I don’t know about you guys, but I love a good album collage. One of the first things I do every Friday is head over to tapmusic.net and render a 4x4 chart of the albums I listened to most over the past week. At the end of each month, I do the same thing with a 5x5 that recaps my previous 30 days of listening. By the time December rolls around, I look forward to recapping the last twelve months with a gigantic 10x10 grid in an unwieldy encapsulation of the 100 albums that defined my year.

Is it a little self-aggrandizing? Sure, but it’s also a fun way to see a quick snapshot of what my last week, month, or year has sounded like. At its best, this practice has led to fun conversations and solid recommendations going back and forth with friends as we bond over specific albums. Sometimes it’s that shared love over a deep pull from years gone by, other times it’s just noticing trends with a recent fave that seems like an unshakable presence week in and week out. At the very least, I suppose it’s satisfying to see a bunch of records that I feel an affinity toward lined up and embodying a specific stretch of my life.

At some point near the tail end of last year, I conceived of a more communal way to bring this love of album collage to life. Because, sure, getting a live readout of your listening history is cool, but this is also about album art, an essential part of the experience and something us nerds can fixate on just as much as the songs that sit beneath the cover. As such, I’m excited to welcome you to the second edition of Cover Collector: a monthly installation where the Swim Team discusses some of our favorite albums based on album color. For February, we’re writing about amorous reds.

Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows

We can stop making pop music. We already reached pop perfection in 2009. Oh, you don’t remember? That’s okay — do the names Adam Schlesinger and James Iha ring a bell? What about Taylor Hanson and Bun E. Carlos? Does Josh Lattanzi mean anything to you? Well, it all should. It’s 2026, and I am demanding a cultural re-evaluation of Tinted Windows by Tinted Windows.

I would go so far as to say that this supergroup released the best pop album of the 21st century. This is the kind of confidence I have to maintain if I am fulfilling my duty to defend this forgotten band’s honor. But this is an easy task to maintain when I’m dealing with an album that has “Kind of a Girl,” “Can’t Get a Read on You,” “Doncha Wanna,” and “Take Me Back.” All of these songs are loud, goofy, tight, and perfect — a knockout Schlesinger combo uplifted by Hanson’s sheer excitement to Not Be A Hanson along with a litany of power pop veterans. The song nearest and dearest to my heart is “Messing With My Head,” which has been my favorite song for almost 20 years. It’s all about the guitars; the incessant riff chugging under the song, the squeal of the strings replying to Hanson’s pleas, the guitar solo before Hanson’s pronunciation of “you” in the bridge. Pitchfork unfairly gave this a 3.5, but with your help and a $5 subscription, we can get that reader score up to a 10.

– Caro Alt

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

Nonagon Infinity is a rare album whose title and cover art mirror its structure. Nine songs, each represented by one vertex of the nonagon on the cover art, are designed to be looped infinitely, with the last track seamlessly connecting to the first. Each vertex of the nonagon connects to every other vertex of the nonagon, instructing the listener that you're supposed to view every song as being connected.

Nonagon Infinity marked a shift for the seven-piece Australian multi-genre experiment, as eight albums into their career they departed from the psych, jazz rock, raja rock, dream pop, and garage rock that they were known for, taking a mishmash of those elements that defined the albums prior to this and twisting them into something louder, darker, and more energetically exhausted than anything we’ve seen before.

This was the band's first experiment with heavier music, a theme we’d see expanded later in their career with the albums Infest the Rats Nest and PetroDragonic Apocalypse. From the first notes of “Robot Stop,” you hear the intensity come through, as vocalist and lead songwriter Stu Mackenzie opens with a chorus that recurs throughout the whole album, not just this song. It’s fast, it’s energetic, it’s designed to start a mosh pit, and it’s in 7/4.

As Stu opens the album singing “my body’s overworked” and “my coffin’s all I see lately,” we begin to get the feeling that the band is tired. They've spent the past four years releasing eight albums while touring, and they're ready to take a break, which, from the future, we know never comes. They follow this album with a five-album year, spanning microtonal music, narrative progressive metal, psychedelic pop, polymeters, and more.

Nonagon Infinity opens the door to the rest of King Gizzard's work and stands as a fantastic entry point if you love heavier music and want to start digging into this ultra-prolific band’s extensive discography.

