Vince’s knack for combining brevity and sly wordplay, together with Kenny Beats’ restrained production, make the album particularly lucid from start to finish.

Todd Snider's compressed story-songs are so vivid and knowing that they seem completely plausible, even the one on his new album voiced by a piece of discarded junk mail that dreams of being a tree again.

Ditching the occasionally somber tone of some of her later records, she seems to have rediscovered the glories of a classic Sheryl Crow record. Working with producer Mike Elizondo as well as longtime collaborators like Bill Bottrell and Jeff Trott, she’s tapped back into what lured us into her music three decades ago: shamelessly big-hooky records that sound terrific blasting from a car stereo and remind you that only the likes of Tom Petty could match her in that regard.

A Mark is the first time he's let the musical intensity match the lyrics.

The Mars Volta's second album is an exhilarating transgression: concussive, nonlinear rhythms; mad-dog guitar algebra; bloody-nightmare suites sung in bilingual free verse. In short, the beastly spawn of Radiohead's OK Computer and Rush's 2112.

The album is packed with hilariously nasty kiss-offs like “Piece of Shit” and “Ur Mum” — it’s got hooks for days, cheek for weeks.

This isn't just B.B. King's best album in years, it's one of the strongest studio sets of his career, standing alongside classics such as "Singin' the Blues" and "Lucille."

Their third set hits a sweet spot between the futuristic soul of their debut and the synth pop of 2009's Machine Dreams.

[This collection is] loving genuflection; it's also proof that Johnson, 21st-century country's outlaw ne plus ultra, is also one of its most sensitive balladeers – beneath the scary beard, he's an old softie.

Map of the Soul: 7 is their most smashing album yet, showing off their mastery of different pop styles from rap bangers to slow-dance ballads to post-Swedish electro-disco to prog-style philosophizing.

Along with the recent string of Rage-reunion gigs, this set shows the rapper-activist stepping back into the arena, and dude's on fire.

The record is most striking for its gentleness.

The album is an immediate gem in their still-expanding catalog; it’s a resonant reflection on pain, depression, love and home that forsakes some of their big, drum-heavy pop leanings for a smoother, more inward experience.

Bejar stacks rainy-New York sax magic, sad-astronaut strings and hippie jazzbo grooving to make songs that are as wryly hilarious as they are weirdly affecting.

As with all great dance music, this set is more about the journey than the destination.

As on Weld, Way Down in the Rust Bucket showcases a reconvened band that sounds newly motivated after increasingly sluggish and creaky shows in the Eighties. They’re not yet the smooth-galloping machine they would become on the full-blown tour, though. What we’re hearing is the musicians feeling their way.

His fifth album leans toward slow, thoughtful stuff, like 'Home Sweet Home,' in which Shelton flees the Nashville circus for the comforts of a breadbasket backwater. But he's at his best in funny songs like 'Green.'

Co-writer John Legend and guests like Rick Ross and Janelle Monáe help Estelle construct a multifaceted album.

Moore's voice isn't huge, but she uses it well, morphing o's into "oh-whoa-ohs" like a siren in a frilly Fifties swimsuit, while Riley's guitar lines sparkle like sun-kissed breakers.

Mellencamp, as usual, writes strikingly about the heart ("Deep Blue Heart") and the heartland ("Crazy Island"), the twin concerns on an album that manages to be at once old-fashioned and very contemporary.

On is that increasingly rare rock & roll specimen -- a magnificently hedonistic party album for extremely consenting adults.

With co-producer Rob Schnapf at the helm, Dr. Dog don't sound like mere imitators--they sound like an unusually hook-savvy indie band whose taut, touching songs about friendship ("Jackie Wants a Black Eye") and life on the road ("Station") begin as straight pop rock and take thrilling turns into psychedelia.

Air return to what they do best: elegantly moody soundtrack music for imaginary films.

The relentlessly likable and danceable Sound Loaded plunges listeners once again into Ricky's hothouse world, with its lush evocations of exotic climes ("St. Tropez"), Spanglish salsa-club blowouts (the irresistible "Amor") and voodoo hussies (oh, pick one -- "Jezebel"). The singing sounds a little tired, but the monstrously effective production is firmly in place, with arena-size swells swamping the ballads ("Come to Me" eventually drowns) and Latinate curlicues (like the arabesque-ing guitar that redeems "Nobody Wants to Be Lonely") peeping from the corners.

[Nas] shreds any doubts about his MC prowess.

Sounds more like the dusky thrum of Disintegration-era Cure than it does any of the members' previous bands.

Joanne is Lady Gaga's best album in five years, since the disco-stick hair-metal manifesto that was Born This Way.

It's the master's steady, rollicking piano that elevates the music -- and keeps the ever-elusive Costello honest.

A suite of mostly instrumental moods and fragments, The Endless River rolls like a requiem through familiar echoes.

