Has everything from alt-pop to futurist pop and Joao Gilberto homages - all cleverly retouched. [Dec 2020, p.70]

Full of delicate folk mopers, lighthearted country romps, and genuinely sweet love songs, as well as his best guitar playing in years. [Dec 2020, p.70]

His music might still be relatable, but it has never sounded so cliché.

El Último Tour Del Mundo isn’t by any means a repudiation of the genres that have made Bad Bunny a star; if anything, it’s proof of how far they can stretch.

Swift touches on so much more – nuanced acts of forgiveness, complex personal histories, the ability to visualize and know how a person can look in different shades of light. No doubt Swift is still the master of writing a spiteful kiss-off, but the songs of Evermore are a welcomed step in a more mature direction.

This time, they go lighter on the samples and heavier on post-trip hop soundscapes and contemporary singers, making for recombinant pop that feels joyfully seamless and organic.

It may be [Future's] best collaborative project this side of Free Bricks. While he sounds flat at moments—he appears to be positively winded on the opener “Stripes like Burberry”— Uzi’s Naruto-loving luminescence radiates from every bar.

What emerges is a compelling mix of youthful passion and coming-of-age agony.

Rather than a through-line back to the Pumpkins’ trip-hoppy Adore, Cyr often sounds like Corgan was going for a new-wave sound that recalls Talk Talk, and unfortunately he has neither the singular vision he had in the Nineties nor the melodic savvy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis to pull it off. Instead, most of the songs, all filled with neo-goth romantic lyrics, stumble and fumble over meandering melodies with no sing-along choruses to buttress them.

Unlike her previous album Younger Now, where Cyrus dabbled in a rootsier sound without much substance, she actually has a lot to say on Plastic Hearts.

McCartney III isn't ambitious like Egypt Station - like his first two self-titled solo statements, it's a spontaneous palette cleanser after a labored studio project. [Nov 2020, p.69]

BE may be the most on-brand album BTS has ever made, recognizing hardship while offering healing and hope and a way to look past our current pain. It’s what BTS has been about since the start of their career.

Megan’s own flow is musical enough to offer its own hooks without outside ornamentation. A track like “Body” shows Megan’s pop strengths as she stretches the title into a stream of ody-ody-odys so bouncy you can practically see booties popping to the beat.

For casual listeners, the inclusion of already-released material and repeated songs may feel bloated and unnecessary. But hardcore fans have craved this for years, and they’ll be more than happy to indulge in any and all versions of these tracks (ahem, “The Losing End” at the Roxy!). ... Some of the unreleased tracks are unfathomably great.

Jewel Box goes out of its way to be a very different, sometimes maddening beast. Its eight discs include a substantial chunk of unheard early material, like those Zippo tunes, but they sit alongside an even bigger batch of songs that have already been released in one form or another, either on albums or singles. Jewel Box doesn’t just clean out the closet but the whole house.

Naturally, there are no real surprises here: Power Up sounds unapologetically like AC/DC, and Angus has likened the LP to a tribute to Malcolm the same way that Back in Black was a back-pew eulogy for Bon Scott.

It's a cozy-campfire roots record. [Nov 2020, p.71]

From the very first moment they started playing, this was a band that was eons ahead of its time. Pylon Box is exactly the deep dive their incredible legacy deserves.

It's sprawling, unpredictable, and always engaging. [Nov 2020, p.70]

Classic disco euphoria as only Kylie knows how to do it. [Nov 2020, p.70]

Positions is minor growth, major strength and a solid step forward in the right direction for one pop’s most exciting stars.

Although gems are scattered throughout The Early Years, its last two discs — a homemade demo followed by two 1967 sets at the Ann Arbor club the Canterbury House–are the keepers.

Music is the Weapon is a stale, mixed bag that aspires to the global ubiquity and incredible commercial success of Major Lazer’s 2015 spastic moombahton anthem “Lean On.”

Painful memories are twirling around in Lenker’s head on Songs. It’s an album that lives up to it’s name by capturing the basic, natural truth of her art.

Love Goes doesn’t quite have overwhelming moments to match the titanic power of signature hits like “Latch,” Smith’s career-making hit with house duo Disclosure, or 2017’s “Him.” In some ways, that’s OK.

On Getting Into Knives, Darnielle shows that the Mountain Goats’ toolkit is always expanding, and his tools are getting sharper all the same.

Coherence has never really been a hallmark of the Gorillaz aesthetic anyway, but this set of songs isn’t a mess, either; several moments offer interesting cross-generational riffs on U.K. music history. ... As always, Albarn’s ability to create dubby, drifting synthetic beauty — a kind of futurist pastoralism — remains a key ingredient to his music’s distracted wonder.

At its best, Fake It Flowers is right up there with the first Veruca Salt record or That Dog’s Totally Crushed Out in its ability to fuse pensive elation, sugary guitar charge, and sweet pop melodies.

In the years since Petty released his 1994 classic album, he slowly revealed, on-stage and in interviews, more about the darkly personal inspirations for the record, this retrospective box does the same for the sprawling, bursting creative process that went into making Wildflowers. It’s the definitive artistic statement that newly illuminates one of the most fruitful, inspired periods of the American legend’s career.

