Pink Friday, while certainly far from profound, is neatly rooted in predictability and vulgarity. But then again, would we have Minaj any other way?

Despite the impressive breadth of their ambition, not all of the experiments stick.

24-7 falters when it tries anything except balls-to-the-wall, though.

Its walls of distorted, alt-rock power chords reek of the 1990s. [Apr/May 2006, p.102]

Sweet Heart is beguiling, warm and wise, but it begs for a good kick in the ribs.

The two started jamming together and the songs evolved organically. Before the duo knew it, they had an album’s worth of songs. And that’s basically what the album sounds like--two guys of a certain age doing stuff they think is really cool that only winds up being cool to guys of a certain age.

Singing with El Madmo or sampled by Talib Kweli, she doesn't sit comfortably or confidently in every style, but even the less successful forays serve to bust through genre boundaries.

A bit of a yawn considering most of the bands employed make no efforts to cloak their blue collar core. They sound too much along the campfire-and-malt-liquor rock rolodex Springsteen nailed to breathe new life into the tracks.

Songs like "Traveling" and "Robin" attempt to capture the same magic of Cape Dory but feel a bit out of place amongst all the displays of emotional angst elsewhere.

On the whole, Nosebleed Weekend is a triumph, The Coathangers’ strongest top-to-bottom album and one that proves the band can maintain its essence as it evolves.

All of the classic rock components are here--drug-induced percussion segues, heavy distortion on guitars, a singer who may or may not be fully cognizant about whether the recording process is underway. There’s an ethos at work, a controlled chaos, and it’s a brilliantly orchestrated jam session.

It’s not perfect. It’s not really revelatory. But the guy realized after two decades of making solid folk-pop albums that he ought to put the guitar down for a bit and try something new.

Like with Foxy's previous efforts, The Church of Rock & Roll shines in its ballsy rejection of modern pop stereotypes, however, the new album slips in its contradictions.

The Montreal duo of P-Thugg and Dave 1 write hypnotic, theatrical disco beats reminiscent of Miami's late-'70s/early-'80s blow scene.

Screwed together with fuzz-tone bridges, rhymes scan monosyllabic even when they’re not, and are resolutely and nostalgically pre-postmodern in their references.

bEEdEEgEE makes it apparent that Brian Degraw has a future with or without Gang Gang Dance, as this solo album can rival any of his previously released heights.

It's hard to discern their true mission, but Nightingale is best when it traffics in the modest pleasures of a memorable melody or a pointed lyric.

Because of this seeming resistance against leaving their comfort zone, Bleachers becomes so opaque it practically evaporates by the time you finish it.

Uneven. [Apr/May 2006, p.117]

Adiós I’m a Ghost manages to retain its humanity and emotional center even in the most blistering of numbers.

Endless Wonder has a lot of great songs, but they aren’t among the best of what Say Hi has to offer.

A dream-pop icon teaming up with a protégé on an album of western(-ish) songs is probably not a collaboration anyone was looking for, but if Dean Wareham vs. Cheval Sombre was unexpected, it also turns out to be unexpectedly satisfying. They sing well together, they picked interesting songs to interpret and they perform them in a way that is reverent without feeling too earnest.

Bad Brains still sounds best when it's angry, though.

Despite all the influences blowing through the ether, the resulting songs lack the dynamic range of their most obvious inspirations, each charting a familiar trajectory through a slow build and release of cacophonous guitars and caterwauling vocals that gets old around the five-minute mark.

This diverse album's eerie ambience and astute songwriting more than compensate for its periodic uneventfulness. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.145]

Kaiser and Cartel just might be the Sonny and Cher of the indie-pop world.

This is his third solo album, and it’s well-written, breathtakingly pretty and as edgy as a cue ball.

Most of Then Came the Morning shows a confident band stepping more fully into a compelling sound.

While the band and management are careful not to peg Sonic Highways as the soundtrack to the cable television series, the Foo Fighters’ eighth studio LP certainly remains a concept album and requires that lens to be appreciated fully.

There isn't much to distinguish him from a million other talented but interchangeable coffe-shop-circuit troubadours. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.95]

An album that echoes the pull of modern pop, it’s rousing, revelatory, dynamic and demonstrative without negating any sort of bigger theme.

This is an album that knocks you over at first. But when you gather yourself, get back on your feet and listen again, you'll want to hit the play button a second time.

Amos fails to find an entryway into these songs that justifies her willingness to bury her personality inside them, ending up with a well-meaning but ultimately inessential vanity project.

Something’s Changing is a culmination of much-welcomed growth for Rose.

Without a doubt Baba Yaga is a lovely, delicately crafted album. That being said, the band’s predilection towards mid-tempo rhythm leads to several stretches where songs blur together or stretch on for so long (the album’s songs average about five minutes) that the momentum is all but shot.