The Edge has cited this New York loops-and-dance trio as a recent inspiration.

Isbell kicks up dust by looking backwards, and Reunions is at its best when he’s doing just that.

Folk singer Mark Kozelek's remarkable sixth album as Sun Kil Moon feels less like a collection of songs than a series of eulogies delivered in real time.

He sounds more earnest than ever on Born Free, and there's a very adult kind of wistfulness to songs like "When It Rains" and "Times Like These." Born Free shows that you just might be able to take the Kid out of the Rock.

The Harlem MC remains one of hip-hop's most compelling eccentrics, enlivening clichéd gangsta subject matter and pro forma beats with his deceptively virtuosic flow, and with taunts that work by wiggy word association.

When it comes together--as on the bumping ode to Jamaica "Green & Gold," and the spare "Wonderful"--this album demands, and rewards, all the attention you can give it.

A tidy EP under 32 minutes, but it still manages to cover plenty of ground.

He’s never inhabited traditional folk and blues-imbued settings as personally as on his 22nd album.

While this album may lack his debut's soul-jazz seamlessness, it compensates with bipolar freakiness.

There are fewer risks taken here than on previous albums (though the New Wave chase "Happy Idiot" and the Ramones-y "Lazerray" are worthy exceptions). TVOTR's boldest move this time around is starting over.

Drake is in total command of a style that would have been hard to imagine dominating hip-hop a few years ago: He's subtle and rueful rather than loud and lively; emotionally transparent rather than thuggy.

The album shrewdly positions her in hip-hop-flavored R&B, which is interesting because it's one style she never touched on the show.

Frontman Ben Bridwell's vocals are perfectly suited to the change-up, as are most of the songs here. Band of Horses' 2006 breakout single, "The Funeral," fares the poorest.

This 25th-anniversary reissue features an accelerated and raging '89 live rendering of the album that adds a few Hüsker classics--acoustic and disarmingly tender.

Dark Matter greets #MAGA America with his signature brutal comic irony and heartbreaking grandeur.

Exciter glimmers like a gentle ambient doodle with vocals: The beats are mostly minimal, closer to early Kraftwerk than to current electronica. But because Gore's songwriting is so focused and Gahan's vocal presence is so commanding, the softest songs leap to the foreground like a whisper from a lover.

If you're the sort who would feel fuddy-duddy driving a perfect, new VW Beetle, avoid Tour de France. If you're one who would proudly point out the offbeat grace and unlikely persistence of a vivid personality in a machine, Kraftwerk endure.

A thrilling hard-rock epic.

The Red Light District is his most inventive album yet.

After a necessary break, Swearin’ has returned as a much different band: newly reflective, open-hearted, self-aware, and more concerned than ever with songcraft. As a result, Fall Into the Sun feels less like a reunion than a rebirth.

The result is the sound of a veteran talent stepping out and deservedly getting his.

It's shtick, sure, but one only a dour vegan would gripe about.

Bleached's songs get that job done pretty well too.

The second disc from this Chicago trio is what David Bowie might call a total blam-blam--an overpowering blast of glam-rocking gorgeousness.

The record flows, hitting knee-skinning highs like “Stuck in Your Head” (“I just wanted to pick up the tempo!” Bognanno sing-songs as the band counts off), barn-burners like “You” (about, it seems, an absent parent) and the hauntingly discordant “Hours and Hours.” Whatever the subject matter, whatever the tempo, each track finds Bognanno full-throated, wild and free.

Nobody really knows if Bowie is hanging up the spacesuit for good, since the man has been periodically announcing his retirement since 1973. But if so, this is one hell of an exit.

Here, he mostly dials back the volume to plumb heavy emotions.

When Fivivo brags, “This is the town of the big drip, smooth talk, Milly Rock, Shmoney Dance, Woo Walk,” the vibes feel electric. B.I.B.L.E., for the most part, proves that he’s about keeping that same energy.

The sound may be retro, but pure blues rock of this caliber is really timeless. [21 Sep 2006, p.84]

On the third Wavves full-length, a one-man bedroom experiment blossoms into a real band, with Jay Reatard's feisty backing duo and Modest Mouse's producer beefing up low-fi strumming, smiling melodies and zonked studio whimsy.

Even when he's straining to purge any trace of emotion, the exuberant yearning of the music means it sneaks in anyway.

Next Thing shows that as the group continues to grow up, Kline's clear-eyed observation and youthful disaffection only feel more vital.

His latest is two discs and all over the highway, from the solid rock of "Missin' Cleveland" to the banjo-glam ballad 'Tango With Your Mind' to the bossa-nova glide of 'Killing Me Sweetly.'

