In Review: André 3000 Piano Sketches, Arcade Fire Pink Elephant, Maren Morris Dreamsicle
Plus Little Feat, I'm With Her, Cat Stevens Live
André 3000—Piano Sketches [2025]
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. The clustered chords, digressive dissonance and percussive melodies scattered through Piano Sketches hints at jazz, a connection André 3000 wants to make by citing Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, and Vince Guaraldi as inspirations in his Instagram post announcing the mini-LP. Such comparisons are misleading--pianist Matthew Shipp details why in a Facebook post eviscerating the record--suggesting there's compositional consideration and rhythmic rigor here, when those qualities are conspicuously absent. Perhaps that's to be expected when a recording is comprised of, well, sketches: a collection of experiments and idle thoughts that amount to plenty of beginnings but no endings. The aimlessness isn't a hindrance upon the first spin, when the listener is as unsure about the music's direction as André 3000 himself, so the cool veneer and ghosts of hard bop amount to a pleasing bit of mood music. Those slight charms curdle upon subsequent plays, when the compositions buckle and the limitations of André 3000's technique become apparent.
Arcade Fire—Pink Elephant [2025]
Already on creative and commercial decline when Pitchfork aired allegations of sexual misconduct against frontman Win Butler in 2022, Arcade Fire finds itself stuck in a mire of its own making on Pink Elephant. The accusations against Butler, which he has denied, hang over the album even if they're never quite addressed by the band. The songs teem with images of renewal and growth, rhyming with his public apology to "continue to look forward and heal what can be healed, and learn from past experiences." Certainly, Arcade Fire seems eager to leave all this nasty business in the past, rushing through acknowledgments of unpleasantries so they can rally around love, ending the whole album with the exhortation to "clean up your heart." The curious thing about Pink Elephant is how all these pleas of progress are tethered to a solipsistic murk curated by Daniel Lanois, a producer with a gift for turning the clearest waters opaque. The slow, subdued churn creates a stasis that suggests that the group—and particularly Butler and Régine Chassagne, the husband and wife at the band's center—are stuck in their heads, doomed to relive their trauma.
Maren Morris—Dreamsicle [2025]
Frustrated by the lack of response to Humble Quest, Maren Morris told the Los Angeles Times in 2023 that she was leaving country music behind. Dreamsicle, her first album since that contention, certainly is produced like a pop album.