– Noëlle Midnight

The The – Dusk

For years, I have spouted that the two most underrated bands of all time are Shriekback and The The, and I still wholeheartedly believe that. Both are British new wave-turned-alternative rock groups that started in the 80s, developed minor club play success in the States, but each only had two albums in the 90s. For The The, the brainchild of musician Matt Johnson, most people champion their first two albums: 1983’s Soul Mining, featuring classics like “This Is The Day” and “Uncertain Smile,” and 1986’s Infected, whose title track is easily one of the hardest rocking dance singles of the era. My favorite in their relatively compact catalogue has always been 1993’s Dusk, a more guitar- and singer/songwriter-based album that expertly helms the band’s transition into a new decade.

The record opens with one of my all-time favorite three-song runs: the dramatic, partially spoken-word “True Happiness This Way Lies,” the hopeful ballad “Love Is Stronger Than Death,” and the blues-influenced single “Dogs Of Lust.” Johnson’s reflections on the world and his place in it on tracks like “Slow Emotion Replay” and “Bluer Than Midnight” have always resonated with me, and the closing track “Lonely Planet” hits as hard in 2026 as it did whenever I first heard it: “If you can’t change the world, change yourself,” the refrain posits. The The would only be sporadically active after this album, including a 2024 comeback album, Ensoulment, and a tour to support it. While I appreciate everything Johnson does musically, Dusk will always be the high watermark.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Citizen – As You Please

Everybody and their mother talks about Youth as the quintessential Citizen record, and for a second, I was going to write about that as well. However, I wondered what else needed to be said about Youth, considering their third record, As You Please, is sneakily just as well written and not as sneakily much more red. Citizen’s movement into hazier forms of alternative rock was encapsulated quite well in their first two records, but As You Please showcased the gravitas of their emotional outlook on the world in a more mature way than Youth, though not as crushing as Everybody Is Going To Heaven. Tracks like “Jet” and “Fever Days” get the heads bobbing, but the spacey tracks like “World” and “Control” feel more akin to a Sunday Drive tracklist than a typical Run For Cover record. There’s also the fan favorite “Flowerchild,” which caps the record off with an acoustic-turned-punk anti-Valentine’s Day song. It’s a great journey to dive headfirst into and an overlooked example of what makes Citizen such an interesting group.

– Samuel Leon

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

When I was a mere toddler, my parents would play all kinds of records to help me develop my own distinct musical taste. There was one artist my mom chose that stood out amongst the rest for a fresh-out-the-box baby David: Jimi Hendrix. Every day I would dance away in my all-white Huggies to songs like “All Along the Watchtower” and “Foxey Lady.” My mom has recounted this story about me prancing around to some of the best psychedelic rock ever created about a zillion times to my family, friends, and even complete strangers at the local Jewel-Osco. Fun times! Present day, now as a fully grown adult, I hold Jimi Hendrix in a special place in my heart.

Electric Ladyland, being the final full-length studio album before Jimi Hendrix tragically passed away, is a clinical masterpiece in artistry. “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” has my favorite guitar solo I’ve ever heard. There is a true rhythm to each stroke that I never know where it’s going to go, even though I heard it thousands of times. Jimi Hendrix is the Wilt Chamberlain of rock music. He changed how the game is played, holds damn near every record, and oozed pure charisma (do yourself a favor and look at that beautiful blue silk kimono he wore on The Dick Cavett Show).

Listening back to Electric Ladyland, you can hear how Hendrix's guitar skills were limitless. Songs like “Long Hot Summer Night,” “Gypsy Eyes,” and “Rainy Day, Dream Away” are iconic psychedelic jams from a man at the peak of his powers. This makes reliving all those stories dancing as an infant worth it.

Thank you, Mom!

– David Williams

Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind

I confess to being a silly guy for this one. I spent an entire subway commute scrolling through my library for my red album. When I happened upon Third Eye Blind’s eponymous 1997 debut, I felt ridiculous: it was always this one.

I saw 3EB at Jones Beach when I was nearing the end of my college career. I went with an on-again, off-again girlfriend; we’d had a complicated relationship due to our own traumas and the challenges of growing up. Now that I recall this memory, I feel the rain pouring on my skin, mixing with my tears as they played “Motorcycle Drive By” and “How’s It Going to Be.” In my mind’s peripheral vision, I recall her looking up at me with love and sadness. Only now do I realize that this night together and this concert we shared were the end of our relationship. It was beautiful, and now I look back on it fondly and with gratitude.