BTS's gentle guitar jams home in on the tender core of the Texas songwriter's starnge genius. [Jun 2020, p.71]

While nothing here comes close to the sonic risks Cudi felt free to take earlier in his career, he makes up for that shortcoming by creating one of his easiest listens to date.

Aside from a few twangy licks, Things Change is an unabashed rock & roll record--a snapshot of a band and its reinvigorated leader.

Wiki's flow is like a paint gun blasting out beautiful graffiti; Hak's warm hooks balance it all out.

Backed by bassist Jason Narducy and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, Mould rips through 12 bristling guitar-pop tracks that, at their propulsive and tuneful best (the Sugar-y "I Don't Know You Anymore," the Hüskers-worthy "Kid With Crooked Face"), recall the classic eras of his much-loved former bands.

The songs feel familiar, as if they’ve even assembled from parts of previous hits. ... All that said, there’s still an inordinate deal of pleasure to be taken in music that wants to sweep you up and revel in sonic bliss, whether you’ve emerged from a still-lingering pandemic or not.

Gibson shows he's toying with and expanding his formula.

It's ambitious, beguiling stuff.

The result is an album that captures the range of her styles, from the rhythmically charged pop of her Eurythmics days to the haunted, longing ballads of her solo career. If the two approaches don't always cohere, each is satisfying in its own right.

"Revolution Rock & Roll" is a slamming gospel-tinged get-woke anthem, while the strikingly spare piano ballad "Montreal" evokes Big Star's "Thirteen" and Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," and turns on the lines "I gave conjunctivitis to a girl in a bar/I gave conjunctivitis like a star."

No Shame might sound placid on its surface, but a closer listen reveals that as her sonics have become more gentle, Allen's truth bombs have become even more explosive.

Produced by T Bone Burnett, this may be the shaggy outlaw's most polished set.

Under the lipstick and howling-Stones guitars, the Dolls always aspired to the rough-granite poise and battle lessons of great blues and soul.

It's a grand meeting between a star and her fans.

Throughout the album, Legrand's lyrics conjure vivid experience.

They simply sound like a better, defter, maybe even snottier version of their younger selves on their 10th album.

The result is both illuminating and one-dimensional in equal measure. ... Despite a handful of missed landings, Tyron still admirably inspires the kind of mosh-pit energy that feels nearly romantic in an era of closed venues and social distancing.

Tenderness is a grand gesture that works. Woke looks good on Duff.

Her voice is the headliner: Miked so close you can smell the cigarettes on her breath, it's sultry, wise, rueful and unapologetic, connecting a 1960s singer-songwriter tradition to the ache of the now.

The five-piece British band has mastered the art of the recording studio, and this self-produced effort boasts the breathless enthusiasm of someone who's finally learned a difficult craft.

The arrangements typically blend lush waves of acoustic guitar with moody, cascading crescendos; it's strum-and-Drang best suited to rainy Sundays.

Even when Band of Horses go for broke, the South Carolina-bred Bridwell exudes the laidback gravity of a down-to earth Southerner.

It's holy music, even if wholly weird.

A predictably righteous volley of rhyme grenades on race and pop-culture politics, tinged with grumpy nostalgia, it's startlingly potent.

His ninth album, Years of Refusal, stares down existential dread with muscular glam-rock riffs, cheesy synths, heroic mariachi flourishes and a whole lot of punch lines.

Judging from the lyrics to “Welcome 2 America,” Prince wasn’t interested in the pop life anymore anyway. What he did care about will remain a mystery, but puzzle pieces like Welcome 2 America will always be welcome.

Seven years later, they've released a 94-minute follow-up that explores even wilder styles of mordantly nutso android bleat.

Deeply unsettling, heart-quickeningly intense and often gorgeous.

Phair is a fine lyricist, and although she's lost some musical identity, she's gained potential Top Forty access.

In contrast to the relatively concise muscle car that was Powertrip, Magnet's 1998 commercial breakthrough, God Says No luxuriates in a decadent psych-rock whirlpool, improbably bridging the chasm between the Music Machine and Nine Inch Nails.

On their second English-language album, The Dreaming, K-pop group Monsta X pays homage to boy-band culture, with Nineties-style harmonies, slick choruses, and head-bopping beats that come together for an infectious and joyous 27 minutes.

Digs into childhood trauma with all the acoustic verve and wit you expect from this guy.

It all adds up to something so captivating that vocal guests like Erykah Badu ("See Thru to U") can get a little lost.

District Line is a ­focused, gripping zigzag between fury and woe, scorched rock and folk-pop distress, much like the Hüskers' best records--now with a longer view.

Edwards augments the coffeehouse sparseness of her writerly earlier albums with shimmery surfaces, whoosh-y hovering-spaceship bleeps and gently padding beats, which lend her songs an exquisite, widescreen beauty.

Not everything on Groove Denied works, but it’s gratifying to see a great songwriter still busy being born.