Sympathy for Life still skyrockets as a natural follow-up to the left turn of its tonally ambitious and technically masterful predecessor—but on this project, the band ramp up their polished sound with an assembly of synth-rock and soft palettes of speculative and, sometimes, refreshingly vulnerable lyricism.

The Things We Do is a record for anyone who’s ever felt, even for a moment, that music is what matters the most. For any hard-luck kid or nowhere bum who needs it, that escape is heaven.

Although it's a trite concept, Dear's delivery sounds new, bathed in glowing, emerald light.

Dionysus is a great album to play while relaxing, or, even better melting into a deep meditation. It’s short by contemporary standards, coming in at just over 36 minutes total, so don’t expect to plan a whole dinner party around it, but it’s perfectly suited for the main course. Just don’t expect Dionysus to show up when this is played--it’s too cluttered to work as the intended invocation, a showtunes version of ritual celebration.

The Prettiest Curse shows the band at their expected peppy standard, maintaining the youthful punk-cum-surf-rock vigor they’ve built their name on for damn near 10 years. They’ve grown up, whether they meant to or not, but they haven’t lost their edge. They’ve merely sharpened it with their best work to date.

There’s a rockabilly feel alongside soul and even country, but no one genre is discernible for long. It’s as if The Mountain Goats contain multitudes and so can you.

More than its predecessors, Marnia exists as a kind of safe place, a forum where Stern can confront her deepest anxieties and most crippling self-doubts and always come out on top.

Where Want One emphasized his ability to soar, Want Two drowns him in costumes; his range actually sounds restricted when you hear the same droopy-lidded croon against such varying backdrops.

Each song shows new facets of their sound.

It’s tempting to think of Carried to Dust as a companion piece to "Feast of Wire."...And, like that distinguished predecessor, this one is a beauty from start to finish.

The disc remains infectious throughout. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.131]

Other Worlds is an immersive, expansive listen, filled with warm electro-dub grooves and plenty of ear-tickling headphone details--but it can also be a snooze.

On the surface, TRIP’s concept sounds like the kind of diehards-only project that would fit on the back half of a career-spanning boxset or as a high-priced Record Store Day release. Instead, Lambchop continue to subvert expectations by making TRIP an essential chapter in their recent creative hot streak.

TYRON is an exciting follow-up project whose bifurcated structure encapsulates the duality of slowthai’s effervescent rap persona and the evolving interiority of Tyron Frampton.

The occasional misstep aside, Capricorn shows another side of a young artist who is still growing into his full potential. Not only can Eddie 9V play the blues, he’s got plenty of soul, too.

Saint Dymphna is a dangerously sane blueprint for producers trying to capture what "futuristic" sounds like right now.

Eternally Even, while a solid album worth a spin, would have been well-served to have a little more urgency, or at least energy, to it.

It’s a quietly sublime work from a group of musicians who have always insisted--via their straight-up goofy music videos, Budweiser references and substitute teacher-like appearances--they’re just average suburbanites.

Commendable, but not very enjoyable.

Musgraves’ most sonically cohesive album to date, every song pulling from the same muted, pastel palette. And yet, there is still enough variation to keep things interesting from song to song.

In some ways, the too-slick production on Wrecking Ball is a scrim that allows Springsteen to compensate for his social detachment from his working-class subjects while perhaps convincing himself that he's giving the people what they want-a big rock record.

Throughout I Was Born Swimming, Williams pokes around in her own mind while wearing a tiny headlamp, digging up romantic evening encounters, lonely late-night drives and midnight beach jaunts. It never quite feels like daylight. But the instrumentation is such that the record never feels cold, either. You’ll just want to sink into it, like a warm bath, or maybe a 4 p.m. ocean that’s been baking in the hot sun all day.

She understands the properties and possibilities of an expanding flower plant and lets the idea of such possibility guide her songwriting. It channels the ancient and mythological without succumbing entirely, and supersedes it with the daring spirit of a 21st century woman.

