¡Tré! picks up where its predecessor, ¡Dos!, left off.

Just a classic power trio lineup in the spirit of Midwest post-punk juggernaut Husker Du and its barely-sweetened antecedent Sugar, with Bob Mould conjuring the ecstatic rage of his earlier bands for a grim new era, apparently still convinced that the best way to meet crushing hopelessness is by barreling head first through it with a throat-shredding howl and all amps cranked.

The emo godfather's sixth album proves he's also gotten better in that span.

Tigers Blood is an album that makes you marvel at how much Katie Crutchfield has accomplished, over all the miles she’s traveled so far. But it’s also an album that makes you excited for wherever she goes from here.

But the haunting horns under Horace Andy's vocal on "Girl I Love You" and mind-tickling thump of closer "Atlas Air" are pure genius from the minds of Grantley Marshall and Robert Del Naja: creepy and danceable.

This 21-track set plays like a crash course in the history of international club style.

She’s got a sly sense of music history, which is how she can reach so far on Cuz I Love You.

Throughout Tomorrow’s Fire, Williams sounds strategically self-effacing while also cradling a quiet, growing inner certainty. The result feels like the sound of someone coming into their own, albeit not without some rough patches; she still gets good and angry, but where rage used to feel like a deadend in her previous songs, here it drives her forward.

Hitchcock has a knockout gift for Beatlesque melodicism, and the Venus 3 rev it up here with a beat-combo drive and star-shine twang that sound like Murmur in space.

Live in Paris is a 48-minute purge reaffirming the power of that hoary rock cliché, the live LP.

This is an album that forces us to question the boxes we've placed Rihanna in all along.

It's not every goth-punk fiend who can celebrate his fiftieth birthday with an album as loud, filthy and brilliant as Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

For all of his vigor for partnership, is a solitary classicist, a singer-songwriter wrestling with the dynamics of desire and emotional commitment. Hyperspace is grounded in that realism.

A concept album about an all-night bender, Last Night solidifies Moby's link in the chain that binds DJ pioneers like Todd Terry to slinky futurists like Justice.

Earthy, impressively diverse. [28 Oct 2004, p.101]

It’s a band whose great talent has always been its aspirational one-world melodies, now sounding much more like the world.

Taylor has grown immensely as a melodicist and arranger (he self-produced this album) in the ensuing decade, and the LP, which features contributions from longtime companions like Josh Kaufman and Scott Hirsch, is full of the collaborative warmth of recent Hiss landmarks like Heart Like a Levee.

[A] superbly rugged new solo album.

All that said, this is an exercise for die-hards and audiophiles: To PJ's credit, the original didn't leave much room for improvement.

Hearing it reimagined 50 years later, the album’s themes — transcendence, renewal, breaking free of materialism — resonate even more than they did all those years ago.

A near-perfect balance of gutter grime and high-art aspiration, the Rick Rubin-produced By the Way continues the Peppers' slow-motion makeover.

The ebb and flow of eighteen concise, contrasting cuts writes a story about Moby's beautifully conflicted interior world while giving the outside planet beats and tunes on which to groove.

He’s paid just enough attention to pop’s new ideas to come out with an album that looks forward while remaining true to what's made him one of R&B's most reliable stars.

With Work of Art, he solidifies his status as a street-pop superstar.

Punisher is more sure of itself than its predecessor, thanks to Bridgers’ sharpened and studied songwriting. Her couplets, even more biting this time around, are either brutally self-directed (“I’m a bad liar/With a savior complex”) or just quietly dazzling.

The 15 songs range from entertaining throwaways to top-shelf Prince, making this basically a very good golden-era Prince album, with material recorded entirely between 1981-85 but for the ’91 version of “Love… Thy Will Be Done,” a hit that year for Martika.

Wagner and Foo have gone back to the rougher basics--distortion, echo and monastery-choir vocals--of their debut EP, 2002's Whip It On. But the simplicity is deceptive.

It’s empowering to see Trifilio own the full spectrum of her emotions, and it’s what cements Beach Bunny’s latest record as a masterclass in confessional rock and roll.