It's a party-starting masterpiece that might just get you to think on occasion too. From the straight-ahead radio fire of "This Fire" to the spry funk of "Barefooted" to the anti-technology screed "The Witness" to the cinematic floor-filler of "Is This All it Seems," Crazy P show a deft mastery of styles on this full-length, sometimes pushing large thoughts about society through catchy hooks and addictive grooves. The band's increasingly serious lyrical themes and ear for a good jam all coalesced into this year's "Age of the Ego," its best record and one of the year's best pop albums bar none. Initially goofy and party-starting, the gentle passing of time has aged and matured the band, the group getting only better and better at their groovy and distinct brand of dance song craft. modern disco outfit Crazy P have been putting out albums since 1998, with its core members, Chris Todd and James Baron, perfecting their craft over the course of several albums, integrating vocalist Danielle Moore around 2002. "Dedicated" is another excellent record from the newly appointed queen of the four-minute dance-pop fantasia, although this time out things are a little bit more piano-based and just a little bit more sensual, particularly on the joyous '80s pastiche "Want You in My Room." It's a great record all around, but songs like "Julien," "Now That I Found You," "The Sound" and the celebratory "Feels Right" have become instant classics, proving that each new Carly Rae Jepsen album is just going to sound like another self-contained greatest hits album - and quite frankly, we're here for it. It was some mighty fine vindication but - where does one go from there? If you're Carly Rae Jepsen, you just keep Carly Rae Jepsen-ing, manufacturing bops like it's nobody's business. For our money, it might just be the best dance album to come out this year.īy this point we all know the story: Carly Rae Jepsen emerged in 2012 with a universe-swallowing hit ("Call Me Maybe"), was dismissed as another manufactured radio star for a spell but came back with 2015's "Emotion," one of the most heralded pop records of the decade. From the striking (and ridiculously catchy) scene remembrance "Flat Talk" to the rolling midtempo keyboard work that is "Azalea Chuva" to the octagon-drum '80s pastiche that is "Time is Certainly Passing," the duo covers a lot of ground in this record's half-hour runtime, somehow finding a melody line that hooks us in and stays in our brains at least once a song but often even more than that. Their sophomore effort, however, is an escalation of their aesthetics in every way possible. and his fellow artist and DJ friend Photay - put out their first album under the moniker in 2016, and it felt like a creation designed for the clubs: Sparse but focused beats, repeated vocal loops, and a change in percussion style with every song all added up to a distinct sound that borrowed from worldbeat as much as it did from current club trends. The duo - comprised of Astro Nautico Sam O.B. It's a singer-songwriter album brimming with personality, and by the time you're done with it, you'll too be noting that "today was a good day."Įnsemble Entendu has always been about dance music, but it has also always been about the drums. Whether it be on the apocalyptically romantic "End of the World" or the extremely meta "Don't Play This On the Radio", she always turns worn clichés into fresh new concepts, waiting for eternity in "The Waiting Room" for her love-at-first-sight to maybe, hopefully come back. Filled with easy, strummable melodies and a warm glow to the production, Spraggan, as always, lands it with the lyrics. Yet that was a long time ago, and while she has never really made any impressions in the U.S., if any record was going to get her notices stateside, it'd be "Today Was a Good Day," her fifth full-length.
One-time "The X Factor" contestant Lucy Spraggan truly never needed TV exposure to get famous - but it certainly helped in her native U.K., leaving the show in 2012 and suddenly getting chart placements and critical notices for her conversational folk-pop style.