Pivoting away from the brighter, jammier aspects of 2019’s Father of the Bride with a decided bent toward experimentation and surprising, often harsh, new textures. The results showcase a band that, nearly two decades in, is willing to issue a challenge to its fans and produce a soundtrack for a reality that is teeming with noise and discord.

Marciology again demonstrates why Roc is one of rap’s most unique voices — no matter how many artists try to ride the wave.

The album is full of moments like this, where the lyrical conventions of a hand-me-down genre are enlivened with genuinely personal urgency.

[Don’t Forget Me reveals] a rustic, more organic-feeling pop-rock sound. Upbeat tracks like “On and On and On” and “Never Going Home” are perfectly made for big-voiced sing-alongs in a way that brings to mind Michelle Branch’s early work. Meanwhile, the meditative high-note “All the Same” is raw and elemental. .... The sense of unguarded affection perfectly sums up Don’t Forget Me.

As on her debut, Girl in Red really shines when she steps up the energy level in pissed-off songs where she’s getting her heart kicked around.

With Dark Matter, the band has rarely sounded more essential.

By giving themselves over even more to their concepts on Rampen — and no, everything will not be fine — they’ve created a new set of structures to explode.

Sentiment is a place to jump right into her sonic world, with a proper pop pace: 10 songs in 37 minutes. The indie-rock tunes mix with orchestral interludes, synth drones, field recordings, found sounds from nature or the city streets, all full of raw emotion.

Like the Midnights 3 A.M., the second half of Tortured Poets: The Anthology is more acoustic, more delicate, more Quill Pen, much more Aaron Dessner. If you preferred 3 A.M. to the proper Midnights (“The Great War,” “Bigger Than The Whole Sky”) you might also prefer the second hour of the Anthology.

It’s music that evokes the terror we all share in just being alive, and the way that fighting through it is a form of constant rebirth we all share, too. That’s the kind of truth this album excavates and celebrates many times, and why this is some of Annie Clark’s most satisfyingly urgent music yet.

No matter how bleak Miller may feel, he’s ready to dance until the end of the world, and that spirit is infectious from the beginning of American Primitive to the end.

Funeral for Justice is the band’s most forceful album yet, tailor-made to melt minds at massive festivals.

Can We Please Have Fun shows that these family rockstars aren’t afraid of change, and they’re sliding smoothly into whatever their next phase will be.

Hit Me Hard and Soft makes you marvel at how far she’s traveled as a pop artiste.

Anyone who loved O Brother should find even headier musical pleasures on Ralph Stanley.

Only a singer of Osborne's caliber could pull this off; she's in complete control of her powerful pipes.

These Brits are sort of a New Order for the twenty-first century - fitter, happier, more productive.

The long-awaited Long Distance continues the suavely bittersweet pop that made Apartment Life such an enduring pleasure. Any fan of Everything but the Girl, Saint Etienne or vintage Blondie should find plenty to swoon over here...

You can mess with Orton's music however you want -- add layers of electronica or strip them away to reveal the folkie within - and the songs will still work, because her melodies are that strong and her voice that compelling.

Ten tracks that play out like a joint venture between Shaft and David Bowie's Thin White Duke.

But there are more moments when all-too-human messes lurk beneath the veneer of producer Don Was' perfect pop tracks, moments when the relentless sunniness of the music is pierced by sober themes (the last song, "Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel," is a graphic account of car-wreck carnage) and dark, psychological-profile assessments. In turning the snarky level down a notch, Robertson and Page haven't sacrificed the band's good-time giddiness -- they've just opened things up a bit.

It's a Saturday- night version of Foxtrot: laid-back, poignant and comic.

Rouse... comes on like a happier and wittier Elliott Smith. [30 Oct 2003, p.93]

The slapdash feel will remind fans of the band's early days. [30 Oct 2003, p.93]

An odd, compelling hybrid of snappy drum loops, digital atmospherics and indie-rock woodshedding.

This is art without artiness.

Their most enjoyable collection yet.

Shine is a record meant to be heard on headphones, providing Lanois' signature warm and smudgy vintage sound.

So 18 is neither a retread of Play nor a departure from it. It's pop music the way Moby has always heard it: a frantic dance of different sounds and styles, banging into the wall a time or two but hitting sublimely beautiful highs along the way.

A vibrant new artist bursting with individuality.

