Ultimately, Olsen shows she can still be gripping, but with a much greater sense of presence. [No. 106, p.57]

Ambitious, risky and occasionally rambling, this is a song cycle best absorbed in a start-to-finish listen. [#73, p.93]

Listening to Coyne retreat behind the faux-Power Rangers horror-movie shtick he's created here is puzzling and ultimately disappointing. [#55, p.73]

A gorgeous record brimming with unhurried songs. [#61, p.108]

Snaith crafted Out Love with all the care of a handwritten mixtape. [No. 114, p.52]

The toxic muse behind Pussycat's bitter melodies and crunchy guitar solos is recognizable as the man who's made so many of us feel as dejected as a woman in a Hatfield song. [No. 142, p.57]

Basinski has proven remarkably capable at existing far outside of his own legacy, his uncanny ability to wring entire worlds from his famously deep tape archives proving more remarkable with each subsequent release. A Shadow In Time is no exception. [No. 139, p.53]

The beauty of Pleasure's vintage danceteria lies in its sharp 21st-century focus and Lerche's consistently reliable songwriting skills. [No. 141, p.59]

By maintaining his intimacy while armed with a full palette of colors, Beam sets himself far apart from the rest of the hush-and-shush crowd. [Fall 2007, p.98]

Second Hand Heart weakest moments are when it's a little too familiar, though.... He more than makes up for it elsewhere. [No. 119, p.61]

The group's warmest, most charitable album to date. [No. 98, p.61]

Shooting through the proceedings is a relentless, apocalyptic jitteriness that leaves you teetering on the edge of your chaise. [#58, p.84]

Their scope isn't quite as broad as 2011's Apocalypse or as emotionally complex as 2009's Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, but they are full of sharp observations and wit. [No. 102, p.54]

Twenty years later, the Shellac so many swore by is back, and swinging. [No. 116, p.61]

Freedom's Goblin has hooks and strong songwriting, and the quality is more consistent than Segall's norm. [No. 150, p.55]

It's exquisitely constructed sound with a sharp punk edge and an anarchist's ear for chaos. [#48, p.92]

The Pilgrimage is a much busier, more dynamic effort than its predecessor; one that never flails in its considerable ambition, but, rather, simply continues driving forward, all menace and swagger. [No.86, p.56]

Songs like "Driving School," "M Train" and the deathlessly compelling "Crazy" sound unerringly alive and modern, making this an excellent archival release. [No. 134, p.59]

Revolution is not a political screed, as the band scorches and eases its way through a fair number of life/love reflection. [No. 144, p.55]

The songs are tightly constructed, the recordings clean and largely devoid of production effects, allowing the melodies, all quite lovely to take center stage. [No. 147, p.61]

On par with anything in the back catalog. [#69, p.106]

The music seems to matter, and for the listener, that's welcome relief from indiedom's groveling. [#52, p.82]

On [Her Majesty...], the whimsy and multicolored narrative threads that represented the best of the Decemberists' terrific first album are given room to breathe. [#60, p.96]

FLOTUS is unexpected, occasionally inscrutable and fascinating. [No. 137, p.57]

Midway through, it's already tiresome to hear the anthemic shouting and seemingly non-stop drum fills. It's a celebratory listen for sure, but one that could do with a breather that shows off this duo's skills. [No.88 p.58]

They've consistently upped tempos while delivering saccharine-infused riffs with all the sunshine-y aplomb of a Prozac salesman's first and last day on the job. [No.87 p.59]

Mould’s in a dark place right now: bile in his gut, pain in his heart, doom on his mind. It’s the end of days, people. He makes it sound so fun. [No. 129, p.56]

Golightly brings out rock'n'roll's original transgressive spirit. [#60, p.98]

Gibbons' craft is making her desperate drama believable and compelling.... [But] the lack of memorable tunes is Gibbons' worst affliction. [#61, p.96]

That the feel throughout is cruel New England winter suggests July is one hell of a break-up record. [No. 106, p.57]

The inanely literalistic Looping State of Mind magnifies that trend [toward expansionism], offering seven mutations of his trademark sound, in a newly expansive array of tempos. [#82, p. 55]

Paternoster invites you to get ugly and rotten with her like it's a call to arms. [No.86, p.57]

