Man's Best Friend (2025)

""Man’s Best Friend" (...) is not particularly provocative, but strangely old-fashioned. Carpenter is fond of blue turns of phrase, and the wordiness of her lyrics is indicative of someone who grew up in an era of constant stimulus. But this album makes it clear that she regards pop music as a craft as much as it is an art. Few A-list albums released in recent years are as tightly stitched and locked-in as this one; played almost entirely with live instruments and packed with so many hooks that it feels as if it might burst at the seams, it seems a true creative arrival for Carpenter. The most significant provocation here may be a newly minted star, beloved by gen Z, going against industry orthodoxy and packing an album with unusual instruments, including clavinet, sitar and agogo, and making distinct allusions to ABBA and Fleetwood Mac’s "Tusk". It’s so distinctly Carpenter that you might not even realise it’s one of the year’s singular, musically provocative pop records." (The Guardian, 4 uit 5 sterren)