If all seven of their previous studio works represent a layer in Wynona's castor Taco-Bell repast, then it's appropriate to say that Green Naugahyde takes a big bite of the whole thing.

Soccer Mommy mirrors the melancholic joy of Death Cab For Cutie with the emotive songwriting of Now, Now, reworking some older demos into mournful indie-pop that are introspective, yet intensely relatable.

In short, it's a modern blues record that even non-blues fans can love and that blues fans can outright cherish.

On Close to the Glass, the results are more fractured and schizophrenic than ever.

Destroyer starts thumping with the first track and never stops; the tone might change, but the listener’s desire to stomp the accelerator on the open road won’t.

One can be a grower: The sleepy and skippable "Worship" (featuring an obtrusive duet vocal from Jose Gonzalez) finds Brun approaching a more accessible vocal territory-one annoyingly reminiscent of Feist. But it's a mostly stellar experience.

Burnett's production is well-intentioned, but the vibe is a little too restrained, the burn a little too controlled.

Ultimately, B4.DA.$$ is a lackluster album with little appeal beyond its dry technical flourish and fleeting moments of vulnerability.

It’s great headphone music.

Tatum doesn't offer anything game-changing, but he does serve up a platter of breathless, sometimes mindless synth-pop fun.

What an enormous room’s production reaches the same high watermark as prior efforts like Three Futures and Silver Tongue, but struggles to land with the same impact.

At least the tension between his addiction to depression and his longing to escape it has, on this record, produced a music that’s not defeated, but appropriately tense.

Though it has its moments, Fear of the Dawn isn’t quite wild enough.

Even songs which seem at first like throwaways take turns which end up redeeming their back-to-basics structure.

A career milestone and one of the year's strongest rock albums. [Sep 2006, p.73]

His grittiest, least-ethereal long-player to date. [Feb 2007, p.58]

On his latest, El Turista, Rouse takes things a step further, diving headfirst into jazzy, lushly orchestrated, early-’60s-indebted Spanish-language tunes that play like a cross between Astrud Gilberto’s bossa-nova classics and Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The music is possibly the duo's best, though it's a little uniform compared to their competing peak The Con, which had shrewder tunelets and weirder sonics.

Despite its many nostalgic elements, Floating Features represents a new start in a new city, and though it often looks inward, it’s grounded in the present and glances towards the future.

On Songs for You, Tinashe shows off how adept she is at flitting between genres, hopping on moody, woozy R&B, sun-dappled G-funk, ’80s pop, acoustic devotionals, club-worthy drum ’n’ bass and skittering trap, sometimes in the span of a single song without so much as straining her airy, but substantial soprano. There are a few songs left over from a scrapped album with RCA, but here, they feel part and parcel of the vision Tinashe has for herself.

If Silver Landings isn’t a world-beating collection of songs, it’s a promising return for an artist who is rediscovering her voice, and what she can do with it.

Far Enough would have likely benefited from shifting toward shorter, more undeniably riotous songs like these and away from the several more complex, seven-minute-or-so songs present, but when you’re fighting the good fight, is there really time to fret about the little things?

What You Gonna Do When The Grid Goes Down? is mostly Public Enemy doing what they’ve always done—offering insight about what’s happening in the world around us and prodding folks to wake up and do the right thing. It’s a space they’ve held for over three decades, and one where they’re always welcome.

People Who Aren’t There Anymore is an extensive portrait of an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. But even then, Future Islands are still finding new ways to polish a diamond on this album.

While One Day is a passable throwback rock recrod, it doesn't rise to the level of a true celebration of the Doll's legacy. [Sep 2006, p.80]

It’s far from terrible, but it’s equidistant from that and “worth a dozen more spins.”

The album’s sequencing is impeccable, as the band segues into airy atmospherics for 'Night of Joy' and 'We’re Gonna Rise,' the album’s most tender, melancholy and meditative tracks.

These are solidly constructed pop jams, sometimes introspective but never insular, occasionally caustic in a way that’s more resigned than snotty, and always smart but with an appreciation for the simple pleasures of a good rock song.