Gold Complex is a mere five tracks long, which the band hopes will be enough to tide fans over while they record their debut. Almost all of the songs are show-ready, though, which makes them perfect for your laid-back house parties and live performances. (And word on the street is that the band’s got a killer show.)

You don’t need to look any further than “Backbone”, the band’s opening track. There’s a great moment just about three minutes into the track: a sax solo fires up in the middle of a track, and for a split second, you think it’s the vocalist gearing up for another verse. The solo’s surprising every time, and never unwelcome.

The blend of soul and pop continues on “O.G.”, which has a couple terrific bass lines. “Cities & Lovers” and “Katrine” slow things down a bit towards the end. These slow-burn tracks harken back to some of the biggest names in old-school soul and R&B. “Katrine” has my favourite solo moment on the record. It’s a simple scale-stepping solo at first, but the way the instruments all bounce off each other is delightful.

The music works because the band is able to pull off the blend so perfectly. Gold Complex (the EP) is a perfect blend of soul and pop that’s both completely impressive and utterly inoffensive — which makes it a great introduction to the genre for those of us who have a time approaching it. It also shows great potential for the band.

If the EP has any downside, it’s that it’s nearly too polished. Gold Complex could benefit from letting their music get a little rough around the edges. As it is, lovers of soul music might find the EP pandering. But if the band stripped away any of the polish, I don’t know if they’d have the same audience.

So let me just say it, and get the elephant out of the room: Gold Complex is soul music for white people. But the band is so good at it that it’s hard to fault them for it.

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The lead singer, Miles Arntzen, put on a heckuva show. He was practically manic: he played an upright, standing drum kit centre stage, pounding it with a palpable degree of ferocity. The bassist head banged through every track, but in the sort of dancey way that you might laugh at if you saw a friend do it.

The sax and trumpet player can’t stop dancing, wiggling on stage like they’re at an EDM show. The percussionist in the back has all the excitement of a DJ who’s really into the tunes. This show was messy, and the band wasn’t as tight as they maybe could have been, but it didn’t matter. It was an explosion of energy — one of the best lives shows I’ve ever seen.

That energy isn’t necessarily captured on their debut self-titled record, but the incredible music is. Emefe is straight out of New York, so their Vampire Weekend-inspired Afrobeat sound is almost familiar, but the way they layer in jazz and funk makes it feel like a whole different gig.

Same Thing is one of the moments on record where it feels like they manage to capture as much of their energy as a recording can handle, and their jazzy style is on full display. The keyboardist is oozing psychedelics, and the trumpet and sax are out in full force. Not to mention that the music is delightfully weird, and oddly danceable.

The One isn’t dissimilar: the guitar lays down a nice, groovey riff, the vocal line makes for a nice sing along, by and the time the song is over, the whole band is jamming over a gnarly riff that’s simply divine.

I also love Sun Spat, which might be my favourite track on the record. I love the way that the instruments interact with the off-beats of the drums. It’s cool stuff, even if it “feels” musically wrong. It’s an incredible track, played with power, delivered with gravitas.

The following track, Summer, feels nearly traditional by comparison. But it’s clear, at this point in the record, that Emefe is all about defying convention. I love the way the song slowly builds up, in a manner that feels reminiscent of some of the great funk of yesteryear. Plus, that guitar riff (and the surrounding instrumentation) about a minute and a half into the song is plain old delightful.

Every member of this eight-piece band feels important, and necessary. Even if the music isn’t your cup of tea, if it’s too avant-garde for you, they’re a band you need to see live the next time they’re in town. They’ll make a fan out of you yet with their incredible live show — among the most energetic and exciting I’ve ever seen.

I can’t recommend Emefe highly enough, and I cannot wait to see where they go next.

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Originally released independently (in small quantities) in 2015, Iron Mountain has since been picked up Prophecy Productions. The re-release features new artwork, but the songs remain the same.

Despite its short five-track length, Unum is almost fifty minutes long. It doesn’t feel as long as that: with a seemingly endless bevy of ideas, the band comes alive with each track, building them with successive layers of intensity. At moments, their sludgey riffs conjure memories of Black Sabbath or Mastodon at their gnarliest. A couple tracks are reminiscent of Metallica’s thrasher approach (particularly their instrumental work). Blitz reminded me of Iron Maiden.