The album is a disjointed trip but a trip nonetheless, and few can take listeners on a wandering journey better than The Black Angels.

If this all sounds like a dog’s breakfast of sound, it is--the tunes themselves only occasionally work.

Why foist all of this upon a fanbase that's gracefully aging right along with you and is thus a little more malleable than either of you were in your mid-twenties, a little more open-minded, a little more down for whatever? The answer, clearly, is "Why not?"

With the help of producer Phil Ek, the band captures the odd we're-young-but-wish-we-were-younger nostalgia of the so-called crisis while still creating an album that will appeal to an audience outside the twentysomething set.

On GUV IV, Cook’s songs feel fuller and more fleshed out.

Re-sculpting many of her best loved songs, the complexity of her musicality emerges from the intensity of the originals-as dynamics are truly sculpted and the songs take on new and often more ominous colors.

It’s the originals that shine the most, a testament to the talent of a songwriter that has written a standard or two of his own.

This album is pure, 10-bandaided-finger combustibility--the notes need room to breathe, like a freshly uncorked keg of moonshine, each pluck of each string hitching a ride on the cool, Allegheny mountain breeze.

Althaea sets the tone for ambitious future work by Trailer Trash Tracys and provides a perfect soundtrack for in-between days like these, when music maintains a bridge to the lushness of summer as the melancholy of colder months begins to approach.

It regularly pushes an interesting idea into your mind, but reliably recedes shortly thereafter.

While this might indeed be a coming-of-age record, it's very clear that this is an acknowledging age and existence experience.

Still, if Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! is a ramble, it’s an infectious ramble, too much fun not to rock out to; you’ll pick out bits and pieces of The Mr. T Experience, Descendents and Ted Leo in the record’s texture, but then again, you may be too busy bobbing your head along to care about such paltry things as influence.

Despite the album’s lack of big splashes, it still lands like a trip to Florida in February. And at only eight-songs-long, it’s endlessly digestible. Snow, sleet and seasonal affective disorder may rage on, but Supervision is pure warmth.

The Alien Coast’s varied array of influences sound wholly unfamiliar coming from St. Paul & The Broken Bones, but they work. Whether they’re welcome is another question. No one wants to think about annihilation when they’re engaging with art to find respite from annihilation, but The Alien Coast’s fluctuations in tone are so rewarding to confront that they make the record’s message that much easier to absorb.

There are some lovely songs on Para Mi, though; you might just have to slog through some unfortunate synths and occasionally cringe-inducing lyrics to get there.

The way that Soft Metals experiment with repetition without needing much time to do so is unusual and impressive, with Lenses ending up so much stronger for allowing the ideas behind the music to drift into view of the audience.

Like the rebels she so often lionizes, Arulpragasam is conducting hit-and-run warfare on modern pop, snatching a hook here, a melody there, and then falling back to reshape these pilfered rhythms into unfettered anti-establishment anthems.

With each turn back and forth, it’s a better, more confident band delivering the next phase. So even as All Across This Land is a triumph of Blitzen Trapper’s classic rock sensibilities, perhaps there’s an oddball masterpiece waiting in the wings.

As both a concept and an insular set of songs, it works. But for an act that’s always found its footing in the future, it’s puzzling that the duo find their present rooted so firmly in the past.

Just like real fireworks, there's a "gather 'round" quality to this spectacle, but don't forget some earplugs.

While the band remains true to its less-is-more instincts, Mythomania’s songs stand as fully developed structures that take advantage of their limited instrumentation.

On Ellipse she presents mini-symphonies of herself, with vocoders and Auto-Tuned versions of her helium-filled voice floating in and out of songs that glide--the amazing 'Canvas,' the magic patchwork quilt of 'Earth'--more than they drive.

With such fraught subject matter, the only dissonance seems to be from the lushness of the mostly acoustic arrangements and the actual life contained in the lyrics.

Ultimately, Naomi doesn’t stray too far from The Cave Singers’ previous output, but she, like any good muse, will captivate, invigorate and satiate.

Ramona can be overwhelming when taken in as a whole, and that’s something that might ultimately keep many at arm’s length from the album. But, if you let Grace Cummings in, Ramona might just surprise you yet.

She's still got class and sass to spare, but among so many collaborators, Sinatra sounds too malleable and impersonal. [#13, p.111]

Let’s Face the Music features some of his strongest and most engaged performances in a decade.

The band simply reiterates earlier ideas less interestingly. [Apr 2007, p.54]

Diamond Rugs emerge from their first full-length effort as a cohesive, spirited country-punk collective that brings out the best in each member.

This ought to be the album that launches Spectrals out of the expanses of the insider underground. And if it doesn’t, it’s still one of the best records of 2013.

