The result is impressively visceral darkness. [10 Feb 2005, p.81]

On Legend's fourth LP, executive producer Kanye West helps give him a plush, nuanced palette to match his signature emotional generosity and strong sensuality.

The lyrics on the eighth THS album are as vivid as ever, and the guitars ring true. [Feb 2021, p.73]

Lost was cobbled of outtakes from its previous album, 2005's lackluster Waiting for the Siren's Call. Surprisingly, it's a much better record.

On Sky Blue, Van Zandt rarely sounds as perfectly in command of his material as he would just a year or so later, on 1977’s Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas. Instead, in this private home recording session-turned-album, full of pain and beauty, he merely sounds like himself: tormented, tremendous, forever trying to break through his chains with a song.

Though he doesn't quite have the narrative zeal of Kendrick Lamar or Ice Cube, YG rides beats with a singsong flow that's instantly winning.

This instrumental quartet from Austin specialize in a highly disciplined enchantment: echo-laden orchestral-guitar rock as specific as Bach in its circling concentric melodies and as steadfast as AC/DC in its push to ecstasy.

Permission to Land is the first retro-metal album that's worth more than a momentary chuckle.

At times, you're sure they've nicked a melody from some neon-dream MTV hit you can't quite place. Then you realize they're reinventing that dream right now.

The refusal of hope or respite in these songs often makes Ruminations feel like Oberst's Blood on the Tracks.

Third is an unexpected yet totally impressive return.

A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments.

Overall, it's less about abstract guitar heroics than his usual projects. But hearing Cline get freaky with such a wide palette and such a sharp ensemble (including twin brother Alex on drums) is a new shade of thrill.

Foil Deer is an upswing from the listless cynicism that clouded their 2013 breakout, Major Arcana: This time, Dupuis and fellow guitarist Devin McKnight take charge.

Now reissued with a variety of bonus goodies, Wings Over America is a time capsule from a neglected phase of the Macca saga--an artifact for Seventies stoners who thought Wings were heavier than the Beatles.

From the opening seconds of "Swingin' With My Eyes Closed," it's clear Shania's up to her old genre-trashing tricks.

On Crimson, Alkaline Trio again manage to make bloodletting sound like hot fun on a Saturday night.

For every head-nodding beat, Game Theory has a head-turning treat. [7 Sep 2006, p.100]

Several of these [tracks] match Oberst's best work.

Here, as always, Hegarty's art gives shape to the deepest loves and darkest sufferings of the human heart.

There's a heart beating in Burial’s out-of-body sound, and Rival Dealer plays like an ashy memorial to a beat that lives on.

His high-register hiccups convince you he's having more fun than a spring-breaker half his age.

A welcome sharing of the band's playful way with Sixties pastiche ("It's Magenta, Man!") and vigorous defense of pop classicism's truths and joys.

Mala is smoother in its amalgamation, drifty melodies and his classic mumble recorded with gorgeously low-fi-sounding muffle.

The change in musical course--and the fact that Joe is singing more and screaming less these days--will probably disappoint (or even anger) a certain percentage of the band's devoted fans. But for those who can appreciate a tightly focused hard rock album infused with emotions that are often just as heavy as its riffs, Magma offers a listening experience that is as rewarding as it is therapeutic.

Just as Some Girls rejuvenated Mick and co., the Hold Steady’s latest finds the Brooklyn collective rediscovering the mix of morose jubilation and joyful myth-making they perfected a dozen years ago. Freed from the pressures of serving as Craig Finn’s primary creative outlet, the band has learned how to keep telling its hoodrat saga.

Leo's racial politics are serious and confused in that familiar white-guy-in-D.C. way, but word-heavy, wound-up gems such as "Hearts of Oak," "The Anointed One" and "The Ballad of the Sin Eater" prove he knows how to turn political conviction into punk energy.

Kalimbas and koras pulse throughout, but with surprising solo turns, a gentle middle section and a spoken vocal, this is proof that In C remains spry as ever at 50-plus.

Musically, it sticks to the band's established brand of warrior-cry punk metal.

It's the varying textures on Faith that prove Uberzone to be a true renegade of funk.

The music Montreal duo Majical Cloudz makes is cold, stark and confrontationally intimate.

Royal Headache's execution is so straightforwardly 1977 that it almost teeters on generic garage-rock pastiche. The saving grace is this album's undeniable heart and soul.

The best moments come when Post looks within for inspiration.