Only now, too, do I realize how meaningful and formative this album was and continues to be for me. Everyone sings along to “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Graduate,” and “Jumper,” but the singles are truly just the tip of the iceberg. “Losing a Whole Year” is an incredible opener, bookended by the equally gutting and somber “God of Wine.” “I Want You” translates lustful love into perfect pop rock—only for “The Background” to finish the story with the perfect break-up ballad right after it. How is a band’s debut this good? I remain flabbergasted by it.

As thankful as I am that this album soundtracked my growing up, I’m grateful to be able to listen to it now, sing along, and feel all the emotions without the pain of nostalgia. Instead, there is only awe.

– Joe Wasserman

Fiona Apple – When the Pawn…

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring
There's no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo, you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand, then you know where to land
And if you fall it won't matter, cuz you'll know that you're right

My love for Fiona Apple’s second album knows no bounds. It came to me at a very ~mental breakdown~ time in my life. I was 22, the same age Apple was when the record came out, and was equally masochistic and self-sabotaging. I felt like a floating head, watching my life unfold while I did nothing, unable to even consider having a positive thought. The saunteringly propulsive opener, “On The Bound,” became my favorite song to play on a loop while lying on my bedroom floor and staring at the ceiling. Any album with “Paper Bag” on it is going to be good (the line “He said ‘It’s all in your head’ / I said ‘So’s everything’ but he didn’t get it” alone should have gotten Apple a Pulitzer), but When the Pawn… is relentless from top to bottom. “Fast As You Can” makes me lose my breath with its urgency, kicking into overdrive after the looping drawl of “A Mistake.” Apple gets to the heart of both relational and internal toxicity, showing she’s fighting a battle with herself just as much as with the rest of the world. The smile she’s flashing on the blood-red cover masks the inner turmoil rumbling beneath.

– Cassidy Sollazzo

Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun

When I think of red albums, my mind pretty quickly jumps to Songs For The Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age. It’s mainly because that record utterly blew my mind in middle school and continues to loom large in my life to this day, but it’s also because it’s pretty solidly red. While I entered this document fully prepared to write about one of the greatest records of 2002, I was met with a sudden flash to another Josh Homme project from a decade earlier, and that’s Blues for the Red Sun by Kyuss. On their sophomore record, the foundational stoner rock band tightened their screws in a stair-step discography where I truly view each record as a step above the last. On their debut, Wretch, the band arrived scuzzy, caked in beer and desert dust. One album later, they got druggier and spacier, dropping most of the thrashy elements in favor of chasing the almighty riff. From the opener, “Thumb,” it’s clear the band has honed in on the perfect tone and then proceed to spend the next 45 or so minutes slowing things down, stretching things out, and cranking their amps to earth-shattering levels. There’s still some chugginess like the iconic “Green Machine,” but tracks like “Freedom Run” and “Thong Song” show a surprising amount of restraint (shocking, especially given the latter’s title). Rather than throw every note at the listener in an attempt to whisk them off into heavy metal nirvana, Kyuss learned it’s much more gratifying to go the opposite way and descend into the smoky pits. A remarkable record that still sounds best played loud as fuck, nodding along, and flying down the highway. If you can manage all those things at once, all the power to ya. If you can’t, you’ll always have Blues for the Red Sun.

– Taylor Grimes

If we’re talking solid-color album art, there’s one band that stands above the rest, and that’s Weezer. Across fifteen studio albums, more than a third of their discography is made up of self-titled albums that fans simply refer to by their color. Each features the band members lined up staring down the barrel of the camera against a solid-colored background. In this recurring section, we’ll address the elephant in the room that is Weezer’s discography.

Cue the guy standing up in the courtroom meme: Side A of Red Album is the second-best Weezer material. Everyone knows the singles “Troublemaker” and “Pork And Beans,” which are very Weezery songs that fit perfectly in their rotation of hits. But “Heart Songs” has always been a crown jewel of the Rivers Cuomotolog (Rivers Cuomotic Universe?), a perfect song for music nerds like me, riddled with references to everyone from Judas Priest to Rick Astley. I’m pretty sure Red Album was the last CD I ever listened to on a Walkman, and boy, did I use the track repeat function a lot for that one.

