There are bits of jazz and dub, but mostly these guys want to rock. When they do it their way, they sound like nothing else.

The result is Carey's most sonically and tonally coherent release, a mix of love ballads ('Inseparable') and sassy breakup anthems ('Standing O') that might have been her best album had it been several songs shorter.

His ace in the hole is his signature cozy sound -- dusty soul samples, gospel hymns, drums that pop as if hit for the very first time.

Picaresque is a triumph of theatrical imagination: the culmination of the Decemberists' steady march to greatness in four years of enriched storytelling and folk-rock invention.

All of this proves that Avicii's new sound is much more than a page from Moby's Play book.

While 'All You Really Have to Do' and 'Shake Shake Shake' support that rep, their debut full-length shows a more versatile outfit.

Not everything works: "Buried Alive" is basically a goth-y version of R.E.M.'s "Radio Song." But the tragic magic blazes on "Despair," a funereal procession that recalls Joy Division's "Atmosphere" but offers communion beyond the existential wail.

If her writing is still a work in progress, it's progress that's worth watching.

The real action on Warpaint's full-length debut happens in the tension between the music's ethereal boil and singer-guitarist Emily Kokal's lyrical evocations of all-too-human anxiousness.

Even when the lowend gets a workout, as on "Asda Car Park" and "Opium," the tone is party-friendly rather than glowering--good news for pop fans, less so for Korn devotees.

With music this smart and inviting, the implied diss of mainstream mediocrity doesn't feel like sour grapes; it feels like a blueprint forward.

Smart, street-wise and fun all at once.

Erasure do the Ronettes' "Walking in the Rain" almost as well as Cheryl Ladd, they do Buddy Holly's "Everyday" better than James Taylor, they prove that one man and one man only was meant to sing "Can't Help Falling in Love," and they tart up Peter Gabriel something fierce.

Newman pens melodies that seem to have sprung from the collective unconscious and then encases them in bright, lush power-pop arrangements.

Everything about this finely wrought yet diabolically chaotic album feeds a theme: The more we try to manicure reality, in life and online, the messier it gets.

This album doesn't sound that distant from the grass-roots rock of Mellencamp albums such as Scarecrow and The Lonesome Jubilee.

Made with Arctic Monkeys producer Mike Crossey, Get Hurt is a fresh, anthemic striving--further from E Street, driven by epic metal guitars.

Strange Mercy is visceral, vivid stuff: When Clark announces, amid a Roxy Music-style glam racket, that she's seen the northern lights ("Northern Lights"), you'll swear you can see them too.

The I-need-love pop tunes are not getting any better, even with Timbaland and Justin Timberlake in the stripper ditty 'AYO Technology.' 'Follow My Lead” is an inexplicable Robin Thicke duet and 'Amusement Park' is even sillier. Much better is 'All of Me,' with Mary J. Blige. Wailing, "I got a feeling like I'm fiending on crack," Blige steals the show without even trying.

Growing Pains is an edgier record than "The Breakthrough," but Blige has definitely lost or just outgrown the brassy urgency of her twenties.

As a concept album on man's most abstract concept, Because the Internet is more than worth the download.

Their second album is a multi-faceted R&B treat, full of glistening vocal chemistry, sharp writing, and a self-determination you want to get up and cheer for.

The Mountain Goats' latest shows Darnielle's folk rock growing more diverse, swelled with strings and choral harmonizing.

If there's one downside to Don't Be Afraid of Love it's that the record is a bit schizophrenic, as the jump from style to style is bumpy at times.

They show off their abilities throughout Invincible Shield, and occasionally they hit on new and surprising ideas with their songwriting. Although some Shield tracks feel like Priest-by-numbers, the songs that really hit feel like lightning striking.

Ghostface Killah is weirder, Raekwon is gruffer, Method Man is zanier, and here the three kings of Staten Island hip-hop return to their classic-Wu roots like nothing's changed since 1995 but the sports references.

Sharp, shapely roots-rock songs, with flashes of surf rock and Brill Building pop surfacing amid the usual twang.

If the songwriting doesn't quite measure up to U.K. art-pop divas like Kate Bush, the hooks always go to town, and her voice – Dolly Parton-dazzling in the upper register – mates gorgeously with electronics.

He submits a dozen songs to crystalline modern engineering and arrangements that place selective bits of mandolin, flute, harp and synthesizer in guitar-and-rhythm grooves, moving forward without losing his identity.

[A] dark, magnetic opus. [24 Aug 2006, p.90]

Despite some uneven striving-for-maturity moments... Sov's at her best when she doesn't take herself too seriously.

Byrne delivers some impressively wicked guitar outbursts, too. But the frantic segments generally recede too soon, supplanted by more less-anxious downtempo bits.

