Alone's as good a Pretenders record as has been made. [No. 137, p.59]

Consider the jarring Highway Songs a retrenchment in the wake of its creator's publicly nightmarish 2015: the album as spirit quest, as bridge. [No. 137, p.59]

Their playful mutability keeps them from being genre exercises and makes I Had A Dream a delight. [No. 137, p.57]

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

Walls could be their portal to lingering greatness. [No. 137, p.57]

This is a mature work. [No. 137, p.54]

Perhaps both the best and worst you can say about Revolution Radio is that it sounds exactly like Green Day. [No. 137, p.55]

Naked and nearly innocent, the raw talent of Buckley is finally revealed. [No. 137, p.53]

After the actors have their poignantly emotional say, it's Bowie's own tremolo-rich, baritone voice and the noir-art-industrial-jazz band he employed on Blackstar that top off Lazarus stage-songs. [No. 137, p.53]

LP2 is certainly worthy of standing next to a genre classic. [No. 137, p.53]

Vernon's gorgeous falsetto and vice grip on melody hold it all together beautifully. [No. 137, p.52]

No, we haven't heard this Cave before, and though magnetic, emotive and tenderly merciful, one prays for his sake that we never hear it again. [No. 137, p.51]

So well-versed are Jacuzzi Boys in hooky guitar pop that their boisterous personalities occasionally get lost in the mix. [No. 137, p.55]

There's nothing else like it, and once you listen, you'll never forget it. [No. 136, p.61]

There's not an ounce of flab on this record. [No. 134, p.60]

Blonde Redhead's early sound, however, can be tough grasp as an "artistic" aesthetic sometimes derails the excellent juggling of downtown noise and heads-down rock of the band's more focused moments. [No. 136, p.53]

This lavishly packaged box, comprising either 12 CDs or 13 LPs, observes Bowie's blossoming into a chameleon, ready to shed personae and styles the minute they strangle his artists needs. [No. 136, p.52]

While there's a bit less winsome lilt and a bit more loud fuzz, the songs still sound like a bulked-up amalgam of early Pavement, Television Personalities and your favorite shamble-rock outfit. Why change it if it works? [No. 136, p.61]

This is an album of mostly beatless soul whose heart nevertheless pumps vividly and loudly throughout its 17 tracks. [No. 136, p.61]

Tweedy is a certified master of the simple, effective melody--time and again, he's built something grand from the pieces of something small, and trace evidence of this trick is splattered all over Schmilco. [No. 136, p.60]

All the elements anyone would want from the band are adroitly balanced. [No. 136, p.59]

Cosmonaut is a mostly understated genre-jumper that serves as the platform for frontman Bid to exercise his dry wit. [No. 136, p.59]

Having carved out a signature sound from the start, Local Natives continue to sound both fresh and familiar. [No. 136, p.57]

Another low-key masterpiece wrapped in spooky twanging guitars, heartbroken harmonies, droning tempos and lyrics that often don't rhyme, delivered in Brett Sparks' deadpan, rumbling baritone. [No. 136, p.57]

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

Discerning Anglophiles will warm to the charms of the Divine Comedy's 11th album, Foreverland. [No. 136, p.55]

Everything about the resulting album elevates what could've been a gimmicky lark into something affecting. [No. 136, p.53]

The fantasy and the fantastic continue, and his soft sculptural Dadaist lyrical sense of romance will always go with DevBan's trembling, lilting melodies like cheese and chocolate. [No. 136, p.53]