White Reaper, The Dirty Nil, Criminal Hygiene
Recommended
On their 2017 breakthrough, The World’s Best American Band, White Reaper shed the grit and grime of their previous releases and stepped into their destiny as pop-rock crowd-pleasers. The Kentucky band’s major label debut, You Deserve Love, is an even shinier bauble, a slick and glittering collection that imagines an alternate version of the 1980s, one in which Sammy Hagar or Rick Springfield made an entire album that matched the ecstatic bliss of “I’ve Done Everything For You.” It is an unabashedly big and bright record, and few albums since One Direction’s Midnight Memories have so expertly demonstrated the power of pure pop.
by Chris Stamm