The result is a set of forlorn ballads that start spare and gather beauty as they grow.

Springsteen sounds at peace. Although the LP doesn’t sport the same youthful urgency as the recordings he cut in the Seventies and Eighties — there’s no “Badlands” or “Cover Me” here — you can hear how the anger and depression of his tougher times and his many split personalities delivered him to stability, and the most fascinating parts of Letter to You are when he comes out of the shadows to admit that he realizes it, too.

The record’s only failing is Weiner’s instinct for maximalism. Many of Private Lives’ 17 tracks are one- or two-minute segues that don’t sound so much like intervals as undercooked songs; it’s like songs that Low Cut Connie could have developed but just felt they had to release to fill two albums. But these are easily skippable, and there’s enough top-shelf Connie here that a few speed bumps don’t slow it down too much.

The most interesting stuff here is in the Blackberry Way Demos, some of which came out on a previous expanded edition of the album. ... Even the collection’s rough mixes — usually the most over larded part of a box set — offer new insights.

While SM1 was ineffable and mystic, Savage Mode II spells out its influences and its place in the canon of Southern rap.

On Tickets To My Downfall he tries a new gambit that works surprisingly well, switching to late-Nineties/early-2000s pop punk, with Blink 182’s Travis Barker producing and playing drums. Trashily lachrymose and full of easily digestible angst.

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.

Sign ‘O’ the Times was an eclectic funk-pop-rock-R&B-gospel-novelty hodgepodge of songs about love, sex, and Jesus that sounds awful on paper — what great record this side of Little Richard could include the phrase “green eggs and ham,” as Prince deadpanned on “Housequake,” and still work? — yet it was a masterpiece. Its very lack of focus was its greatest strength. ... It’s impossible to trace his thought process, which makes it all the more exciting to find the diamonds he left in the vault.

The most heartening thing about this record isn’t the critical takes, it’s the guys bringing the noise.

With the exception of “Wasted,” with its hard-rock guitar and raging solo, there’s a gentleness and a sweetness to The Waterfall II that is easy to get lost in.

Blue Hearts gushes more piss and vinegar than Stanley Kubrick could fill a hallway with, but what makes it jaw-dropping is the precision with which Mould has focused his ire on conservatives, evangelicals, homophobes, while leaving room for some self-criticism as well. ... Blue Hearts often feels like a lost Hüsker Dü album with Mould howling invective over his buzzsawing guitar.

“Close My Eyes” feels a bit like Suicide pretending to be a power-pop band with its quivering keys and its catchy “In my mind I want to choose the right” chorus. The glitchy “Hard Times” balances Butler’s brooding with disco-house keyboards, and “Surrender” feels like a gospel call-and-response moment of ascendency. But it all comes crashing down on Generations’ final two offerings.

Pecknold has come up with a pleasing album about letting go and being thankful for what we’ve got, be it love in a time of quarantine or an old Silver Jews record.

Alicia is one of her most musically engaging LPs, with production from Mark Ronson, Sampha, Tricky Stewart, and her husband, Swizz Beatz, among other reliable hands. Alicia moves easily between moods and styles.

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.

These overly literal ditties feel a little too simplistic. [Sep 2020, p.68]

The 80s-loving Vegas crew delivers its strongest set of songs in years. [Sep 2020, p.68]

Americana firebrand makes a grand rock & roll record worthy of her Bowie jumpsuits. [Sep 2020, 68]

This batch of cadaverous Bowie-isms won't leave fang marks on your memory. [Sep 2020, p.68]

Doves amble as they surge, swirling in a middle distance between Radiohead and Coldplay. [Sep 2020, p.68]

Goats Head Soup didn’t — and still doesn’t — sound like what one would have expected from the Stones after Exile. ... The alternate mixes of a few of its songs don’t add terribly much, but the same can’t be said of an instrumental jam on “Dancing with Mr. D,.” which lets you eavesdrop as the band locks into a groove and jams without Jagger. ... The Brussels Affair bristles.

The ska-reggae legend sounds stronger than ever on Got to Be Tough, his first album in more than a decade.

Giving both of these records some distance allows for the songs to have breathing room, and for Whole New Mess to stand on its own.

With Energy, Disclosure continue the refined, radio-friendly takes on house, U.K. garage, and more that made them stars, but find plenty of room to expand into new territory.

At its best, King’s Disease is a slick Illmatic redux, a fresh portrait of Nas’ now-mythical hustler years that expands his Queensbridge universe with new characters and anecdotes and finds him in vintage form as a rapper and storyteller. At its worst, it is a misguided attempt to paper over abuse allegations and a stark showcase of his increasingly questionable politics when it comes to women. 26 years after Illmatic, Nas still has room to grow.

She stops trying to keep up with the Halseys and happily defaults to the fizzy bombast that is her stadium-size safety zone. [Aug 2020, p.72]

At its heart, Down in the Weeds is a wounded, hopeful take on the Los Angeles midlife-crisis record (he moved there a few years ago). It’s a topic well-suited for Oberst’s abstract cynicism, as he tackles crumbling SoCal interstates, Malibu beach disasters, and, of course, yoga.