Yet Iron Mountain is working entirely within their own framework. With flutes, fiddles, and pipes, there is jazz-like backing track happening here (Blitz being another great example of a jazzy bass line with some memorable solo work). The band is completely comfortable with their own identity.

Tracks like Powow begin quietly and slowly ease their way into distorted power chords, still using the higher-pitched flute and pipes and fiddles to cut through the bass-heavy tones of the guitar tracks and the drum kits. The song’s mid-point becomes a total riff-fest, but yet it never descends into simple chugging. Rather than going the route so many metal and rock musicians go now — high-speed chugging on low guitar strings to create an ominous, train-like sound — Iron Mountain forges their own trail.

It’s worth saying that these gentlemen really know how to play their instruments. The drummer keeps excellent time, and the guitar work is particularly intricate. But what really shines are the solos throughout, which are rarely played on a traditional instrument associated with the genre.

The sound Iron Mountain’s got going for them is unique. Thanks to their appropriation of many genres, Unum has more to reveal with every listen. If there was going to be one album you listened to over the next week (or month), Unum would have enough depth to make the cut. It’s also a refreshing listen for those of us who think metal has had little to offer lately; it’s a reminder that it’s still possible to do something original in what’s beginning to feel like a stale genre.

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And then Jimi asks, “If a body drop in the hood, and no one around, does it make a noise?” overtop of a kinetic beat. By the end of the song, he’s answered his own question, but it’s a provocative thought process.

Most of the songs on 5 O’Clock Shadow, which is a seven-song EP that feels as long as a full-length, deal with Tents growing up in the hood. This is East Coast hip hop though; it sounds nothing like the hood Dre grew up in. One spin of The Way (Intro) clears up any misconceptions; Jimi Tents isn’t hear to sound like one of his heroes. A melancholic bass line walks him onto the record, and that melancholy stays with him.

That melancholy suits his voice, which reminds me in some ways of the baritone sound of The National’s Matt Berninger. Both of them sound positively morose sometimes, almost like Leonard Cohen. For Tents, this is a sound uniquely his own in hip hop. There’s nobody else in New York who sounds like this, and I’ve read some comparisons to Kendrick.

Should’ve Called and Landslide (the most upbeat track here) feature the strongest rapping on the record. Tents’ flow is impeccable, but it’s interesting that he doesn’t often spit that way. As a rapper, he’s more interested in songs like Elmer Fudd and Jazzy, which slow the genre down and let him ask these introspective questions.

The questions lack some of the depth that the leaders in the genre carry. Elmer Fudd is a great track, but listening a second time doesn’t bear repeated revelations about growing up in the hood. 5 O’Clock Shadow isn’t the sound of a landmark rap record, but rather the sound of a rapper coming into his own and being confident in his own voice.

Jimi Tents’ debut EP is a pitch to hear more from Jimi Tents later. The pitch is successful enough that I vote we just give him a seat at the table.

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So Boucher put Grimes on hold for a little while to come up with new material. When the material did flow, it really flowed: there were over 100 songs written for Art Angels, most of which I don’t think we’ll ever hear — and Boucher has made it clear that these tracks are all part of Grimes records we wouldn’t be interested in anyway.

The result of all this writing, re-writing, and experimentation is Art Angels: a celebration of pop set against Grimes’ hallmark sunny sounds and weirdness. The opening three tracks are worth listening to as examples: an instrumental opener that’s simply bizarre leads into the radio-friendly California before the whole thing explodes into the decidedly not-for-radio Scream.

Those three tracks serve as a wonderful synopsis of the record: pop tracks like Belly of the Beat sit against oddities like Kill V. Maim (which might be the record’s best track), often dwelling in some sort of strange tension that makes the entire record feel oddly balanced in its leanings.

Despite these seemingly opposing directions — one experimental, and one radio-friendly — Grimes is able to hold it all together with uncompromising focus and unbridled imagination. Ultimately, the album feels like it’s two steps ahead of everybody else: pop music that’s laser-focused on experimenting with form and style, often to the point of flying off the tracks, all while remaining accessible.

