The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Warpaint

[#] Warpaint (2014)

Glossy, understated, unfurling.

Reviewed September 29, 2025

I've been chasing down Warpaint's self-titled since I was in high school. "Love is to Die" proved itself to die for, an upbeat-yet-diffuse cloud of inky vapor with boom-bap drums and seductively doomed vocals telling of knives to cut out the memories ("it's not necessary to be so dark", guitarist Emily Kokal assures herself). Issue being, there was something keeping me from embracing more where that came from, but with the attention span that adulthood brings, I know now why. Warpaint is the kind of gauzy, minimalist effort where the hooks require a bit of patience to uncover—or the middle is just undercooked, depending on how you look at it. Either way, your patience will be greatly rewarded with time and the final four songs.

There's a really thumpy bottom end to this album that keeps the ethereal vocals grounded in reality, like an auditory opium den or sunbeams in darkened bedrooms post-coitus. The basslines are super prominent, and these girls aren't afraid to dig in with an earthy drum beat, like on "Disco//Very", to support the swirling mirages of keyboards and harmonies. It's actually when they lean into those mirages with "Hi" through "Teese" that the atmosphere grows the thickest and the songs the most patience-testing. The payoff comes in the final third, especially the successive punch of "Go In", "Feeling Alright", and "CC". The songs come sharper, the yearning hungrier, and penultimate "Drive" has the kind of personal epiphany that truly justifies the grand sonics. Give me more, I haven't had this before indeed.

Essential:	"Love is to Die", "Feeling Alright", "Drive"
Quintessential:	"Go In"
Non-Essential:	"Biggy"
Rating:

[#] Exquisite Corpse (2008)

The pieces just don't quite come together.

Reviewed February 2, 2026

Like a movie you have to watch a few times to catch all its little details, Warpaint's debut album Exquisite Corpse is probably what people are referring to when they talk about EPs being frustrating. There's good tunes here and a lot of range in their sonic humidifier clouds of twinkly gentle passages and surfy stomping. They're augmented even by not just one, but two different Chili Peppers guitarists. This should've been a knockout, and I can't tell if it's that it's too slight or that one or two duds is simply too many for such a short album that it isn't.

Opener "Stars" is Warpaint's sound and the required patience on full display. You get these warm, wandering guitar strums and Theresa Wayman's lovely, dreamy whispers as the song takes two entire minutes to build to the full band entrance. It also works, whereas the musical mire of "Burgundy" very much doesn't. For all its strengths, like the moving, detached vocals and fingerpicked guitars of "Billie Holiday" or "Elephants" and "Krimson" injecting some much needed hooks and gasoline into the proceedings, it just doesn't feel like you get a complete whole with Exquisite Corpse at the end of the day.

Essential:	"Stars", "Elephants", "Billie Holiday"
Quintessential:	"Krimson"
Non-Essential:	"Burgundy"
Rating: