Stephen Thomas Erlewine

2 weeks ago | sterlewine.substack.com | Stephen Thomas Erlewine

"If I'm the problem, you might be the reason," sings Morgan Wallen on the first of 37 tracks on I'm The Problem, his third successive double album. Wallen's shirking of personal responsibility is what amounts to his star persona: he might act out but only because he was forced to do so, pushed to his limits by a girlfriend or the urban jungle. Wallen didn't have this peevishness four years ago.

3 weeks ago | sterlewine.substack.com | Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Would anybody listen to Piano Sketches a second time if it wasn't by André 3000? Possibly so. Plenty of people listen to private press LPs partially because the ideas shine through the rudimentary technique, a perspective that certainly could be applied to this collection of seven improvised instrumentals that were recorded almost entirely on an iPhone way back in 2013.

1 month ago | pitchfork.com | Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Consider If You Asked for a Picture as the second chapter in an ongoing novel chronicling the trials and tribulations of life in your 20s. On Sabrina Teitelbaum’s second album as Blondshell, which arrives two years after her eponymous debut, Teitelbaum is still haunted by the past and stumbling into the kinds of bad decisions that fueled Blondshell.

1 month ago | pitchfork.com | Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Although it isn’t billed that way, Oh What a Beautiful World belongs to a certain strain of Willie Nelson albums dedicated to the songbook of a particular songwriter. It's a tradition Willie inaugurated in the late 1970s, when he released tributes to his honky tonk hero Lefty Frizzell and his fellow country maverick Kris Kristofferson, and has continued to the present day, saluting Harlan Howard with 2023’s I Don’t Know a Thing About Love.

1 month ago | sterlewine.substack.com | Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Running a little longer than 35 minutes, Evangeline Vs. The Machine appears to be a deliberate retreat from Heart & Soul, the overstuffed triple album that brought a close to Eric Church's golden decade. That's not quite true. Pumped up with enough choirs and strings to credibly call this prog, Evangeline Vs. The Machine tackles big issues—Hurricane Helene, gun violence, etc.—in a big fashion, blending old-timey allusions with classic rock sensibility and a contemporary country aesthetic.