The only downside, if there is one, is that with so much happening at once, She Walks in Beauty is best taken in small doses to appreciate its majesty.

Entering Heaven Alive is flush with surprisingly nimble and fluid melodies that remind you of what a song craftsman he can be when he’s not overcooking his music. And some of those tracks—”If I Die Tomorrow” and “A Tree on Fire From Within”—are among the most arresting and least self-conscious songs he’s made in years.

His latest is almost a straight R&B/dance set. But romantic certainty is in short supply.

Yungblud is a whirlwind listen, fusing together building blocks of various rock subgenres—mostly Britpop’s hip-shaking carnality and emo’s on-the-brink wails—then spit-shining them a bit before adding confessional lyrics.

The lyrics are down-to-earth and positive -- almost wholesome -- but Quality Control's overall vibe is uncompromisingly intense and hard to resist.

Weirder is better with this crew; witness the 12-minute apocalyptic dub incantation "In The End Is The Beginning," which locates sublime power in its spacey pessimism.

Machine Says Yes throbs like vintage acid house, but they've given it a cosmetic makeover for the millennium.

More than any of his previous albums, Pretty Toney hones Ghost's wild style into accessible confections.

Wes Anderson's music guru Randall Poster produced this tribute with Gelya Robb, and it's as inspired as their 2011 LP Rave On Buddy Holly.

Luminaries such as Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Dolly Parton also make appearances -- but it's always clear who's sitting on the throne.

They're still great at delivery wry prettiness. [Jun 2022, p.74]

What holds these fourteen songs together is Crow's unwavering emotional commitment.

Cramming in more than twenty tracks, Ego Trippin' grows weaker as it drifts away from head-spinning collages into generic slow jamz.

In the End is a moving album and a worthy epitaph for O’Riordan and the band’s legacy, but it leaves you wanting something more, something you’ll never get to hear: the comfort of knowing everything worked out OK. It’s a reminder that grief lingers.

Blur went from wanna-be's ("Popscene") to provocateurs ("Parklife") to artistes ("Beetlebum") to world travelers ("Good Song"), and, rare moments of torpid dross aside, remained fascinating with each mood change.

Younge's production, combining breaks with live instruments, is familiar Blaxploitation soundtrack-style stuff--a touch dull but not intrusive, it doesn’t detract from Ghost's riveting presence.

Their debut suggests the White Stripes' White Blood Cells by way of M.I.A.'s Arular, noise that's friendly and cute, primitivism that masks pop smarts and respect for tradition, from New Wave to Sixties rock.

Perpetual Motion People is an album that makes you root for him to pull through.

You wish the band would let some tunefulness creep in, but the dozens of riffs, guitar spills and slogans pack a messy, intelligent punch. [13 May 2004, p.72]

Their second disc is roomier and more varied.

Ranks among the best work of his career.

Doe has been mining a vein of stripped-down folk rock for years, but his melodies are sharper this time out, and his tunes are more accessible.

A focus on beats and ecstatic dance fever comes at the expense of more expansive songcraft revealed by Four Tet of yore, but the effect remains otherworldly in its mix of finesse and raucous musical adventure.

His storytelling chops are only getting sharper with age. [Jun 2022, p.74]

A great deal of the material here was covered on 2009's Live in London, but it's well worth the price to hear backup singer Sharon Robinson's exquisite take on "Alexandra Leaving," Cohen's hilariously self-referential "Going Home" and a finale where he covers "Save the Last Dance for Me."

Just as Billy Bragg and Wilco helped reanimate and modernize the words of Woody Guthrie with their Mermaid Avenue albums 20 years ago, Forever Words is a moving, illuminating window into the grace, darkness, mercy and struggle that Johnny Cash spent his entire life documenting in song.

Here, he takes another leap, fusing Armchair's emotive indie rock with the chamber-music experimentalism of his early recordings.

Playing like a welcome sequel to 2006's style-hopping "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass," Yo La Tengo's 16th studio album finds the New Jersey trio bringing out Farfisa solos and celebrating ongoing couplehood.

The Coen brothers, together with producer T Bone Burnett, have assembled a collection of folk, bluegrass, gospel and hobo country so true to the music's down-home, egalitarian roots that it's hard to distinguish the old tracks from the new and the folk heroes from screen actors.

What keeps it from being a crackling mess is Markus Acher's sweet, plaintive voice pushing these selected ambient works toward song structure and melody.

What might've been a Nineties nostalgia trip feels more like history made new.

