Where a song like “Dimeback” felt like dream pop backwash, the 12 tracks here draw endless comparisons. In “Rylee & I” alone he evokes the mangled production of Bon Iver’s 22, A Million; the gauzy seduction of Jai Paul’s demos; the attention to space in Arthur Russell’s World of Echo; and the everyman sensitivity of John Mayer. That Mk.gee can bring to mind such varied artists is a testament to his ingenuity.

Brainwashed is a warm, frank goodbye, a remarkably poised record about the reality of dying, by a man on the verge.

Eminem just may have made the best rap-rock album in history

While it can often go dark, the vibe is empathic; Shake’s said the record was designed to comfort, and counter hate.

The Chicago-bred singer-guitarist works one of rock's finest faux-British accents, sounding like an early-Seventies prog-folkie. It's a perfect vocal vibe for music that can recall the very late Beatles and New Morning-era Dylan.

Other tracks, like the kinetic breakbeat jam "A Cidade," by DJ Dolores with Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz, take the Tropicália spirit into the 21st century, where it sounds perfectly at home.

If you have a favorite Foghat album or can name a single member of Deep Purple, you will love Broken Boy Soldiers; fortunately, it doesn't end there. [18 May 2006, p.226]

The album's wanton schizophonia results in such a switched-on pileup of styles that Groove Armada have earned their own rubric -- call it electrocrash, and consider it great.

An album where she keeps finding ways to give her artistry a new edge.

This is a sprawling, furious, deeply ambivalent theme album about institutional racism, the failures of black leadership and the pathologies and promise of early-21st-century African-American life.

There is a grim magnetism coursing through these 10 new songs--and most of it is in Dylan's vividly battered singing.

Clapton pays broad tribute to Johnson as a composer and public-domain synthesist.

There is a flow and coherence to these fifteen tracks that make the narrative whole much larger than the sum of its occasionally goofy parts.

It's hard to care about any shortcomings when the tunes are as masterfully crisp as they are on much of V.

A thrill ride of a listen, a motley mix of slick bops and searing confessionals that wonderfully encapsulate all of her various vibes.

The result is the best Pretenders record in years, a mix of galloping rockabilly and country & western songs, delivered in Hynde's trademark snarl.

The Pretties were impatient modernists, carrying that blues zeal to psychedelia (1967's "Defecting Grey"), rock opera (ahead of the Who, on 1968's S.F. Sorrow) and progressive rock (1970's Parachute) with spectacular if commercially dire results. This grand box takes that tale, across 11 studio albums and a feast of extras, up to the present day.

Virtually all of these songs and recordings have held up beautifully. [28 Oct 2004, p.104]

While the song selection (including classics like the brass-balled superfunker "Zombie") is killer, recording info would help. The music speaks for itself, but presidential history deserves better.

Even in duets with [Wainwright and Boy George], Antony is the dominant voice of solitude and agonized waiting. [10 Feb 2005, p.84]

Wilco's seventh studio album is a triumph of determined simplicity by a band that has been running from the obvious for most of this decade.

It might also be his most broadly emotional set ever; certainly it's his most sharply focused record since the game-changing tag team Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs decades ago.

Across the 10-track LP, the folk-tinged singer belts with gusto. ... The album's strongest moments, however, are Carlile's riskier departures towards the LP's end.

There is plenty of unexpected texture to keep your ears engaged.

Thankfully, Tucker’s latest never succumbs to old-age weariness.

Upping the spectacle from Fun Fear his 2012 debut, I Love You, Honeybear is an autobiographical set about love, marriage and derangement that's both ironic and empathic.

For all the broken romances on The Loneliest Time, it’s an uplifting experience.

At times, the album is a victim of its own ambition. But it wouldn't be half as awesome a ride if it had aimed any lower.