Even when Georgia sings about relationships, love, romance and all that standard pop music fodder, her lyrics tend to double as tributes to the joy of dance.

This is probably the best Band of Horses album in 12 or maybe 15 years, after all—but when longtime fans listen to “Lights,” they’ll almost certainly hear echoes of “Weed Party,” a song from the band’s debut album.

Ward's lo-fi (and utterly charming) ditties make you long for a past you never lived. [#14, p.123]

With all the hype and fast tracking to fame, it’s astounding that the rest of the Coming Home holds up to such unreasonable expectations. Bridges pays homage to an era so judiciously and so personally that it’s hard to fault him as derivative.

It’s sparse and lush all at once, and each listen reveals a different star in the night sky. There’s still room for them to move forward, but it’s a debut which ensures the listener there’s no way that won’t happen.

If at any point you find yourself starting to lose interest, just wait; something good will be along soon to snap you back into head-bobbing bliss.

Laugh Track is a companion piece to the band’s other 2023 album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, sure, but it stands on its own.

Think of the best moments throughout the Grandaddy discography and you will rarely praise them for their consistency. Blu Wav is nothing of the sort, and frustratingly so. By Lytle’s own accounting, seven of the 13 songs on the album are waltzes, which, it turns out, might be far too many waltzes. The lonesome, ambling tone works on a few occasions.

[The] spirited mischief is sorely missed elsewhere on Who Needs Who, as the album settles into a series of soggy, minor-key piano ruminations.

The Silver Gymnasium grows on you, and sooner or later its nostalgia becomes your own--only the names and places are different.

With alt-country lyrics that are more Tom Waits than Guy Clark, Hayes Carll continues to impress, giving us more to think about than just honky tonks and heartaches.

There's something about the flaws on this thing--the way Marshall lets it all hang loose, the way she continually tries to express a sentiment she can't quite put into words--that's absolutely fascinating in its humanity and compassion.

The fact that Hackney Diamonds is this damn good further proves that even the bands who’ve given every bit of themselves to the music still have more left to give.

The band’s multiple harmonies and call-and-response on “Seventeen” and ”Stop Your Crying” remind listeners that Lake Street Dive is a group effort and that its core is powerfully impressive, even if this collection of songs is wrapped up in an unnecessarily over-produced package.

Producer Joe Henry succeeds in putting a Lanois-lite polish on everything, adding a subtle but not overbearing gravitas to the songs that allows Crowell’s humor to slide through without clashing.

Better Oblivion Community Center is the kind of warm and fuzzy record that provides listeners with a soul-lifting ending no matter which path they choose--to collapse into the arms of its devastating lyrical woe or to jump onstage with Oberst and Bridgers and bask in its giddy musical benevolence.

They already ask us to follow them on a slow path colored by skipping, jazzy tunes like “Lessons” and deepened by the rich drones and humming strings of “The Workers of Art.” Trying to crack open a conversation about epistemology in the process is asking a lot of folks that might otherwise set this album running in the background.

It’s their most immediate album--but not necessarily their simplest.

Sisterworld is petulant, rewarding and ultimately lonely. It’s a record that refuses to pick a style or lock step with the world that exists around it, much like the band that created it.

The furious yowling on each track off Uniform’s Perfect World belies some pretty arresting compositional finery.

Haunting and heartening, the record is a powerful follow-up, that feels like just the beginning.

Though there are also occasional woodwinds, brass, keyboards and percussion, Impermanence is almost like an experiment in minimalism, to see how fully Silberman can deconstruct songs and still make them compelling. Quite a bit, as it turns out.

With the range, depth and lyrical class Metronomy brings to Metronomy Forever, it’s quite a fun listen, one that shows how the group has evolved over their lengthy career. The electronic orchestration will leave you bopping through memory lane as you reminisce on old love.

The fact the “Born Under Punches”-esque freakout outro doesn’t rob the earlier minutes of their somber beauty is testament to the success of this particular sonic experiment. For that matter, it’s the main proof this new sound of theirs was not just a good move but a great one.