Recorded in the couple's home studio, this set of duets by Lennon and his model girlfriend, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, recalls other forebears too, such as the damaged beauty of Elliott Smith. But the songs have a sunny, psychedelic side.

Derek Trucks could very well be the best guitarist of his generation, and his sixth studio disc is his band's most accessible blues-rock set to date.

Albarn isn't trying to say much, but The Fall is pretty consistent, from the country-radio sampling dub of "The Parish of Space Dust" to the Rust Belt planet-rock of "Detroit."

Part biography, part self-analysis, part feminine primal scream, Myself is a tour through familiar Gray territory, spiked with humor and her take-no-bullshit attitude.

At first, she sounds almost tepid in comparison to her older work, but this is music that grows in depth and feeling with each listen.

The casually odd music and Byrne's subtle evocations of loneliness work together to suggest that it's great to be your own favorite weirdo, but not paying attention to the rest of the world around you, well, that's really strange.

If there’s one downside to the album, it’s that it’s too short. At just eight tracks, the high has barely kicked in before the party is over, and The Album leaves you wanting more: more grit, more experimentation, and yes, more than eight songs.

At seventeen tracks, Pick a Bigger Weapon isn't as focused or as thoroughly block-rocking as the Coup's 2001 classic, Party Music. But it's the rare record that makes revolution sound like hot fun on a Saturday night.

I Never Liked You is no DS2, but it has a compositional sweep often absent from his work. Most importantly, it’s an album with layers that’s more engaging than recent fare such as 2019’s appealing yet boilerplate Future Hndrxx Presents: The Wizrd and Save Me EP; and 2020’s one-two punch of desultory hive-bait, High Off Life and Pluto x Baby Pluto, the latter with Lil Uzi Vert.

Now they've pummeled out another disc that fits right into their discography, even without rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, who has bowed out due to a debilitating illness.

Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon, Pop’s 19-track posthumous debut album, marks a dramatic expansion—and dilution—of his signature sound. 808 Melo, who produced about two-thirds of Pop’s music to date, is less of a defining presence here.

She covers her conceptual bets by rolling out sturdy club-thumpers, and this eight-song EP (included in the reissue and sold separately) is largely on point.

Amnesiac is full of computerized clicks and hums - the kinds of tracks made by geeks alone with their gizmos - and of instruments and voices so heavily filtered they sound alienated even from themselves.

Despite some spectacular moments, Queen has a flabby, meandering mid-section.

Her latest, Like the River Loves the Sea, feels simultaneously grounded and even more expansive as it tracks its way through the changing seasons of a relationship.

The trio's first official (i.e., for profit) LP has one-liners over beats from Diplo and El-P. Their political humor is, as they say, "dark like the rainbow in a Ronnie James Dio joint." But they also love dumb wordplay ("Don King playing Donkey Kong"), video games and girls whose hair smells like Newports.

She’s been honest about how much she adores the boldness of pop, and she’s been so good at crafting sticky, soaring blockbusters anyway. Here, she’s simply storming the gates head on.

Cox values songwriting ahead of texture these days, and the effort is paying off.

Volta is arguably Bjork's loosest and most ruminative record, and though it touches on everything she's ever done, it's not as gripping or coherent as her best stuff.

The reboot works.

It's a return to form the band never really lost, and if the quiet bits drag, the wit's sharper than ever.

The sound under him is a wild roadhouse blues with the signature groove of old bandmates Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.

Duran's Mark Ronson-produced 13th disc is a return to roots for a band that's all implants - which is part of the album's charm.

One of the year's best rock records.

It could be a messy grab bag, but Record Collection hangs together as an album. Ronson is the rare DJ-producer who is as fluent with melodies as he is with beats.

Spacey songs that never lack for sass, bite, or beauty. [Apr 2020, p.87]

System of a Down's sophomore album thrives on this sort of urgency, the adrenal rush that insists there's no time for ambiguity.

The big improvement is in the songwriting: This time around, Cee-Lo works a memorable tune into almost every one of these eighteen overstuffed tracks.

She's an ideal ambassador from her homeland's ever-expanding groove universe, with a diva-next-door voice that brings every body-moving subgenre her producers serve up - from bleeding-edge dubstep and so-called U.K. funky to good old-fashioned house and jungle - into the pop realm.

These prose-stuffed metasongs require concentrated listening. But the rewards are rich, the experience unique.

Well-crafted, unfailingly likable, the music hints at his activist-sage roots.

Glasvegas create wall-of-distortion melodrama that draws on the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sixties girl groups and the Velvet Underground's rain-dance pulse. It makes for a compelling blend of grays--lit by singer James Allan's high, bright hurrahs.