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.

Full of shiny seventies pop rock simulations, but you would be much better off putting on an old Todd Rundgren or Raspberries record. [Aug 2020, p.73]

It's kind of like a psychedelic Randy Newman. [Aug 2020, p.73]

Modern electric blues as Prince and George Clinton would have it. [Aug 2020, p.73]

Examines small-town origins, fatherhood, and matter of the heart with extra earnestness but few surprises. [Aug 2020, p.73]

All of the pieces in the box set complete a puzzle that explains how McCartney found himself again and hit the stride that has propelled him to the present day.

Although they indulge more textures this time, they don’t stray so far from Dogrel’s art-punk blueprint to the point of losing themselves. It’s just that the palette is wider and more pronounced. If anything, their chiming, noisy guitars and messy arrangements only fit their highfalutin aspirations even better.

For all of its melancholy, Such Pretty Forks feels personal but never profound. [May 2020, p.89]

But the real surprise is the music itself — the most head-spinning, heart-breaking, emotionally ambitious songs of her life.

Rossdale’s voice becomes a distraction when it overpowers the group’s wooshy guitar textures. But mostly Bush’s biggest sin is going back to the same well again and again hoping to find something new, something vital but coming up emptyhanded.

The 12 tracks on Gaslighter fall into easy, radio-friendly categories: empowerment anthem, cheeky ukulele kiss-off, minimalist protest song. Coupled with a long-overdue drop of the “Dixie” from their name, the arrangement dissolves most of the group’s lingering connections to their street-corner bluegrass origins.

The album shines brightest when Juice stops navel-gazing, when he tempers his fatalism with a sense of hope and togetherness, the yang to his depressive yin.

Their fifth album is pure misanthropic splendor. [Jul 2020, p.87]

The New Wave greats haven't sounded this raw and real since the early Eighties. [Jul 2020, p.87]

The highlights are when Nelson sings the songs of his old friends.

As with Wainwright’s best works, it’s musical theater without the theater (remember, he once interpolated the theme from Phantom of the Opera on Release the Stars’ “Between My Legs”) and it comes with all of the good and bad that comes with stage drama.

Pop-punk trio deliver glittery hooks and raw feminine energy. [Jul 2020, p.87]

The Houston retro perfectionists create great global grooves with multilingual narratives. [Jul 2020, p.87]

With Jump Rope Gazers, the Beths — Stokes, Pearce, bassist Benjamin Sinclair and drummer Tristan Deck — prove that despite a global pandemic, it’s still possible to have a good time. They might not be excited, but we sure are.

For the most part, Years finds Anderson at his most convincing, and moving, since his hit-making heyday. It’s the type of record that should cast his entire discography in a new light, an inspired offering that shows a forgotten legend pulling off a new trick just as effectively as his old ones.

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.

Moody and inviting. [Jun 2020, p.71]

The oft clunky Translation doubles down for a full-length that deserved EP treatment at best.

Teyana Taylor is a good singer, capable of shifting between a soft lilt on “Lowkey” and a strident punch on “We Got Love.” But she tends to sound like others, particularly Brandy. She hasn’t quite absorbed her influences into a vocal presence all her own.

Bigger Love, his seventh album, shows off the emerging subtlety of his musical craft and social messaging.

Decently fun results. [Jun 2020, p.71]

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.

Much of Lamb of God contains the sort of piledriving guitar riffs and Olympic-medal-worthy drumming the band has perfected over the last 20 years, making it easy for their less political fans to get in on the fun. That said, the group sounds best when they take musical risks.

This is an album that proves something beautiful and enduring can come from even the most dire circumstances.

On Rough and Rowdy Ways, Dylan is exploring terrain nobody else has reached before—yet he just keeps pushing on into the future.

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.

It plays out like the Instagram Live DJ sets and password-protected Zoom parties occurring nightly all over the world, something intimately comforting and oddly unifying when people so desperately need it.

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.

Her lyrics are often uncomfortably revealing, as she peels apart her feelings about love, sex, sin, femininity, masculinity, Catholic guilt, and violence and how they all define her — often on the same song. She’s a rare artist who thrives on overthinking everything (hey, she is French) and the album’s general grandiosity never feels obnoxious.

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

They’ve upped their game even further on Sideways to New Italy, and the result is a perfect summertime indie-rock record.

Playful spirit is in short supply on a record where club beats, acoustic strumming, and parched guitar lines usually get siphoned into unobtrusively earnest background pop. [Jun 2020, p.71]

There are toe-tapping moments, but the best song is a Roxy Music cover. [Jun 2020, p.71]

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

RTJ4, which the band rush-released a few days ahead of schedule, is laser-focused. ... Mike unloads on racist cops, systemic poverty, corporate media, and other eternal enemies. But the album never feels preachy, because the music bounces as much as it brays, with an elastic flow and deep history.

Mostly, Gaga has focused Chromatica’s spectrum on the kind of body-moving music that comes naturally to her. Dance music will always be her salvation, and her pop renaissance couldn’t come at a better time.