I Hate Music weds the North Carolina indie legends' eternal penchant for grind-it-out power punk with the pensiveness and introspection that colored their late-'90s/early-aughts output. [No. 101, p.56]

It's the sound of Griffin at an intriguing crossroads. [No. 104, p.56]

One of the band's best.... While 1999's Ric Ocasek-produced Do The Collapse was criticized by some for its thick, pop-radio gloss, Isolation Drills shows more restraint, reconciling Pollard's idiosyncrasies with the track-to-track consistency great rock albums demand. [#49, p.75]

What sounds like downcast spaciousness is actually riddled with layers of sound complementing the expected morose and heartfelt topics. [No. 121, p.61]

Surprisingly, Dylan has never been more deliberate or so overtly savage. [No. 93, p.54]

The sounds of the time are eclectic DIY, and often impressive. [No. 124, p.55]

Is White's nonchalant spectrum dabbling [found throughout the album] as interesting as the myriad variables of his own quirky sound? Eh, not quite. [No.88 p.60]

By stepping around traditional rock instrumentation, the group is able to cover a lot of ground. [#69, p.112]

Languid and sometimes lagging, [a] sensual 47-minute set. [No. 92, p.52]

With Foil Deer, Speedy Ortiz fully owns its style, quirks and neuroses on a level that would have been unimaginable circa 2013's Major Arcana. [No. 120, p.61]

An album chock-full of some of the most melodic and memorable work the band ever produced.... This reissue definitively covers the final chapter of Reed's time with the band that not only established his street cred, but launched him headfirst into his solo career. [No. 126, p.56]

As fine a record as you're likely to hear in 2016. [No. 132, p.54]

A soundtrack that hits with the force of a well-timed punch and soothes like the ministrations of a doomed romantic poet. [No. 142, p.56]

The Avalanches bag production, they roller-coaster; got to be jokers, they just do what they please. [No. 134, p.51]

An embarrassment of riches. [#58, p.91]

It's good to have these Michigan noisemakers back, in fine form. [No.99, p.61]

The new Apocalypse is leaner and funkier than the more jazzy and sprawling Golden Age Of Apocalypse. [No. 100, p.59]

Williams’ themes here aren’t new for her—love lost and found, mortality, the struggle to get right with God. But thanks to Frisell especially, the settings for Williams’ cracked, world-weary voice and vivid songwriting are indeed new. [No. 128, p.60]

This album is magnificent. [No. 109, p.54]

What holds it all together—besides the thematic unity--are Pollock’s vocals, which are clear, unaffected and emotive throughout. [No. 128, p.59]

Consistently fantastic. [#64, p.80]

Guitarists Gunn, Jim Elkington and Paul Sukeena channel their prodigious technique to fleeting textures and ingratiating hooks, and the arrangements update the template of 1970-vintage Velvet Underground and Grateful Dead with a half-century of judiciously applied production acumen. [No. 131, p.57]

Hard, clear and carefully ornamented, their harmonies feel as ancient as the hills and as immediate as the wind hitting your face. [No. 143, p.57]

Mozart's Mini-Mart is full of short, witty synth-pop songs such as "When You're Depressed." Think Magnetic Fields at their most ephemeral. [No. 150, p.53]

A captivating listen. [No.87 p.58]

The duo constantly varies each elements of its sound in ways most rock bands could learn plenty from. [No. 95, p.56]

The rhythm section is thoroughly strong, giving the band freedom to travel as far into the bleeps and bloops as it pleases, which is many miles. [No. 100, p.57]

That they've played themselves out of a tight corner is an impressive feat in and of itself. [Winter 2008, p.99]

With the right proportion of leadership and lawlessness, Wild Flag sounds like liberation. Long may they wave. [#81 p. 52]

An epic, potentially epoch-making release. [No. 131, p.53]

It's a truism that embedded in most double albums is an even better single one, but that doesn't apply here. [No. 114, p.58]

Subtle acoustic bass, quiet drums and occasional strings and piano accents support his strummed acoustic guitar, leaving his quiet, expressive singing at center stage. [No. 138, p.61]

Accelerator is the most focused album Royal Trux ever made. [No.92, p.57]

Cheap nostalgia and cynicism be damned. They still sound--on this evidence at least--utterly majestic.