Girl Band’s latest is a startling upending of any and all expectations you would dare place upon a modern rock group.

Big Picture is a successful meditation on tension, an act of sitting in the discomfort. Fenne Lily has become a veritable expert on the subject, and her approach to narrating that process is engaging and novel.

The Devil You Know masterfully walks the line between politically charged while remaining , perhaps tragically, timeless. But it’s also an immensely listenable album, a fully realized emerging of the band’s true power in crafting edgy, electric songs.

A fun-as-hell pop-punk romp for listeners of any age.

What Path of Wellness lacks in sonic urgency, it makes up for with a vintage classic-rock swagger that livens up the material considerably.

The arrangements are consistently dynamic and clear, but Tegan & Sara’s wordy vocals steal the show.

Across 11 tracks, 3D Country is gnarled, chaotic and vibrant. But, what’s potentially the most-shattering truth of all is that, amid all of this charismatic, wholehearted sonic anarchy, Geese have only just begun.

Heartbreaking Bravery is pretty far-out and difficult to pigeonhole, even for Krug's standards--but what sets is apart from the rest of his catalog is a dark, throbbing instrumental cohesion.

While A Mad and Faithful Telling--the band’s first album of all original material since 2004’s "How it Ends"--doesn’t exactly break new ground, it offers a much fuller realization of dynamic and structural sensitivity.

On Dry Food’s eight heartbreaking observations, she teeters between aching insecurity and crushing tenderness.

While not as great a leap in style or maturity, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me showcases more of what's great about the grown-up Brand New. [Feb 2007, p.60]

On Made in the Dark, Hot Chip has stopped trying so hard to integrate the dance and bedroom sounds it loves, instead segregating them to eliminate the compromises of the ?rst two albums.

Houck's voice knows exactly when to crack, and when the material's as great as this, that's the only embellishment you need.

Isbell shines most when he’s not channeling; tracks like 'Chicago Promenade,' 'Shotgun Wedding' and tasteful protest ballad 'Dress Blues' (which smartly chooses empathy over proselytizing) find his sound evolving into an alternately rocked-up and quietly satisfying maturity.

While it’s certainly enjoyable in moments, it doesn’t command that you subscribe to anything in particular, and in that sense the shadow of some of his earlier works’ obvious antecedents is lost for the worse.

Like Jimmy Page’s previous deluxe remasters, these new sets are fitfully revealing, littered with extras that even obsessives will write off as fluff. But the albums’ scattered brilliance has only deepened in the past four decades. [Coda (Remastered Album): 7.5 / Coda (Deluxe Material): 7.0]

Throughout Anxiety, tracks fail to resolve--“Counting,” “Promises,” “Gonna Die”--and initially I thought it was a songwriting flaw, coming on so fantastically strong there was nowhere left to go. But .... On multiple listens none of this plays accidental--songs run aground as a means of setting the next episode in motion.

With the title character appearing in several songs amid frequent descriptions of desert landscape, Josephine sounds like a concept album, at times tedious or academic....The Co. redeem these songs by creating beautiful scenery for Molina’s long, hard drive.

CRAWLER, especially, reads like a love album—a demonstration of the hard work and self-reflection required to be the most loving version of yourself. Talbot’s integrity could be felt on every beat. But TANGK boils love down so much it’s not clear if there’s anything there at all.

Musgraves’ storytelling skills and musical instincts are as strong as ever on star-crossed. While it’s not perfect, love rarely is, and breakups never are.

Shopping isn’t trying to become more commercial or appealing on a wider scale, but they undertook this sonic shift because, as a band that has long been heralded for its dance-y vibe, the incorporation of electronic elements seems to be a natural progression in order to make the most well-rounded version of what their music conveys.

Infuriatingly inconsistent. [Dec 2006, p.90]

Frequently too safe and polite for its own good. [Oct 2006, p.72]

The complexity of the album is minimal, but McCombs manages to craft eight songs that explore a lighthearted lyrical tone and dynamic view of life.

