Spring! And with it, the advent of this season’s crop of light, sugary pop albums designed to serve as background music as you luxuriate in the sun. At the fore of this season’s harvest are The Concretes, a Swedish octet who have a name that entirely fails to suggest the airiness of their music. In…

I write this review with a simple purpose: to tell you that M.I.A.’s Arular is perhaps the best damned pop/rap/hip-hop/dancehall/electronic album in existence, and if you do not want to pick it up then you are intentionally depriving your ears of a buttered grilled-cheese sandwich of audial joy. To make my reasoning clear, these are…