell scores our Album Of The Week this week, with a solid four stars from our reviewer. He noted that "Harris’ trademark harmonies stick like Tennessee honey to Crowell’s sweet bourbon tones" and producer Joe Henry "creates the feeling of a late-night dive bar shrouded in cigarette smoke".

Nosaj Thing — Fated (Innovative Leisure/Inertia)

LA producer Jason Chung, also known as Nosaj Thing, has come out with Fated, "essentially 15 short, warped, eerie soundscapes of seemingly random FX, disembodied, shimmering, ghostly voices and gut-churning bass drops, swirling around drum patterns that are often seemingly devoid of any sort of pattern at all". We gave it three-and-a-half stars and found it to be an "intriguing listen". 

The Tallest Man On Earth — Dark Bird Is Home (Dead Oceans/Inertia)

As the band's fourth album, we found it to be an "opaque set of songs that feel like a warm hug and cold shower simultaneously". Our reviewer notes that the production is "great", and though "not his best work, but it’s certainly the easiest one to listen to". We gave it three-and-a-half stars. 

Snoop Dogg — RUSH (Sony)

Snoop Dogg — formerly Snoop Lion, formerly Snoop Dogg — has come out with a "Pharrell-produced, ‘70s era R&B compilation of sex jams and braggadocio", but our reviewer found the album to be a genre hop, which he believes is "about building a compelling persona and sticking to it". Our reviewer didn't think RUSH achieved this as convincingly as Snoop Dogg's past attempts at reggae, country music and West Coast rap. Instead, "here, he’s exposed as a charlatan". We scored it two stars.