It’s a miracle that these songs are accessible at all, though. Grimes isn’t writing love songs: on Kill V. Maim, she sings “I’m only a man; I do what I can,” words that feel completely defiant to the male-driven institution that is pop music. Throughout the record, Grimes practically screams for her freedom as an artist, experimenting with post-electronic noises and genre-pushing ideas that are more like middle fingers than love letters.

The consequence of all this is that it feels like Boucher is entirely avoiding anything personal with Grimes. There’s a sense of detachment throughout the record: it’s massively ambitious, but it’s also clearly a performance. Boucher isn’t involved on as personal of a level. While the vision is entirely hers, the world feels like a meticulously crafted production of her Grimes alter ego.

It begs the question: can pop music, in its truest form, be more personal? Or does it require detachment? Is Grimes answering the question, or has Boucher merely discovered that Grimes is at the unique intersection of performance and experimentation that allows her to drag a genre forward at the expense of herself?

Regardless of the answer, Art Angels is one of 2015’s strongest records, and a glimpse into the future of pop in an age where anything is possible.

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But an incredible amount of artists did have something new to say. Some of them challenged us. Some of them broke our hearts. Some of them made us feel good. The best of them are gathered here for your perusal. Cheers to 2015, and here’s to the year to come.

Leon Bridges

Coming Home

Coming Home is a record that should have existed in the 1960s. Leon Bridges is performing music that intersects perfectly with soul and R&B and gospel music. Who knew that this nostalgic sound could be so formidable in 2015?

What Bridges lacks in originality — even Bridges would say he owes Sam Cooke a beer — it makes up for with songwriting and smooth style. Leon Bridges’ debut is a comeback record for 1960s R&B/soul, but it’s also a hugely compelling charmer that makes Bridges feel like one of the most exciting soul performers of his generation — despite his retro leanings.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Girlpool

Before the World Was Big

Girlpool’s charming folk-influenced pop music feels startlingly original while remaining clearly influenced by greats like Velvet Underground. At just twenty-five minutes, Before the World Was Big feels like a giant tease, as if the band is still warming up to something bigger.

But they never break free of their simple guitar riffs and dual harmonies. In spite of that, the record holds some sort of mysterious raw power and energy to it: when Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad sing together, it doesn’t matter whether they’re intentionally ironically stripping away both folk and punk at the same time. The two of them have the emotional weight of an eighteen-wheeler. The rest of it is just candy.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

HOLYCHILD

The Shape of Brat Pop to Come

HOLYCHILD came out of nowhere and claimed to invent a new genre of pop music. While that’s not necessarily the case, the band sounds amazing and has a ton of momentum going for them. This duo is politically aware and socially conscious, with lyrics that read more like scathing indictments of the genre than they do pop songs.

Almost every track on Brat Pop is insanely catchy, and the biting tone — one that is both sarcastic and glaringly truthful — doesn’t spare anybody in its path. HOLYCHILD’s debut was glossed over by mainstream publications last year, but it’s a record you shouldn’t miss.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Petite Noir

La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful

South African Yannick Ilunga doesn’t care about your conception of pop music. His experimental electronic pop dares to be completely different and sounds entirely new. While he’s not necessarily have writing tracks you can dance to, his 80s-influenced, genre-mashing take on the genre feels like something straight out of the future and completely ahead of its time.

La Vie Est Belle (Life Is Beautiful) feels like a near-perfect record that dares to dream. It’s music that doesn’t believe in the boundaries of genre, and in the process of defying convention while remaining deeply rooted in what’s come before, Petite Noir’s debut earns respect and commands attention.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Kamasi Washington

The Epic

The Epic is authentic jazz. For a brief moment in time, Kamasi Washington was “that guy who played on Kendrick’s new record”. Immediately after The Epic dropped, he became the jazz aficionado who appeared out of nowhere, dropping what may be one of the genre’s masterpieces as a debut.