Admittedly, I do think the album falls apart in the second half, save for the finale “The Angel & The One,” but then the deluxe version is full of incredible bonus tracks. If they had swapped in those songs, this would probably be a perfect 10 record for me. I think “King” has to be an all-timer non-album track for any band. And “Miss Sweeney” was on rotation for me years before a certain Sydney was making accidentally racist jeans commercials.

– Logan Archer Mounts

Drug Church – Cheer

I love heavy music. I especially love heavy music that channels pure, raging emotional catharsis. Drug Church, to me, is the ultimate raging-emotional-catharsis band, and Cheer is my favorite album of theirs. Every bitter lyric, sardonic riff, and sneering song title hits exactly how it should: a brutal uppercut to the slack, flaccid jaw of an apathetic and self-righteous society. Tracks like “Unlicensed Hall Monitor” unapologetically critique those who ignore the beam in their own eye so they can point out the dust in others’: “There’s a guy in a group chat with Klansmen telling you how to live / Just a matter of time before he’s the one twisting in the wind / A grown man who can’t handle his shit.” The preceding song, “Weed Pin,” is a scathing condemnation of career culture and the endless cycle of mediocrity it creates. “Pay shit rates, get shit labor / I should have started a chemical fire… / I should have burned this place to the ground.” Losers beget losers beget losers. History repeats itself, and a chemical fire burns Rome to ashes.

The deep red cover of the album features a trio that are jarringly posed: they appear undead, naked save for grotesque body paint and an unsettling collection of harnesses and wire. If you dare to look closer, you’ll realize that they’re all the same man, triplicated in different positions. The crimson paint (blood?) splattered across the mask, obscuring each face, only adds to the general unease of the skillfully executed artwork. Even with their visages obscured, the figures seem to be leering at us, taut with rage. Because Cheer blatantly critiques society and condemns both the worst and the self-proclaimed “best” of us, it’s not difficult to imagine that the zombie-like figure adorning the cover is meant to be an Everyman. Painted, holstered, harnessed, and violent, we all know him: maybe we are him.

– Britta Joseph

Mowmow Lulu Gyaban — 野口、久津川で爆死 [Noguchi, kutsukawa de bakushi]

I say this with the highest regard; I have no idea what’s going on in this album. Not just because it’s in a language I don’t speak, but because its alt-noise-funk sound is completely unique. The combination of manic lyricism, ripping basslines, and frenetic drumming results in a record that escapes easy description or conventional genre labels. Released in 2009, 野口、久津川で爆死 was Mowmow Lulu Gyaban’s first album on a label, followed by touring, several more albums, and well-deserved notoriety within their underground niche. Trying to figure out what makes this band work without knowing Japanese has been tough, but from live videos, I learned the drummer is also the main vocalist, explaining much of the energy charged in this 44-minute package. For me, the last track ties the whole album together and is a key reason I’ve kept it in rotation. It starts as a more subdued song, maybe hinting at a contemplative closing, but it slowly devolves into loosely constrained chaos, with two singers narrating the same lyrics of (if Google Translate can be trusted) a mostly mutual breakup. The track closes on speaker feedback and a call-and-response shout along from the audience, the perfect endcap to the entire experience.

– Braden Allmond

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Fuck Kanye West.

This is not a plea to “separate the art from the artist.” This is not an attempt to identify a threshold in the Kanye West timeline where he “went too far,” thus exonerating anything before that statement or behavior. Both of these efforts are futile.

I haven’t listened to Kanye West’s music in years. I never wanted it to show up on any Year In Review report. I didn’t want my neighbors or people on the street to hear me listening to it. Mostly, I didn’t even want the $0.0000000034 per stream to go to him. And it’s a real shame, because from 2004 to 2011 Kanye West had an absolutely immaculate 6-album run. GOOD Music and Yeezus and even The Life Of Pablo were great too, but by that time Kanye’s behavior had blown well past “provocateur” into “complete asshole.” What began as mostly just asinine complaints about being under-recognized at award shows (culminating in the now-infamous “Taylor Swift imma let you finish” moment) got more and more outrageous and indefensible. At one time, Kanye’s biggest beef was with Bill Hader (Hader, both an SNL cast member and a South Park writer, drew Kanye’s ire in MBDTF). Most recently, Kanye took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal where he went long on his 2002 car accident, the damage it did to his frontal lobe, and his struggles with bipolar disorder. It’s a surprisingly lucid statement from Kanye that ends with a number of apologies and a plea for patience. Coming from a man who claimed “slavery was a choice,” expressed his “love for” Adolf Hitler, claimed to have “dominion” over his wife Bianca Censori, and put a swastika on the cover of his latest album, it feels like too little too late. It’s not only too late, it feels disingenuous and insincere, and to the skeptics is a pretty poor attempt at image rehab in the lead-up to what will likely be a new album.

