Lana Del Rey stares moodily out of the cover of her latest album, Ultraviolence, similar to The Ramones’ classic Rocket to Russia album art. The cover and the album as a whole represent a throwback to vintage rock n’ roll; Del Rey traditionally romanticizes and mystifies old styles but the new, more vibrant direction was probably created by album producer and contributor Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. The two make an impeccable pair, mixing Del Rey’s sugary party-girl persona with Auerbach’s alternative, edgy musical background, but Del Rey’s usual talent is by no means obscured by his presence. She’s a little more distant, a little less enthusiastic, and a little more disillusioned with the world than on previous albums, creating an experience that isn’t just sad, but beautifully poignant.

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I left the recent Purity Ring concert with two predominant thoughts. One, that magic might actually be real, but real in a terrifying and vaguely apocalyptic sort of way. And two, that a conversation about live set of Megan James and Corin Roddick, who make up Purity Ring, would be crippled without some remarks on the album as well. Their musical canon consists of just one album, Shrines, and as such Purity Ring inhabits a moment when their recorded album and live performances are fundamentally one body (a situation which works particularly well for them, because Shrines is itself sort of a singular idea manifested in eleven subtly differing tracks).

Old. Irrelevant. Washed up. Out of touch. Creatively dead.

Anyone who has followed Bob Dylan’s career over the past half-century has probably applied, or heard some version of these terms applied, to the past ten years—a period that will probably be remembered as the artist’s lost decade. And with some justification.

After all, since 2001, Dylan has given us Love and Theft, Modern Times and Together Through Life, three albums that range from the merely mediocre to the truly awful. Anyone who felt that he had lost his edge is entirely justified.

The personal pronoun “I” appears a dozen times in the review in reference to me (it also appears several times in quoted lyrics), which is a lot. In my two previous, decidedly positive reviews, I used “I” a combined four times to talk about the most recent albums of Twin Shadow and Nas. A dozen is a lot for a Four review as well, Spin and Pitchfork, probably the two best known sources for alternative music criticism, both gave the album decidedly negative reviews without ever leaning on first person. Both of them dealt exclusively with the album in front of them, criticizing it for what it did. While I panned the album as well, I justified it by talking about how annoyed I was, rather than by pointing out the parts of the music that were doing the annoying.