Blues Control

10 of the Year’s Most Unfairly Overlooked Albums

It’s the middle of the year, which means it’s time for the music industry’s first round of 2012 listomania — and lo, the first “best of 2012 so far” roundups have already begun to crop up across the Internet. It’s been pleasing to see that some of our favorite albums have had plenty of love on such lists — we’re sure you don’t need us to tell you any more about the likes of Lower Dens, Chromatics, Liars, Death Grips, Leonard Cohen or, of course, Grimes, who may well actually rule the entire world by the end of this year. But there are others that we haven’t been seeing mentioned a whole lot, and thus we figured we’d repeat the feature we did at about this time last year, focusing on albums that everyone seems to have overlooked so far in 2012. We suggest you catch up ASAP, as December’s coming sooner than you think. … Read More

5 Albums to Stream for Free This Week: Peaking Lights, Smashing Pumpkins

It’s Monday, which means it’s time for another edition of our regular start-of-the-week stream-a-thon, wherein we scour the Internet for worthy and/or noteworthy albums that are streaming this week at absolutely no cost. Today we rejoice at strange and wonderful records from Peaking Lights and Blues Control, sigh at the new one from “Smashing Pumpkins,” smile happily at being pleasantly surprised by the posthumous J Dilla record, and then bliss out to the debut album from Echo Lake. Click through and get listening. … Read More