Raekwon has not made a valid sequel to that classic--but he has quite validly added a couple hundred new bars to that performance.

Modern Times is a record of both giddy songwriting peaks and overall uniformity, a record whose music ultimately delivers and enriches its well-bred messages of realism and religion, work and devotion, the certitude of decay and the decay of certitude.

It is indeed a soaring achievement, one seemingly without missteps.... In fact, the only drawback of an album this expertly executed is its smoothness.

When you get past the initial impressions of both "Silent Shout" (2006) and Monoliths & Dimensions, you find something not only stellar but surprisingly different from one’s initial impression.

We adore this album and are pretty sure most of you will, too.

Radiohead sound as ephemeral and variegated as ever, flowering and streaming and as big as the light our eyes can catch.

Happy New Year is fresh and adventurous and, most important, it is consistently so.

Where the album really excels is in how it marries slightly absurd melodies to its lyrics to create a portrait of surreality and madness, as was so often rendered by those same Modernist poets Harvey cites as an influence.

With Show Your Bones, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have proven themselves worthy of the hype, and, more importantly, the excitement caused by an undeniably fantastic record.

The 24 songs... are characteristically and uniformly excellent.

Though High Violet sometimes ("Lemonworld," cough) veers dangerously close to self-parody, the National have crafted something exceptional: a massive, dynamic album that still makes good on the National's devotion to meticulous production and a sound they've kept simple and distinctive for a decade.

Despite its more fractured stylistic elements -- shoegaze smashing headlong into folk pop -- Writer’s Block emerges as one of the most complete and satisfying records of this year.

It’s hard to parse the band’s ultimate intentions, but there’s no doubt that every note and lyric on this album are in fact intended, and, most importantly, sincere.

The thing Have One On Me absolutely excels at is the creation of remarkable moments amid its rambling odes.

The honesty of Bozulich and her band is striking, their creativity voracious.

It is a bright and rousing thing.

Object 47 does an excellent job of making a leap toward the avant-pop side of the pop/punk wire walked by…uh…Wire on "Chairs Missing" and "154."

Give Mobile time, and it will fasten itself, embed its patterns, and stay with you longer than you could have imagined a solo percussion album ever could.

I am aware that I am giving the following guy an 85% on Cokemachineglow. The thing is, he deserves it.

Cosmogramma bursts with inventiveness; I've found myself careening around my apartment to sounds I don't recognize as of this Earth. That Lotus takes these vibrant ideas and sets them to pulses that move asses is incredible. Apparently everyone else is bouncing along in agreement.

Blue Record is, in sound and spirit, satisfying metal painted with broad strokes and big gestures.

Maybe that’s the real spiritual value of the album: rather than impress their personal convictions, the band acts as a conduit for all these forces to combine and radiate like a prism.

Of course it’s cheeseball, as we all were at that age. But that’s ultimately what makes this accessible, highly-listenable album a reinvigoration of both catalogue and genre.

More critically, though, is that Eye Contact works very well as a stamp on this band's original turn with Saint Dymphna: now that we know that a lot of their contemporaries were also going to turn in this direction, it's nice to see a band that was once ahead of the curve still working so hard to keep their sound this fascinating.

At some point in that outrageous lifestyle that flips between videogames and spitting stoned, stupid raps, he makes hard, smart decisions about what to lend his voice to and how that should be packaged.

Swans always understood better than most post-punk bands that the crushing, wall-of-sound repetition pioneered by Glenn Branca could be taken to its logical, nihilistic extreme in rock-n-roll.

It is often silly, occasionally ridiculous, always catchy as hell, and as loose as an album with this kind of production credit can be. What more could we ask from a pop record?

Superwolf is Bonnie-era Oldham trying to channel Palace-era Oldham.