Named after a New Orleans street food, "Ya-Ka-May" mixes a whole variety of ingredients that shouldn't hold together but do. While no record could truly capture the sound of New Orleans in 2010, Galactic sure has a great time trying.

It's entirely contrary to conventional CD construction and all the more appealing for being so. [2 Oct 2005]

Silver Age is an exclamation point to those [Sugar] reissues, a nod to the past but with clear direction forward.

Aquarius heralds an essential new voice, one that coheres 100 current ideas about women, sex, sadness and musical restlessness in one excellent album.

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.

As this standout collection of songs shows, with its astounding lyrical acumen and stellar beats, De La Soul surely ranks among the best rap groups of all time. [24 Oct 2004]

Yes Lawd! maneuvers through its 18 tracks with a gleeful sense of abandon. Like the work of the late producer J Dilla, Knxwledge’s rhythms take a few measures to lock into place, but when they do, weird patterns emerge.

The Lips' catalog is exhaustingly long, but Arabia Mountain is a fine reassertion that its talents extend far beyond running from venue security.

If [the cover of Dennis Linde’s “Burning Love”] the first reason to check in on this collection, which went largely unnoticed when Warner Bros. released it, the reason to stay with it is the exquisite melancholy the Alabama-reared musician invests in just about everything he sings.

A confident, brash, inventive collection featuring songs that lock into the psyche after only a few listens, the White-produced creation is lyrically and musically challenging and filled with many fresh avenues of exploration, even as it nods to key tones and ideas from throughout the history of pre-rap American music.

Dirty Projectors still get itchy at the prospect of sleek surfaces, and their uneasiness is a thrill to behold.

Accompanying himself on a guitar that probably cost 10 quid, Bugg holds two fingers up to yesterday and moans about being stuck in Speed Bump City in scrappy early-rock ditties as full of Buddy Holly as they are of Bob Dylan.

Its well-trodden themes might not break much new ground, but Made succeeds thanks to Scarface's keen storytelling ability, unimpeachable authority and subtle lyrical complexity.

Overall, Rising Down doesn't replicate the balanced charm of last year's "Game Theory," but in other ways, it's the more provocative effort.

Disco with a vengeance, a whomping, unapologetically airheaded engine of stroboscopic beats and succulent textures that exhumes dance music's time-honored values of celebration and affirmation. [13 Nov 2005]

With Big Baby D.R.A.M. he comes into his own, rapping with verve and sensitivity while fully capturing 2016’s loopy, soulful moment in hip-hop. No wonder he’s smiling.

The band works too hard to seem mysterious. [10 Oct 2004]

Prophet mines Fuller’s energy in the pounding title track, which features the refrain, “I hear the record crackle/ The needle skips and jumps/ Bobby Fuller died for your sins.” Prophet described “Bad Year for Rock and Roll,” another album highlight, in an essay for Talkhouse as “an anthem for anyone who’s ever had a bad year and battles late-night bouts of loss of faith.”

LaFarge backs it up with the joyful noise he and his bandmates bring to all 10 tracks

What's best, despite its New York-centric vibe, those locals looking for a beat-heavy record to crank at full volume while stuck in Los Angeles traffic need look no further.

Johnston's best songs remind us that every mirror, like every voice, is always in danger of cracking. But that doesn't take anything away from the beauty of our illusions.

Lyrically, Drake embraces some of his pet topics on More Life. ... Yet Drake is also flashing signs of emotional growth--glimmers he might feel more confident displaying on a happily jumbled playlist than working into a cohesive album-length statement with its own internal logic.

He captures the otherworldly more often than not. Occasionally, though, the songs overreach or miss some central point.

Some bands use studio trickery like an instrument, but Isis' straightforward tools avoid baroqueness even when the band is throwing deep.

Rich with echoed effects and a rolling momentum that hits heavy on the first beat, the 14 tracks showcase an inspired artist who has yet to make a commercial impact equal to his skills.

Beast is his most instantly inviting album by far and vividly underscores his skills as a producer.

The nostalgia in the production — a blend of crisp digital synth textures and ringing grooves drawn directly from '90s house music — further bolsters the shadowed euphoria of a song like "Sour Candy," in which Gaga is joined by the K-pop girl group Blackpink; "Sine from Above," featuring Elton John, gets a similar friction from the interplay between their voices.

What emerges yet again is his deceptively downhome way of dropping pearls of wisdom into seemingly mundane scenarios, with plainspoken humor, with poignancy, with uncommon insight, and sometimes all three at once.