The heart of Lions lies in the best ballads the band has ever waxed, such as the Led Zeppelin III-esque "Soul Singing" and the churning "Losing My Mind."

Like Nelson's best Seventies work, Price's latest is both reverent and revolutionary, a traditional-minded statement that nevertheless blazes an urgent path forward.

This is big-time party music, plain and simple.

The songs are uneven, but the peak is a duet with Mr. Nashville himself, Jon Bon Jovi.

His leisurely seduction ballads get the job done on System, but not since his debut has he gone for such a dance-friendly club sound.

As comfortable as the Beach House sound is, it's the uncomfortable moments that are most seductive.

Darnielle and his excellent backing band (who recorded the album at Nashville’s storied Blackbird Studios) vary the musical mood gracefully.

Persson sounds cute and tender, even while comparing love to a shotgun, shining some midnight sun on these dark, alluring songs.

On the majestic closer, alongside a sad cello, he insists, "There is no sun." With sound this blazingly bright, who needs it?

Songs like the title track allude to Musgraves' whiplash fame, but she dodges any second-album slump with weed jokes and homegirl charm.

They have a brilliant gift for Lennon-style pop melody that makes their spaciest riffs go down like a spoonful of hash-laced honey. [13 May 2004, p.73]

The multiple chapters of 21-minute opener “The Task” plays out like Tortoise’s avant-sampler platter “Djed,” a suite that links multiple ideas into a cinematic whole. Within there’s blackened Mastodon pummel, mathy turnarounds, Stooges-esque free noise, doom stomp and itchy mosquito drone. Towards the end, the rhythm section slowly urps out a 11/4 ostanato while Turner provides a bluesy, noise-flecked guitar solo that’s more like Bill Frisell or Mark Ribot than, say, Kirk Hammett.

“Kiss This” was the band’s first notable achievement, and their second LP advances the notion that maybe ignoring the last 30 or 40 years of pop trends isn’t the best approach.

A shameless solo debut full of Eighties-style electro bangers.

Is Damon Albarn's "virtual band" the greatest British hip-hop act ever? This best-of makes a pretty strong argument for it -- not that the competition is all that stiff.

Pink's music manages to be at once glossy and murky, absurd and natural--pinging with ADD inventiveness from demented glam rock to lone-wolf disco to cartoon punk to zonked-out Sixties psych pop.

$oul $old $eparately is solid work made by an established character.

As bawdy and unpredictable as anyone is in their first puberty, Puberty 2 shows Miyawaki indulging her whims with a devil-may-care attitude--the result is an incendiary self-portrait.

His smooth, Sam Cooke-esque croon makes Coming Home the best kind of nostalgia trip.

On her new album, Bette Midler has gone into the studio with a master of makeovers, producer Don Was, and ended up sounding pretty much the same. That's a good thing.

The best songs here suggest an alternate universe where Bob Dylan and George Harrison agreed to collaborate full-time.

It's a fun ride. [6 Oct 2005, p.154]

For all the up-to-the-minute production talent--including Stargate and Mike Elizondo--this often sounds like an Eighties record, all big, clipped drums and guitar-face soloing.... Still, the best tracks are the most country.

This teaming of a gifted poet and bruising metalheads is like Lou Reed and Metallica's Lulu--but about half as long, and about twice as heavy.​

Camila is sleek pop that gets straight to the point, just 10 songs around the three-minute mark, eschewing celebrity guests or big-name producers.

Terraplane is less a soul-searcher than a sturdy vehicle, built to chug through hard times.

Here Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg hook up with indie boy Andrew Wyatt, manhandling his plaintive love ballads until they explode into freewheeling electro fantasias.

Just as downtrodden and elegant as those [albums] before it. [1 May 2003, p.56]

Hanna sounds like her old fearless self.

Reznor's own hyperdetailed language defines the set: heaving synthesizers, doleful piano, alien-insect noises.

Cut with a country-rock pickup band, his first solo album is full of bleakly funny noir tales.

Heroes & Villains is entertaining enough as a man’s, man’s, man’s world. It’s better conceptualized and executed than Only Heroes Wear Capes, even if 21 Savage can’t quite match the ASMR pleasures of that album’s “Don’t Come Out the House.”

Cuco transmutes various pop methodologies to create his own blend of burnout soul.

Regeneration, the Divine Comedy's sixth album, could find fans on either side of the Atlantic, as it's their first to pay as much attention to the sound as to the songs.