Thr33 Ringz shows what sets T-Pain apart. He's an inventive producer, enveloping radio-friendly hooks in Auto-Tune wackiness.

If Clear Channel didn't have the airwaves on lockdown, This Island would turn the thirteen-year-old girls of this nation into singing, stomping, rioting mobs demanding r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

One True Vine shows there isn't much the ex-Staple Singer can't make gorgeous and lived-in.

The strength of the album... involves how, with tons of melody and tone and a little cheese, Seger fearlessly remains Seger. [21 Sep 2006, p.84]

Chuck has nothing to prove and plenty to say. Flavor Flav is the funniest rapper ever to bamboozle VH1. And their young guitar-bass-drums 'baNNed' slams their conscious points down.

Get Guilty isn't quite as consistent as a typical Pornographers record, but the arrangements are lusher. And like all Newman records, it shows off his smarts and maintains a strong hook quotient.

Every song on Tomorrow's Daughter has a memorable vocal line, and Sweet's voice hasn't changed all too much over the years--it's still capable of sounding quixotically morose and satisfied at the same time, like he's enjoying all of life's letdowns.

As a singer, Jonas never exactly overwhelms a listener with charisma or technique, but he's personable and versatile, equally at home confessing a fear of intimacy over simulated steel drums and a tick-tock rhythm on the Tove Lo duet "Close" as he is teaming with Ty Dolla $ign to celebrate the single life on "Bacon."

The group's first full-length album flies by in a boisterous, intoxicating rush, 24 minutes of saxophone-laced noise and radical slogans.

[Their] debut often recalls New York's Eighties downtown glory days, when punk, funk and disco commingled on labels like 99 and ZE.

Their third LP isn't as sublimely silly, or as consistent [as its last], but it rocks the same mix of guest stars and totally unsophisticated sex jokes.

It's the sound of a DJ just getting started after everyone's gone home.

All these rock laughs would be pure parody if the Blues Explosion's riffs weren't so dementedly chicken-fried and funky.

At its best, Mosaics has all the magic of a bedroom-studio Smile.

What could be a late-game throwaway instead has near-definitive versions of "Wichita Lineman," "Galve­ston" and "Gentle on My Mind," conjuring the originals with a patina of age and minus the arrangement lard.

If you're looking for a guided tour of the eternal-turning-23 blues, you can't do better than the second Swearin' album.

The catalog gets cherry-picked here for a killer party mix that combines Fela Kuti's extended-groove trance states and soulman call-and-response vocals with old-school drum machines and synths.

Daring it's not, but it pays homage to a hero without getting indulgent or falling into rote imitation.

Jumping from Bowie glam to disco punk, the band tosses in synths, arch backing coos and riffing saxes for songs that are both expansive and strange.

It's meta Loretta Lynn, played straight; when she wails on the faintly arch title track, the pain sounds like no joke.

There's plenty of pretense in the long-winded tone poems... But they also know how to deliver a concise pop song.

The band's second disc improves on the "chillwave" (read: low-fi synth pop) of its 2009 debut, dunking dreamy early-MTV haircutband balladry in layers of psychedelic schmutz, almost hiding excellent songs in the murk.

Toxic and delicious, Supernature will make you do bad things -- and like it.

It's his simplest music in a while, but it's effective.

Like almost everything on Neon Bible... "No Cars Go" is excess with a point: We are drowning in the unspeakable and running out of air and fight. If only everything else on Neon Bible made that point with the same dynamic overkill.

There's no adolescent angst on her fourth disc, a gorgeous celebration of adult love.

Fever Breaks is a moving exercise in reshuffling and restating what a long-time talent does best in a just-new-enough guise.

Her fifth set, To Dust, works Russell's exquisite taste for beats and atmosphere into some of her strongest songs.

Televise is a seductive piece of work and a solid step forward for Calla's songcraft.

Korn have circled the wagons and self-produced their best album to date, refining the formula to a black-cancer marmalade of corrosive riffs, fist-flying rhythms, gothic-carnival atmospheres and toxic vocals.

Malkmus shows you don't have to move to the woods and house squirrels in your beard to prove you're a sensitive male. Alterna-dad elegance will do.

A bit heavier and not as immediate, Favourite Worst Nightmare is a slightly lesser record, though by no means a Difficult Second Album.

The album's highlight is the jazzy horn rave-up "Don't Do Me No Favours," where Hunter cackles, yelps, shouts and bellows about refusing to take handouts from a rich man. On cuts like these, Hunter proves he's more than just a retro-soul act--the guy's got fire in his gut.

Exquisitely hushed fourth album sounds like a collection of the world's most downcast sea shanties.