I’m sympathetic to mental health issues! I’m sensitive to personality disorders! If Kanye West has issues severe enough to make him say even 20% of what he’s said in the last 10 years, his gobs of money should be able to get him the help he needs. And I hope he does!

Until then, it’s a damn shame Kanye’s aggressive attempts to make himself the main character of history have completely ruined an incomparable body of work–including his magnum opus, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

I’m sorry this piece wasn’t really about the album at all, but I wanted to say it’s really annoying that I can’t even listen to some of my favorite albums anymore because the guy who made them is a megalomaniacal asshole.

– Caleb Doyle

Against Me! – The Disco Before the Breakdown

Bodies spilling over each other in a grainy photo, washed in red. Mouths shouting. Fingers pointing. People are reaching to lift up a fallen bass player. The cover of The Disco Before the Breakdown captures what listening to early Against Me! feels like: like you could fall apart at the end of this chorus, but you know everyone singing along will be there to pick you up. The music is this scrappy, ferocious beast that surges forward with abandon while Laura Jane Grace screams her confessions. Grace has never sounded more desperate for absolution than she does on “Tonight We’re Gonna Give It 35%” when she sings “it’s got me on my knees in a bathroom / praying to a god I don’t even believe in / ‘well, dear Jesus, are you listening?’” When I’ve been that desperate, The Disco Before the Breakdown has filled me with a sense of triumph in the sorrow.

– Lillian Weber

Best Witches – Jail

Jail by Best Witches has probably the single strongest opening minute of any emo revival act I can think of. Leading off with the drumset, after two seconds of guitar whine, there’s immediately a wayward, forlorn, and simple lead melody. After a tight 40 seconds, this promising setup is abandoned and replaced by two bars of strumming that sound like the stretch before a wind sprint. By the 60-second mark, we’ve gotten some very righteous arpeggios and our first lyrics “I would go out tonight, but we’re stuck playing at the house. Shit, there’s a glow stick, let’s check this thing out.” After a small regathering, we’re rolling again, and at the 1:20 mark, we get the terrible realization that this song is a eulogy for a lost pet: “Raleigh’s foaming at the mouth.” By the end of the second minute, everything but guitar has pulled away, meandering through the opening lick. Slowly, the momentum is built back, and by 2:45 we’re close to full speed again, though this time with more restraint, and the lyrics “No more running around, no more barking about all our favorite toys we can’t live without.” The final 90 seconds are spent repeating the line, winding down the drums, and taking their feet off the gas, gently giving way to full atmosphere, and the start of the next song. This whole EP is great, but “Margot’s Song” is awesome.

The energy this group brings to their art is infectious, and reminds of Olde Pine and Dikembe (still active!), two bands from around the same time. In classic emo band fashion, these guys made incredible music together for about a year, then called it quits for good. Shouts out to Trevor from Hays for showing me this EP like 7 years ago!

– Braden Allmond

Turnover – Peripheral Vision

Turnover’s Peripheral Vision was a point of contention for longtime Turnover Heads such as myself. Today’s emo kids might find it hard to believe that the Virginia Beach unit was largely a pop-punk group before their hard pivot to dreamy indie soundscapes. These same kids are the ones confused as hell at the Turnover gig when thirty-somethings are screaming “play Sasha!” just to piss off Austin Getz.

Peripheral Vision indeed altered the band's trajectory in ways unimaginable for a pop-punk/emo band at that time. The release sparked curiosity for newcomers and confusion from longtime fans. While I love PV and its hazy attitude, at the time I was more enamored by the band's first full-length, Magnolia, and felt a bit slighted that Turnover chose to ignore all their music before PV.