The Sunset Tree can be bleak, but it's also redemptive. [#68, p.104]

It's freeing and inspiring and a wondrous odyssey of class-consciousness. [No. 109, p.58]

It might not get the party started, but it'll sure as hell get the freshly converted pilgrims ambling. [No. 101, p.61]

A record that easily ranks among the heaviest, most remarkable releases in Constellation's recent catalog. [No. 143, p.57]

A sinister, slinky catwalk with sharper melodic angles and a propulsive, post-punk groove. [#75, p.99]

The music carries you along, building to a very gradual crescendo that feels like Popol Vuh stretching out one Phil Spector moment for three-quarters of an hour. [No. 118, p.53]

It's an immediate, obvious highlight of Wasner's career, and of the year. [No. 136, p.57]

Andorra is, to use a phrase not heard much anymore, all killer, no filler.

If Low or Acetone pull your melancholy levers and there's a need for some hurt feelings, then go ahead and reserve Skyscraper National Park a space on your 2002 top-10 list. [#54, p.92]

The Whole Love works best as aural comfort food.[#81, p. 60]

In plain but very powerful terms, it's one of the smartest albums ever released. [No. 111, p.61]

Not since the Men dropped Leave Home last summer has a young band made an album of pure, hard-edged rock this good or entertainingly lacerating. [No. 92, p.56]

While there's certainly nothing on Poses so riveting as to signify a rock revolution, there's something to be said for the virtue of a simple crooner operating at the top of his game. [#51, p.122]

No One Deserves Happiness is even better [than One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache]. [No. 130, p.53]

Daniel Bachman is the guitarist's most emotionally complex and stylistically integrated work to date. [No. 137, p.53]

Utopia is the perfect whooshing winter record, just in time for the bitter chill. [No. 149, p.53]

Grim Reaper shows that Lennox has bigger things on his mind than mere crowd-pleasing. [No. 117, p.59]

Ridiculous packaging and intensely personal liner notes make this a must-have for fans. [No. 106, p.56]

Both [At Saint Thomas the Apostle Harlem and All The Way] elicit a simultaneous sense of terror and wonder as to what demons are flowing through her bloodstream and how she's managed to harness them for the power of artistic good. [No. 141, p.57]

Queens Of The Stone Age lumbers its way through a series of increasingly skronky, sludge-by-numbers jams and sound. [No. 100, p.57]

In Conflict is his masterpiece--if not the best album of 2014, certainly the most profound. [No. 109, p.59]

Blood Orange moves swiftly, wipes clean his chill-pop slate and goes for stark, ham-handed topicality hop and loss as applied to menacingly atmospheric tones. That Hynes does this without losing his sense of pop and tunefulness is a sweet accomplishment. [No. 134, p.52]

Not every song justifies Herring's bold imprimatur, but enough do to make them stand out in a catalog that wasn't wanting for impact tracks. [No. 108, p.55]

Little short of brilliant. [#52, p.79]

Love Streams is a more amiably cluttered affair: bolder, stranger and, at times, considerably more bewildering, but with an ultimately playful, exploratory guiding spirit. [No. 130, p.57]

It's Newman's ability to paint such a scene [narrator's wife, on her deathbed, defending him against their concerned and/or churlish offspring] with humor, affection and honest humanity that makes his albums so thoroughly worth the wait. [No. 145, p.60]

Glass Swords is a testament to the importance of cutting right the chase, boiling house music down to climaxes the way Lightening Bolt compresses wild metal soloing into hard, gnarly blasts of attitude. [#81, p. 59]

It's all very romantic and swoon-worthy. [#67, p.93]

Capturing the band at its creative zenith, the three albums on Volume 2--Music To Strip By, Charmed Life and The Band That Would Be King--are hip-shaking, chin-scratching things of beauty rife with bent-grooves and wacked-out, sexed-up story songs that fall somewhere between Jonathan Richman and the Residents. [No. 117, p.53]

It's amazing that, however slowly, the Ex is still exploring fresh terrain. [#50, p.87]

America is both a progression and a departure for Deacon: an album rife with danceable party music, but also a deeply political gesture. [No.90, p.56]

Collaborations where the principals hail from different ends of the musical spectrum usually lack common ground, making their output little more than a curiosity. Thankfully, this a a problem Harmonic trounces with a big sonic shillelagh. [#88, p.58]