Despite occasional attempts at restraint and the fact it’s only seven songs long, A Productive Cough provides Titus Andronicus with another bold manifesto. They might have varied the volume, but they’re still railing with their customary resolve.

Work sometimes lacks variety, but the mostly unrelenting, feel-good rhythms and sweet vocals are sure to get your head bobbing.

Emanuel Lundgren has a rare knack for catchy melodies and bouncy rhythms that grab the ear, and also for arrangements that enlarge these simple elements into the enveloping emotional weather accompanying these tug-of-wars between adolescence and adulthood, escapism and reality.

The album is uneven by previous PB&J standards, but the band earns high marks for proving their hooks can translate into any stylistic language.

The cadences, demeanors and vocal tones certainly add an interesting wrinkle to Eno's dynamic, but a few exceptions aside, I'm generally too enraptured in his rich compositions to decipher the staggered wordplay.

Given Ben Keith's death last year, it's the perfect merge: Young's rough-hewn organics and the raucous Crazy Horse.

It’s an album custom-made for deep headphone listening, and Tuttle and his cohorts pack the stereo field with incident and instrument.

Ludacris’ force-of-nature vigor attempts the Herculean task of yoking the mess together but can’t quite tame a rambling array of singles.

The album’s crisp production captures every nuance of Hendrix’ technical wizardry—drums snap and guitars burble in simpatico, offering a hazy and heavy backdrop to road-trip yarns (“Stone Free”), flirtations with bluegrass (“Crying Blue”) and show-stopping covers (“Sunshine of Your Love” and “Bleeding Heart”).

Her command of the guitar creates a unique listening experience that explores every raw emotion.

The Desert of Shallow Effects is Kurosky’s first solo effort since dissolving Beulah five years ago, and, happily, his singular gift for melody-rich pop hasn’t deserted him.

In lesser hands, what makes Holland such a distinctive vocalist might also limit her range, yet she inhabits these songs confidently and dexterously.

Odludek does its job well enough as it pulses forward, though it strangely doesn’t stick as deeply as you might expect.

Hansard stayed close to his previous musical muses and stylistic choices, leaving his debut solo effort feeling like a continuation of prior efforts, rather than a foray into new material.

The lion's share of Incredibad is without a doubt one of the funniest albums, music or otherwise, in years.

Recorded in July of last year, Live in Liverpool is an unpolished document of The Gossip’s raw power.

Little Boots’ problem may be that there’s little left to add to her genre: The synth-pop revival has nearly exhausted itself, and Hands ends up sounding like a B-sides collection cherry-picked from the catalogs of Kylie Minogue and Girls Aloud.

Conrad Keely’s vocals remain scabby and untreated and there’s still a bit much sonic compression, but the relative rawness adds a subtle flair to this record.

Maserati have made a space rock record that’s both challenging and accessible, and their sound is completely dialed in.

Yusuf’s vocals are a bit more gruff than in days gone by, but his whimsical tone maintains the fanciful and philosophical lilt once so essential to that early, engaging style.

Beyond The End won’t change that perception, not even remotely, but it does serve as an ideal example of Harcourt’s fearless embrace of whatever creative concepts inevitably come his way.

Rebel Heart is not a perfect record--it meanders at lengthy 19 tracks--but it does boast some of the most introspective and lyrics Madonna has ever penned.

Subtitulo seems slight at first listen, but the songs eventually marry, suggesting the progression from a dead end to a new start. [Apr/May 2006, p.103]

Under Sitek’s guidance, Miranda has created an enchanting, promising debut that is ultimately all her own.

Alongside its distracting flaws, True Sadness contains some truly beautiful music--and a good measure of the joyous energy that The Avett Brothers employ to transcendent effect live--but there’s no guiding principle here, resulting in a dizzy mess of an album that doesn’t live up to the band’s talents.

For the first time, the duo forgoes Ant's sampled beats in favor of live instrumentals to back Slug's rhymes, which results in a sound that's far more textured and intricate than their previous five efforts.

For a band that’s essentially a nostalgia act, Cool Planet proves yet again that Guided by Voices can still matter today.

With the majority of the songs maintaining a steady stride, Farrar shares his conviction with authority and insistence. Those are the qualities that allow Union to remain true to its common core.

Here the iconic Blind Boys of Alabama sound more joyful, jubilant and ready than ever, their faith a source of palpable euphoria, whether laced with tuba, tambourine or resonator guitar.

His lyrics are far more discursive and poetic, and grapple more strongly with existential issues. Musically, it can make for inspired moments like the wowing extended coda of “Blackt Out” or the Grateful Dead-like “Key-Hole.” Just as quickly, though, things can go sour.

The result is their most mature and polished LP to date.

Comedown Machine [is] reliably solid, mostly enjoyable, slightly disappointing for reasons that are difficult to articulate.

Perfect for a top-down ride to the beach. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.115]