It was a hot-as-heck spring day in El Paso when Turnover trekked in alongside acts like Citizen and Sorority Noise. I was ecstatic to finally catch a glimpse of my favorite band, and in my often-overlooked hometown no less. The show essentially ended up being a full playthrough of PV from start to finish, with little acknowledgement of any other music in their discography. I was bummed to say the least. Ten years later, the album has reached near-legendary status amongst many audiophiles. Fast forward a decade to a rainy spring day in Albuquerque, when my fiancée and I attended the tenth anniversary gig for PV, where the front-to-back playthrough of the album was entirely expected. Lots of things have changed in the ten years between those gigs, but what hasn’t changed are two things: PV remains an absolute banger in ways unfathomable, and I still love Magnolia more.

The gig was euphoric, and ended with a few offshoots from random albums and EPs; however, the last song performed was arguably my favorite off Magnolia, “Most of the Time.” My high school self felt vindicated– in the sense that I was able to experience a pre-PV song live, and that the band chose to acknowledge who they used to be when I fell in love with them.

– Brandon Cortez

my better half – mybetterhalf.

This self-titled EP from Seattle emo band my better half is short and not-so-sweet. Instead, you can expect each of the five tracks to reach inside of you, rip open something unresolved, and then grant catharsis through raw vocals and distortion. Despite being a relatively recent addition to the scene, my better half has effortlessly garnered a following and embarked on a West Coast tour.

On mybetterhalf., vigorous drumming and heavy guitars take turns with somber, melodic moments of reflection. The vocals convey a desperation that’s timeless to the genre, with lyrics that could have been scribbled at any point in the past 30 years. In beloved emo fashion, my better half frequently layers spoken word and dialogue over melancholic instrumentals–opening the EP with an ominous twist on one of Agent Cooper’s notorious voice notes from the cult-classic TV show Twin Peaks.

My better half is young, and their songs will take you back to the same point in your own life. Their most popular track, “Work and Progress,” begins once again with spoken word: “Yesterday I graduated / today, I’m alone.” This leads into a bittersweet commentary on the familiar experience of coping with, or rather, resisting change. Closing out the EP, “A Shipwreck I’ve Seen” hints at the ending of something more brutal than graduation and the crushing weight of uncertainty that comes with it. It’s a gritty, intense track with traces of both metal and hardcore, leaving room to breathe only during the brief, contemplative mid-section.

mybetterhalf. is the band’s only released work so far. In just five tracks, my better half has curated a heart-wrenching collection of life’s most difficult emotions and channeled them into an honest, authentic gem amongst the scene.

– Annie Watson

The Chemical Brothers – Come With Us

I was an AV club kid in high school, a pursuit driven 50% by my interest in audio equipment and 50% by my desire to skip out on class. On the day of events like the school talent show or battle of the bands, my friends and I would be given all-day hall passes to set things up in the auditorium; this all-day work window was something I insisted on, but I can admit now that it was, in most cases, not necessary. Sometimes the setup took less than an hour. This left us with a lot of time to screw around, and much of that screwing around involved playing Come With Us really, really loud over the PA system. In my head, I can still clearly hear the opening of “It Began In Afrika” bouncing off the walls of the empty auditorium as we sat in the light booth haphazardly messing with fresnels and avoiding chemistry class. “Star Guitar” is definitely a song best enjoyed at a late-night rave, but I’d argue that listening to it in the middle of the day when you’re supposed to be in AP English ranks a close second. Nostalgia aside, I still think Come With Us is a super enjoyable album, definitely the release from this era of electronic music that I return to the most. Great guest vocals from Beth Orton on “The State We’re In” and Richard Ashcroft on “The Test,” lots to sink your teeth into in general. Don’t think that I’ll ever get tired of it.

– Josh Ejnes

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

My love for the band Fall Out Boy is deep and well-documented, beginning at an early age through rhythm games, as is often the case for me – whether it was “Dance, Dance” on Dance Dance Revolution or “The Take Over, The Breaks Over” on Guitar Hero: On Tour. Despite regularly watching the music videos for “I Don’t Care” and “America’s Suitehearts” on Xfinity On Demand in junior high, I did not become a vehement lover and defender of their fourth record, Folie à Deux, until a handful of years ago.

