The song selection suggests a band that had internalized a heck of a lot of country ideas at a young age.... Overshadowing all, though, is McKee, whose voice sounds like that of a young Dolly Parton fueled by Exene Cervenka's passion.

Fade is classic Yo La Tengo: honest, unpretentious and, above all, catchy.

As usual with the ever-insightful Alvin, the specifics of his raw material are the means to broader truths rather than an end in themselves.

Both heavy with bass and filled with memorable hooks, Q's long-gestating major label debut is tight in length and rich with intent.

The result is a collection of demanding, disquieting and beautiful urban hymns that reveal their rewards on repeated listenings.

By stomping just at the edge of parental propriety and sneaking in (mostly) well-crafted lyrics, her new record confirms her place as the loosest of the dance divas, one who not only preaches on the art of the party like few since Andrew W.K., but who also delivers the message through inventive, beat-heavy musical cannonballs, most produced by hitmaker Dr. Luke, that pummel with pleasure.

It might be the year's most beautifully sung recording.

Animal Collective still struggles with effective counterweights to its euphoric beauty--the attempt at romance on 'Bluish' is off-putting and some of the murkiness can exhaust and undermine--but it shifts so rapidly, with such conviction, that it's more fun to hunker down and surrender.

The Cherry Thing reclaims the unpredictable outlaw energy and impulses of hip-hop, jazz and punk, organically linking them all.

The result is a sprawling, 75-minute immersion in the dynamic between Patterson Hood's Neil Young/Tom Petty-influenced folk and rock and Steve Cooley's mix of Rolling Stones, stone country and Band-flavored folk-rock.

Love 2 is not a make-out album in the traditional sense. It's about the love of silence, stillness, of being a conscious human being and watching the world float by.

The music of AFI wasn't always as daring as its fashion sense, but the NoCal band has grown with accelerating sophistication, stepping further beyond easy pop-punk thrashings to something grander, with music to match the mopey melodrama of Havok's words.

Though it might sound like a cold place, Eno's primordial milk sea is often choppy and warm, the kind of rough and imperfect environment where ideas ignite.

Whatever the arrangement, though, Nicks’ voice--that signature drone that’s gotten only more appealingly imperious with age--defines the music here. Her singing dominates as easily now as it ever did.

"In My Mind" sometimes settles for the conventional, but overall this one is too hot to drop. [23 Jul 2006]

Thanks to Clarke's well-developed tune sense and his bandmates' primal need for speed, We'll Live and Die in These Towns doesn't sound the way life in a cubicle feels; if anything, it replicates the adrenaline rush of one of those YouTube videos in which a stir-crazy office worker decimates a copy machine.

It's no surprise that Ne-Yo sings about women on his excellent third album, Year of the Gentleman.

The 10 songs course through the highs and lows with equanimity, from the pride and hope in Charlotte she expresses to the kindheartedness she displays for those acquaintances who've moved on.

For Simon, the divine isn't in the persistent hook of pop music but in the most far-reaching of global folk, where sounds, structures and techniques long ago abandoned can be employed in the service of something new and unknown.

This music reminds us that subtlety is sometimes worth the time it takes to comprehend it.

Crow's progressive lyrics hit like rubber-band pings fired by some joker in the back row at school. No one is likely to sing her verses at a march on Washington. But by addressing serious issues in the language of pop, they remind us that political speech and casual breeze-shooting can and do often intersect.

It’s chaotic and expansive in the best sense: The Allstars attack many blues and southern rock ideas--and let loose doing it. As a result, World Boogie feels like a journey.

The Alabama Shakes' first album, Boys & Girls, is an electric jolt that anyone who loves blues-based rock music should track down immediately

Some of these lines are so well-crafted that they're tough to bear.

I'm Having Fun Now distinguishes itself from Lewis and Rice's solo efforts, or hers with band-on-hiatus Rilo Kiley, by going for a very specific tone.

Thirty-four years after the band's debut, Heart's dreamboat sails on.

Taken together, the 11 tracks on Kenny Dennis feel like chapters, and combine to create a work as accomplished--and entertaining--as a well-imagined graphic novel or confidently told short story.

A dance syncretism made of menacing beats skittering from dark dancehall to mashed-up jungle, super-warped bass frequencies, stark anti-hooks, and a voice that is the most authentic to emerge in years. [18 Jan 2004]