Ace producer and longtime champion of underground hip-hop El-P walks a fine line on Cancer 4 Cure, crafting aggression with militaristic precision.

This Is Happening brims with smaller joys: the contrast between the wafer-dry vocal harmonies and funk-sopping synth bass on “Dance Yourself Clean”; the cut-rate laser noises on the calisthenic banger “Pow Pow.” These things accrue into a wry loveliness that’s never easy or expected.

At 18 songs, “No Holiday” is basically a double album, one that sits somewhere along a continuum of epic works that includes the Clash’s “London Calling” and Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville.” The determination, the vision, the energy — it’s real.

It's filthy, audibly painful and it makes every wrong decision imaginable in the course of producing an album. It might also be the most delirious, joyful and defining album of 2010.

To the National's credit, its exploration of the dour has never been this subtle, but by never shifting the mood, the band has also never been this draining.

An expertly crafted experimental pop album that at various points suggests the work of singer Kate Bush, the effects-drenched work of the Cocteau Twins and British art-rock band Talk Talk--all musicians who mix a certain sonic delicacy with studio heavy production--No Shape exudes confidence and vulnerability in equal measures.

There's not a cut here that will make anyone think differently about the Baltimore-born outfit but it's a worthy addition to their catalog.

Birgy harnesses her voice, a breathy, elastic instrument that she flexes in myriad ways, in service of songs in which no two measures are alike. Like Joni Mitchell, Caetano Veloso or Tim Buckley, she phrases her lines with the ear of an actor, conveying emotional info and drama with each oblong couplet.

What could have been a random collection of odds and ends--or worse, a nostalgia grab--isn't so much a look at Wilco's alternate-history past as it is a glimpse at ground the band still has to cover.

It's a lot for anyone to get their hands around, but Cash grips tightly to the aspects of loss she has been able to process, even if the enormity of that task escapes her grasp at times. [21 Jan 2006]

The singer dials down his boisterous rock ’n’ roll attack in pretty, midtempo songs lush with the type of string-and-horn arrangements that once kept session players busy in recording studios up and down Sunset Boulevard. ... What lifts this album above the other is the shapeliness of Springsteen’s tunes, catchier than they’ve been in years, and the vivid images in his lyrics.

Though a showcase for history, Lovano and his band expertly show the many ways these classics can still throw sparks.

Yeezus is minimal but powerful, a record filled with more aural space than anything on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” his excellent 2010 album.

Too little progress and too much mood. [4 Sep 2005]

Bombino and his band have released a killer document not only for fans of North African guitar music; anyone who has ever appreciated a master player make magic on a Fender while a band, which on Nomad is augmented by a few Auerbach’s go-to session men, organizes structures behind him, will find comfort in Bombino’s music.

Much of the album was reportedly written in the throes of deep depression over the death of Case's grandmother. But she came out the other side with a beautiful, insightful record to show for it.

What's remarkable about the album is how un-smoothed-out Cardi B sounds in this new environment. Though she clearly values the approval of old-fashioned arbiters, she won't dull her rough edges, as many have before her, to get it; the vivid result gives the impression that she's still in communion with her core audience.

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.

Anima is slightly more songful than Yorke’s previous solo record, 2014’s “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.” “I Am a Very Rude Person” and “Impossible Knots” both ride funk grooves that recall Atoms for Peace.

Though there are highlights--including the winsome title track and the jumpy "Wait in the Car"--Deal's songwriting isn't quite as sticky as it used to be, with simpler melodies and fewer turns of phrase that pop like the twisted bumper-sticker slogans she once threw out.

Hynes’ bold and moving album.

That none of this comes off as preachy or simply lame is a testament to both singers’ astute record-making skills. Though the streaming age requires pop stars to be fluent in multiple genres, Pink and Lizzo are expert in more than most.

A few private recordings have surfaced from the early 1960s, but none capture her essence like 1966.

Like kindred spirit Dawn Richard, Kelela veers from the requirements of mainstream R&B to explore her own course, and the result is a portent on the genre’s future.

Two young dudes couldn't make a synth-pop record so polished and seamless, one with a maturity matched only by the constant quest for surprise. Only the Pet Shop Boys can do that, as evidenced by Electric.

A brave, surprising third effort that's both challenging and confident, catchy but progressive, expertly imagined and executed.

Sometimes, a CD scratches an itch you didn't even know you had, and El Camino is that record.

The Bad Plus mostly set aside improvisation in an effort to capture Stravinsky's modernist vision, but in some ways it's never sounded freer.