Music is ageless. Albums released decades ago (and the artists who crafted them) can still sound right and fitting today. And sometimes, even the newest, youngest songwriters make music as road-worn and wise as their idols from generations prior. In May, we saw examples of both, from Bob Dylan to relative newcomer Car Seat Headrest. Check out the highest rated albums we reviewed that were released in May, and let us know your favorites in the comments below.
5. Bob Dylan: Fallen Angels
Rating: 8.5
If you look at it from a certain perspective, it’s tempting to consider Bob Dylan’s career as little more than a series of caprices, impulses and perverse shifts in direction, designed as much to baffle and infuriate his listeners as entertain them. But that would be a mistake and a terrible misreading of what’s driven Mr. Dylan for the past 50 years or so. Fallen Angels, his 37th studio album, is just one more in so many ways. No big deal.
Yet, Dylan takes on each song on this covers record with complete sincerity. When it works, he remains a great—if somewhat ragged—singer and interpreter of the emotions suggested by each work. What Dylan does with his voice is obviously different than what Sinatra set out to do with his, but their perspectives are equally interesting. Sinatra was silk and sophistication, making the hurts expressed by the narrator of his songs an error, a mistake of outrageous fortune. Singing the same lyrics, Dylan’s the down-and-out guy looking for an even break; victory would be a greater surprise than all the shit that’s raining down on him. Given all the bad luck the guy is singing about, we’re not surprised when he occasionally slides off-key. He doesn’t have Sinatra’s walls of polish and protection. They sing the same songs, but the outcomes are different. —Douglas Heselgrave
Read his full review here.
4. Fruit Bats: Absolute Loser
Rating: 8.5
Though it sounds perfectly natural in the line of succession of Fruit Bats albums, it’s the five-year hiatus preceding Absolute Loser that makes all the difference. That album, as cohesive and strong top to bottom as anything frontman Eric D. Johnson has made, gathers its sense of purpose from the sort of self-reflection and search for meaning that caused Johnson to put Fruit Bats on the shelf after 2011’s Tripper. But Absolute Loser unfolds as a rock-solid example of what Johnson has done best for more than 15 years. Although the album stacks more of its mellower songs toward the end—trading some of the enthusiastic spirit Johnson brings to Fruit Bats’ return for a finale that sounds thoroughly peaceful—in the end, anyone who’s tapped feet or nodded along to Fruit Bats in the past will find plenty to embrace with this new batch of familiar, comfortable tunes. —Eric Swedlund
Read his full review here.
3. Chance the Rapper: Coloring Book
Rating: 8.6
Coloring Book, Chance the Rapper’s third mixtape and his second project distributed via Apple, is deafeningly religious, brimming with testimonies, exaltations and blessings that are loud enough to rock a megachurch and its town-sized parking lot. Purged of the drug-addled skepticism of Acid Rap and pulsing with the free-wheeling spirit and zeal that bolstered Surf, Coloring Book is a breezy listen: direct and purposeful.