Greer's Ears

American indie rock/synth-pop duo MGMT released their fourth full-length studio album last weekend. Following their poorly received self-titled studio release, the group took a hiatus from making music for a while. Little Dark Age is their first album release in over four years, and fortunately, it is well worth the wait. Musically, this album strikes a perfect balance between creativity, experimentation, and accessibility. This is definitely their most pop-centric and accessible release since their debut album Oracular Spectacular . Lyrically, this album tackles an incredibly wide range of topics: relationships, depression, death, friendship, phone addiction, political climate, and more. However, the way they approach these sorts of topics is refreshingly unconventional. The album begins with the witty masterpiece "She Works Out Too Much," which is my favorite track ever released by MGMT. As the title suggests, this song chronicles a relationship that failed because the...

When your favorite artist of all time curates a soundtrack for the newest installment of your favorite movie franchise, it's a good day. Last Friday, Kendrick Lamar released the soundtrack for the latest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther . This album is nothing short of impressive - especially considering how busy Kendrick has been as it is for the past eight months touring the world with his latest award-winning album, DAMN.  Kendrick and Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith (CEO of Top Dawg Entertainment) have done a great job at bringing together a very eclectic group of talented artists. In addition to Kendrick, there are 22 artists featured on this record—and nearly every feature feels significant/worthwhile.  Black Panther The Album  is thematic, cohesive, and fun. I started writing this review a lot earlier in the week, but I decided that it might be beneficial to see the movie before finishing/publishing it. That was a good decision. Granted, only ...

Hookworms is a psychedelic indie pop/noise rock band consisting of five members from Leeds, England. The group released their first tape in 2011 and have been slowly climbing their way up the ladder of success ever since. In 2013, they released their debut LP, Pearl Mystic , which was widely praised. Following Pearl Mystic , they released The Hum  in in 2014, which was even more critically acclaimed. Today, the group finally released the highly-anticipated Microshift— their third full-length LP. In short, this release is a huge leap forward for the group, and an important installment in their discography. Microshift is without a doubt the cleanest sounding record I've heard from Hookworms. The album features the most intricate and compelling instrumentation in their catalogue. There's a much greater emphasis on electronic production in this album than there ever has been before, and the production quality is higher than it's ever been. This propels them even further i...

"M A N I A" is the seventh studio album release from American rock band "Fall Out Boy" (although I would hardly consider them a rock band at this point.) Following in the footsteps of their 2015 release, " American Beauty/American Psycho," Fall Out Boy tries to reinvent themselves with this record. In doing so, they take a pretty terrible turn.  I literally laughed out loud listening to the album opener, "Young and Menace." From that song alone, it was clear that Fall Out Boy had officially sold out. It sounds like a teenager took a song from "American Beauty/American Psycho" and made a trap remix of it on GarageBand for a Call of Duty Quick Scope montage. While I suppose they deserve some credit for constantly taking risks and trying to reinvent themselves, they don't really bring anything unique or original to the table. It sounds like they listened to a pop radio station for a few hours, took notes on every trope they hear...