The Epic is remarkably unhinged. Just shy of three hours long, Washington somehow keeps his jazz music accessible despite his monolithic-sized ideas. It’s the product of a virtuoso clearly obsessed with defying expectations of critics and the culture surrounding jazz, and it’s hard to say that any other record in the genre has commanded as much attention in the past year.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Raury

All We Need

All We Need establishes nineteen-year-old Raury Tullis as a voice to be reckoned with in modern hip hop music. With influences that range from Kid Cudi and Kanye West to Marvin Gaye, Father John Misty, and Bon Iver, he’s also got an incredibly compelling and eclectic sound that separates him from many of his peers.

This sound feels nearly perfectly-honed on All We Need, an immense debut that surprises — particularly because of his age. The genre-jumping album is comfortable with melancholy, comfortable with doling out wisdom, and dealing with doling out the unexpected. He’s the opposite of cynical, and that makes his record one of hip hop’s best in a very strong year.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Alabama Shakes

Sound & Color

Sound & Color feels more varied than its predecessor, with Alabama Shakes spreading their wings on their sophomore effort and beginning to welcome their inner weird. While their first album was incredibly strong, Sound & Color reveals that the band has much more to say. Sound & Color is, as the title alludes, as much about texture as it is about the album’s pure unhinged sonic qualities.

Most importantly, though, Alabama Shakes avoids the sophomore slump with their expanded palette and collection of new sounds. With some of the most beautiful songs put on record in 2015, and a smattering of fantastic singles, Sound & Color makes a strong statement that Alabama Shakes is at the top of their game.

Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Sleater-Kinney

No Cities to Love

Sleater-Kinney’s first record in ten years is one of 2015’s best. The rock band’s comeback is more a statement that urges and commands our attention, nearly staccato with intensely brief three-minute tracks that sound more punk than they do rock ’n roll.

It’s easy to forget that the women in Sleater-Kinney are some of rock’s elder states-women when it sounds like the band still has so much to say. As political as ever, No Cities to Love carries a sense of urgency in its riffs that would make Dave Grohl jealous. While the trio was nothing to scoff at before, their new album is undoubtedly their best work: an absolute celebration of a band aging well and perhaps finally at their best.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Grimes

Art Angels

Claire Boucher said she wrote hundreds of songs for Art Angels, but ended up scrapping most of them. What’s left behind are fourteen perfectly-polished alt-pop tracks that are somehow radio-friendly without ever pandering to her audience. As Grimes, Boucher grabs the pop wheel and — instead of re-inventing things that are never broken — just takes the whole convertible off-roading.

Art Angels is fearless and incredibly ambitious as a result, broad and friendly while remaining singularly weird and individual. Refusing to be white-washed into everybody else’s definition of pop songwriting, Claire Boucher instead made a visionary and uncompromising pop record that the genres’ fans and detractors can listen to with pride.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Sufjan Stevens

Carrie & Lowell

Sufjan Stevens isn’t know for his predictability. He’s leaped from one genre to the next, even making multiple Christmas albums, but Carrie & Lowell feels like a return to his original form as a lo-fi singer/songwriter. As Sufjan charts the life and death of his mother, as well as reflect on his own complicated feelings about her, it strikes not with grand musical statements, but with a series of small, gut-wrenching emotional moments.

Carrie & Lowell is perhaps the epitome of Sufjan Stevens’ sound, stripped back to its most basic and essential. As a result, in a career with seemingly one golden album after another, it could be the best record he’s ever made.

Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Father John Misty

I Love You, Honeybear

Josh Tillman’s sophomore effort as Father John Misty, he continues to demonstrate his outstanding songwriting ability. Better than his solo debut by any reviewer’s metric, I Love You, Honeybear feels challenging and rewarding without losing any of its approachability. Lush and complex soundscapes are perfectly produced, revealing the mastery Tillman has over his genre at this point in his career.

There’s a lot to take apart with the album, but it’s Tillman’s lyrical approach that truly sets it apart. Most of the album explores the relationship he has with his wife, and he’s at turns loving and cynical about their time together and their future. The fascination of I Love You, Honeybear is trying to decode the way Tillman sings about his wife and their life together into something understandable and comfortable — because the staggering openness that Tillman presents as Father John Misty feels nearly voyeuristic.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

Kendrick Lamar

To Pimp a Butterfly

It wasn’t surprising that Kendrick’s latest record was good; it was largely expected to be an excellent record from one of hip hop’s brightest stars. But the level of intelligence and thought surrounding the album, the provocative way that Lamar literally takes it to the White House, took us all by surprise.

