Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Prince’s pair of new albums, we’re picking our favorite songs from the Purple One.

There are only two camps of people in this world: Prince apologists and Prince fault-finders. With the arrival of Prince’s new albums, Art Official Age and Plectrum Electrum, both sides are calling on their members to fall in line. As the reviews start pouring in, there will likely be loyalists who claim these albums…

Welcome to the Music Roundtable, a blatant rip-off of TV Club’s TV Roundtable feature. Here, music writers and fans discuss recent reissues, hot new releases, or just records we like. This time, we’re talking about The Smashing Pumpkins’ 1998 album Adore, which just got a ridiculously massive reissue.

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Prince’s pair of new albums, we’re picking our favorite songs from the Purple One.

Christopher Owens, whether consciously or not, seems to be distancing himself from his short-lived band, Girls. Where the depressingly small discography of that band was inventive and charismatic, Owens’ solo debut, Lysandre, was a stick in the mud, a ballad-heavy roots record that failed to be as dynamic or…

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Prince’s pair of new albums, we’re picking our favorite songs from the Purple One.

Its title and somewhat puzzling distribution method point obsessively toward the future, but neither’s enough to fool the discerning fan: Thom Yorke’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is a throwback to nearly a decade prior. Remember the summer of 2006? Radiohead found itself in the midst of a lengthy dry recording spell, then…

Adam Ferris’ “Gush”
I got a bit of a headache when I initially experienced Adam Ferris’ art. The installation—called “Gush”—first asked for access to my computer’s camera. After granting access, a vague outline of my face appeared in hazy colors, the pixels zooming dizzily. Moving my head around, the screen highlighted…

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about living in the city.

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about living in the city.

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about living in the city.

With a beat that pulsates like a racing heart, Twin Shadow provides a perfect tune to wiggle to with “Five Seconds.” The lyrics, however, reveal a much harsher reality, in which the singer struggles with a closed-off lover, singing “Five seconds in your heart / Straight to your heart / I can’t get to your heart.” The…

In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, we’re picking songs about living in the city.

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

Both the most visible face in electronic music—it’s leered disconcertingly from the covers of albums and the shoulders of bikini models—and its most enigmatic personality, Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James is an artist made for obsessives. His music’s rise coincided with the flourishing of the Internet, tailored for…

Jeff Tweedy is a remarkably versatile songwriter, even when only considering the output of his main gig, Wilco. For every delicate ballad like “Far, Far Away,” there’s a noise-rock storm like “Kicking Television”; for every Tin Pan Alley pastiche like “Hummingbird,” there’s a hazy fever dream like “I Am Trying To…

“I always liked it slow / Slow is in my blood,” a rasping Leonard Cohen claims at the start of his 13th album, Popular Problems. That’s true—one number, “Born In Chains,” took a reported 40 years’ worth of revisions to get right—though in fact the Canadian songwriter is speeding up in his 80th year. Popular Problems…

On his 2012 self-titled album, his first for Sub Pop, Kyle Thomas (a.k.a. King Tuff) became a hero at writing gooey garage punk filtered through a sticky haze of weed smoke. High and in the clouds one minute and high and on the couch the next, the in-the-pocket songwriting features a giddy mix of charming sandy-beach…

When Perfume Genius—the solo project of piano-playing songwriter Mike Hadreas—first caught attention for the 2010 debut Learning, the wide-spread praise centered around Hadreas’ stark lyrical content. Drawing on years of drug addiction and personal turmoil, Learning’s home recording-style only added to the immediacy…