Fall Out Boy's final record before their five-year-long hiatus in 2009, Folie was a notable departure from many elements that fans came to expect from the band: a more collaborative writing approach, more worldly lyricisms, less emo songwriting and more focus on various genre influences, as well as lead singer Patrick Stump desire to move away as the focal point of their songs. It’s no wonder that Folie was received less positively than its monumental predecessor, Infinity On High. To this day, Folie remains the underdog of their catalog, even among the band members themselves, but I love an underdog.

Folie à Deux excels in every aspect of Fall Out Boy that I adore, and its multitude of features and collaborators only expand on that. Stump is firing on all cylinders vocally and delivering a performance of a lifetime on this album, a preview of the comparable vocal performance on his 2011 solo record, Soul Punk. Pete Wentz’s lyricisms are, to my estimation, the best of his career, focusing on American psychosis and commentaries rather than emo love songs. Joe Trohman, despite his struggles with drug abuse during the recording, complements the melodies and instrumentation with his virtuosic guitar playing. At the same time, Andy Hurley’s drum parts stand as the most iconic in the band’s history.

Despite enjoying the albums that preceded it, I genuinely see Folie as Fall Out Boy’s magnum opus that they could have hung their collective hats on forever. Especially with “What A Catch, Donnie” acting as an emotive love note to the band’s most notable triumphs thus far. Folie à Deux is proof that it pays, at least artistically, to destroy your creative mold and see what masterpieces can be crafted from its pieces.

– Ciara Rhiannon

My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt – Man Fears the Darkness, and So He Scrapes Away at the Edges of It With Fire

Although I have long since fallen out of the anime world, Neon Genesis Evangelion remains one of my favorite works of all time (so much so that I dragged my girlfriend, who has never even heard of the show, to watch the agonizing End of Evangelion at a theatre). In Man Fears the Darkness, and So He Scrapes Away at the Edges of It With Fire, My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt uses lo-fi hip hop, a genre often reduced to inoffensive background vibes, as a mirror to reflect the true essence of Neon Genesis, the characters, and their struggles in making sense of a broken world.

Virtually all of the samples on the album are lifted straight from the anime’s dialogue, with whole songs being dedicated to a specific character or scene from the show. Even though the instrumentals themselves are gentle enough, the sampling evokes some of the more emotional moments of the series, making it hard for the album to be thrown on as a ‘chill radio to relax and study to.’ Instead, the catharsis of the show bleeds into the album; Shinji literally endures the end of the world and finds a way to continue living. In that sense, Man Fears the Darkness is a strangely comforting album, despite the bleakness that blankets Neon Genesis Evangelion. It’s no surprise that people are so passionate about the show; these characters are reflections of us and the strength that each of us is capable of. Let this unsuspecting collection of songs remind you of that strength.

– Nickolas Sackett

Honorable Mentions

Hey, we can’t write about every album with this color, so here’s a list of some more that we feel like we should mention.

Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Pool Kids – Pool Kids // POOL
Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Antioch Arrow - In Love With Jetts
The Fall of Troy - Doppleganger
Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe
Flycatcher - Wrench
Snail Mail - Habit
Cory Hanson - I Love People
World’s Worst - American Muscle
Young Thug - Barter 6
Man Overboard - The Human Highlight Reel
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
Migos - Culture II
The White Stripes - Elephant
Beach House - Depression Cherry
St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION
The White Stripes - White Blood Cells
ScHoolboy Q - Blank Face LP
Snail Mail - Lush
Heart Attack Man - Fake Blood
Wilco - Cruel Country
Lil' Wayne - Sorry 4 The Wait 2
Russian Circles - Empros
Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork
The White Stripes - The White Stripes

Swim Into The Sound

Swim Into The Sound

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Swim Into The Sound

Cover Collector – February Reds

Tinted Windows – Tinted Windows

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Nonagon Infinity

The The – Dusk

Citizen – As You Please

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland

Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind

Fiona Apple – When the Pawn…

Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun

Drug Church – Cheer

Mowmow Lulu Gyaban — 野口、久津川で爆死 [Noguchi, kutsukawa de bakushi]

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Against Me! – The Disco Before the Breakdown

Best Witches – Jail

Turnover – Peripheral Vision

my better half – mybetterhalf.

The Chemical Brothers – Come With Us

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

My Sister’s Fugazi Shirt – Man Fears the Darkness, and So He Scrapes Away at the Edges of It With Fire

Honorable Mentions