To Pimp a Butterfly is an album that shines because of Lamar’s singular skill as a lyricist and a storyteller. Music aside — and the backing music on TPAB is worth deeper discussion in and of itself — the record shines because Kendrick shines behind the mic. More than the best record of the year, it feels like an important moment in pop culture.

Read our review | Listen: Amazon / Apple Music / iTunes / Spotify

The post The Best Albums of 2015 appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

You really only need to listen to Turn To Dust to understand what I mean: the soft kick drum and the acoustic guitars, paired with singer Ellie Rowsell’s angelic voice, carry all the menace and creepiness of grunge’s best work, but marries it with a sense of experimentation and texture-driven tension.

Wolf Alice holds off on their grunge tracks and influences for most of the record. I suspect they would consider themselves more of an indie band than the saviour to grunge they’ve been portrayed as, despite their influences and heritage, but songs like Moaning Lisa Smile, Fluffy, and You’re a Germ betray their ancestry (and are reminiscent of Nirvana at their absolute best).

But the band really shines when they’re willing to experiment with new sounds: Lisbon is one of the highlights from the record, which snarling and screechy guitars during the chorus and angst-driven lyrics during the verse — but instrumentation that feels more in line with some of indie rock’s best dream pop. Silk is similar, and feels almost similar to tracks from The National.

The experimentation isn’t always successful, but that it’s so interesting is indicative of a general failure of mainstream rock to bring us an artist who’s willing to be bitingly sincere and inescapably sure of themselves. While Wolf Alice’s style is difficult to nail down, it’s hard to argue that works against them — their stylistic variety is held down almost exclusively by Ellie’s vocal work.

If Ellie Rowsell’s vocal work defines My Love Is Cool’s eclectic whole, then it’s hard to define it as anything other than a grunge record: her lyrics are positively Cobain-esque, as she holds up a mirror to her anxiety and personal issues and cogently tells the listener how it is without dwelling on anything more significant than the messiness of it all.

Wolf Alice’s debut isn’t perfect, but it’s a great example of a band struggling to form its own identity. As they move from one style to the next, sometimes trying things out that don’t work, it seems clear that their willingness to try something new will keep Wolf Alice interesting long after their contemporaries and peers have disappeared.

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Partially, that was to avoid being reactive: while it’s easy to hop on the same bandwagon as everybody else and claim a record to be the best of the year, it’s also very easy to make a mistake with claims like that and look foolish later. Hindsight is 20/20, but I needed time to step back before saying anything that would look ridiculous later.

At this point, it seems conclusive — and even President Obama agrees — that Lamar owned 2015.

What’s not as conclusive is how important To Pimp A Butterfly will be five years from now. I’d go so far as to say that the album is the most important of the decade thus far. It’s not just its jazz experiments — although that’s definitely a part of it — but it’s also the album’s cultural significance.

As Lamar explores his status as a rich black man exploring Africa for the first time and going back home to Compton, he incidentally sheds light on his generation’s biggest plight in cities like Ferguson. As black people (and other non-white nationalities) are mistreated and abused by police, To Pimp A Butterfly feels like a call to act — and a call to recognize each other as people. It’s an incredibly important record that shines a light on the way music can speak for our culture, and how it draws attention to the real issues we otherwise might not have even noticed.

The standout from the record is, no doubt, How Much A Dollar Cost. Against a laid-back jazzy beat, Kendrick discusses an encounter with a homeless man who asks him for money and reveals himself later to be God. Kendrick’s lyrical and rhythmic abilities as a rapper here are unparalleled, as he explains and justifies his behaviour despite knowing he’s sometimes no better than the white racist.

It’s not just that song, of course. Alright has become the theme song for the Black Lives Matter movement. The Blacker The Berry is powerful, and Kendrick’s live performances of the song seem to generate a simultaneously rabid and uncomfortably tense response from its audiences. And at the end of i, Kendrick breaks out a spoken word performance that’s hard to top.

But top it he does, with a so-well-done-it-feels-real interview with Tupac that Lamar scraped together with a bunch of unreleased tapes. It caps off an unbelievable album on a somber note: some things never change.