This collection is the band's tightest and most cohesive, and they do so without losing any of the grit.

All in all, Twentytwo in Blue spills over with well-crafted songs and sumptuous performances.

Okkervil River itself performs here with an organic ease that’s dramatic without reaching for histrionics, continuing to tattoo its rough folkish flesh with Motown horns, power-pop overdrive and chugging New Wave bass.

Happy music can sometimes seem superficial or lacking the emotional depth that music is "supposed to" capture. On the contrary, this album seems enlightened. It's happy and deep and complex and present, all at the same time.

Her bandmates act as a support system, pushing these songs to new heights, ready to catch her when she stares at the unknown. All of This Will End is triumphant, despite the emotional terrain it navigates.

He set out to depict the pains of contemporary Chicago, but he ended up just making another Common album.

Petty fans will be pleased, given that 2 is an adequate stopgap measure, at least until Petty and company come up with something new of their own.

For all the ugliness, all the bitterness, all the fear and regret, Death Dreams can be devastatingly beautiful.

A broader sonic palette--including more overt silliness--gives Murdoch a chance to explore more moods, including some that are deceptively light. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.102]

While it lacks the churn or drama of his earlier work or the dour intensity of Sea Change, it’s an album remarkable in its consistent, pleasant above-averageness, punctuated by bursts of true genius.

Triangulates the common ground between Luna, American Music Club and Red House Painters. [#14, p.105]

The album sounds heavy and elusive, like a field recording, and it will surely be studied with the most powerful of cultural microscopes, but its author will just puff cigarettes and chuckle.

Finds Plant in fine form. [#16, p.127]

At worst, the brag & cuss is overly affected (with its multiple “only whiskey can kill the pain” references), but at best, it’s completely disarming.

Bishop Allen has delivered an album worthy of its integrity-laden new home.

Overall, the album is an honest, and at times heartbreaking, exploration of life’s struggles and losses.

It's hard to believe Don't Blame the Stars has been floating around for more than three years. Hard to believe because, a) It's a terrific album that a label should have snatched up earlier, and b) It's eerily prescient.

Though I Can See the Future marks a new phase of Mandell's life, and, in turn, her songwriting, she is still as adept as ever crafting compelling storylines, as well as using her voice's versatility and nuance to breathe another dimension into her songs.

Coming in at only 11 songs, SremmLife is a lively surge of hedonism and recklessness.

Even with a slower string of songs on the middle of Side B, Highway Queen shows Lane as a growing artist and burgeoning force for women in country music.

What is most inspiring about Cost of Living is, whether they are addressing workers’ rights, saving net neutrality, the white-cis-het hegemony or police brutality, among countless other topics to manage to fit into a 35-minute album, Downtown Boys stay angry, but are never pessimistic.

The Hanged Man, despite some of its thinness and unevenness, is still a great record.

Desert Dove thrives on clarity of purpose and craftsmanship: Anne’s voice rings pristine from one song to the next, clean and clarion, never wavering, never striking false notes.

No matter what life throws at them, Moore and Riley are a safe harbor for one another, just like their music is for anyone who’s a romantic at heart.

A bold, career-defining step, Leaving None But Small Birds updates metal’s longstanding obsession with morbidity, even as the musicians look to the past. That they sound so natural exploring these old, dusty sounds together, and that they manage to breathe new life into them, must be recognized as a monumental achievement.

She offers a vulnerable meditation to soundtrack the ways in which our hearts reach outwards towards the loved ones we miss and the loved ones we haven’t met. And if the music world gifts us all with more pro-mom records in 2022, may we return to them just as soon.

Rice, singing [on "Light Industry"] about “Bennie and the Jets and dreary weekend sex,” plays perfectly into the song’s hesitant mood. It’s the one moment on Gulp! where his audible exhaustion fits, a song that makes you wonder what the rest of the album would have be like if only the band could translate Rice’s weariness into something more suited to their strengths. Instead, Sports Team take a swing with Gulp! and barely make contact.