It’s more than the lyrics that make the album stand out, though: the music itself is incredible. To Pimp A Butterfly is one of the jazziest hip hop records ever made. It’s not a jazz record, but it has so many of the greats on it (like Terrace Martin and Thundercat) — as well as some new faces (like the immensely-talented Kamasi Washington). And it oozes the same sort of sexual, raw, and kinetic energy that the best jazz records eked.

Not to mention the way Kendrick Lamar uses jazz’s best inclinations to continually surprise the audiences with unpredictable beats, rhythms, and song structures. It makes To Pimp A Butterfly immensely rewarding with deeper listening.

There’s a point in the album, around the For Sale? Interlude, when you realize you genuinely have no idea what Kendrick is up to or where he’s going with the whole record. It’s full of surprises. And by the time it’s done, you let out a giant exhale, no matter how times you’ve heard it before. While Alright and King Kunta are great singles, it’s clear that the album is best when you listen to it from beginning to end without skipping a track.

Every ten or fifteen years, an artefact comes out of our pop culture that seems to be the perfect depiction of something happening in our society. It happened fifteen years ago with The Lord Of The Rings, a film trilogy that seemed perfectly time to capture our fears and hopes concerning the War on Terrorism. With To Pimp A Butterfly, we have something similar: a time capsule that is perhaps the closest thing to a perfect record that we’ve ever had, but it also means so much more. It’s our time, no matter how bad it is, recorded onto vinyl. It’s a thing of beauty.

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But 40 Winks, a Belgian duo, has gone on to have a successful career in experimental instrumental hip hop, using the ideas on Sound Puzzle to realize their sound and lay out the foundations that they would continue to play off for the next decade.

Sound Puzzle is an amalgamation of many influences, which may be obvious from the title, but what’s impressive about the record — and 40 Winks as an artist — is how it manages to merge all these sounds and make something cohesive out of it. It’s weird, but not in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable — that weirdness is what makes it unique. The record makes for a compelling Saturday morning lounging at home.

The music also feels as if it tells a narrative, thanks to some well-placed vocal interludes that tell something of a story behind a husband and a wife. The music follows the narrative thematically, and as the marriage begins to deteriorate, the beats and loops become a little more rhythmic and tense.

This makes Sound Puzzle feel like an incredibly coherent album; you shouldn’t skip tracks or be selective if you want to hear the whole experience. Amazingly, this still holds up despite the deluxe version’s additional tracks.

This could be because the additional tracks were originally included with the release in 2007, but in a limited edition print run of 100 cassettes. Times have changed though: with updated (and much more interesting) cover art, the record is now on vinyl for the first time (an infinitely better listening experience than a tape, of course), and those additional tracks are available for all of us to enjoy.

It’s a good time to be a fan of 40 Winks.

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On Half Free, Remy’s first release on the 4AD label, she sings about suicide, father/daughter relationships, broken homes, failing marriages, and disparaging family members (in no particular order). The album’s title becomes particularly ironic, quickly, as Remy jokes on the phone in a spoken interlude about how she’s glad she wasn’t “one of those sons that turns into a fascist dictator” but instead just “another woman with no self-esteem.”

While the album doesn’t necessarily come off as political, its comments about womanhood and family are particularly timely — and extremely liberal. As Remy struggles with finding her place, she speaks for women everywhere on the way.

That’s not to say that the record is entirely depressing: musically, it has a consistent, jangly bounce to it. Damn That Valley and Sed Knife are great examples of the sort of thing I suspect U.S. Girls will become famous for: beautiful alt-pop with venomous undertones.

What Half Free really reminds me of is Gone Girl, the 2014 David Fincher movie, or even Best Picture winner American Beauty. Thematically, both similarly examine the home life dream that has come to symbolize so much of the hope people find in North America’s suburbs. And both find the dream to be left wanting, revealing that beneath that facade, the dream is becoming a nightmare of broken homes and disrupted families.

The difference between them is that with U.S. Girls, Meghan Remy is revealing the brokenness from a place of intimacy. While Gone Girl and Beauty can be shocking, Half Free feels like a personal statement. In many ways, the album is more powerful as a result.

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