Electric Circus is a wild, vibrant trip billowing with purple-haze guitars, ethereal choruses and warped scratching.

A delicious, improbable treat. The British duo of multi-instrumentalist Nick Franglen and DJ-graphic designer Fred Deakin creates tunes as dreamy and sample-intensive as the likes of DJ Shadow while wielding a liberating wit that doesn't require a laugh track.

From the blues-based grit and spit of the opening track to the messy distortion throughout, Souljacker launches an all-out attack on familiar Eels themes -- insecurity, loneliness, despair -- but this time from a more universal standpoint.

Salival's cool appeal is the DVD, compiling four of the band's videos and offering an extra scraplike song.

Like most of Riley's music, it's full of gorgeous air, exposed emotions and rhythms that have a mathematical integrity.

On A Little Deeper, Dynamite pretty much owns the thin line between love and hate.

Tomorrow's Sounds Today lacks the focused punch of Yoakam's best album, 1995's lean-and-mean Gone, but it's at least as consistent as his recent Nineties greatest-hits set -- right down to the nifty honky-tonk rock & roll cover, "I Want You to Want Me."

An unapologetically eccentric album that explores the boundaries of psychedelic pop sounds in the same way Autechre does in the electronic world.

She's one of the most richly idiomatic female pop singers of her generation, combining the blazing timbral containment of Karen Carpenter with the rootsy looseness of Bonnie Raitt.

Mellencamp, as usual, writes strikingly about the heart ("Deep Blue Heart") and the heartland ("Crazy Island"), the twin concerns on an album that manages to be at once old-fashioned and very contemporary.

But she refuses to fake R&B's vocal bravado, and her lyrics, unlike those of her peers, never resemble poor translations of Scandinavian tongues. When she drops the playgirl persona for "As Long As You're Loving Me," C radiates a natural warmth that circumvents power balladry's hot air.

Eschewing the sprawling, double-album ethos that marked the group's early entries into indie rock, Rock Action is also more concentrated and less elliptical

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

I'm Staying Out builds on last year's fine debut, While You Weren't Looking, exhibiting more confidence and some adventurous musical turns.

On Can Our Love..., Tindersticks get heavily into Seventies soul, which expands their sound with more depth than ever before.

A surprisingly upbeat collection of inviting pop numbers.

Has a hazy, romantic feel. [10 Jul 2003, p.66]

Her most rapturous work in a decade.

Minimizing their usual production trickery in favor of live-in-the-studio ensemble thrust, these merry pranksters swim in classic-psychedelia grooves while offering oodles of art-rock allusion.

A very loud, very strange and playfully destructive album.

It's no surprise that Wire still aspire to make complex, strange punk; the shocker is that the spine-tingling Send sounds fresher than the pop punk currently being generated by pups half their age.

Doesn't quite have the ragged charm or the wry humor of 2001's outstanding The World Won't End; the occasional dose of guitar bombast ("One Foot in the Grave") doesn't serve Pernice well.

What makes this Mr. Young-goes-to-Memphis excursion resonate is the trouble that lurks just outside its boundaries.

[Road Rock] is one of his sloppiest live albums ever. But since Neil Young is Neil Young, throwaways like this are a Zen spiritual exercise, a way of keeping his aging hippie bones loose and limber.

Williams remains both ambitious and pleasingly plain-spoken.

Mirror Conspiracy is the perfect soundtrack for those who aspire to the elegantly roguish, Vespa-riding, Italian-soft-porn-loving international set.

[Out Hud] uses guitars like proper rhythm instruments, meshed best with penetrating drums, space synths and a dash of sticky dub. [23 Jan 2003, p.67]

The span of moods and melodies on Shangri-La Dee Da is nearly as sprawling, but this time the lyrics take on a deeper tinge, and they give the album a weight and coherence lacking on previous STP releases.

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

Their specialty is an undulating trance throb that shimmers with shades of rock, contemporary symphonics, dub, disco, house, spoken word, whatever. The result still sounds like Underworld, and the fiftieth play sounds better than the fifth.

The album veers from dreamily childlike to furiously metallic, from bouncy dance-hall reggae to funked-up TV-theme fun. There's even a pop single or two.

Throughout all the various textures, Raitt puts forth her signature soulful vocal delivery and gutsy bottleneck chops, once again proving herself queen of the Americana road.

On is that increasingly rare rock & roll specimen -- a magnificently hedonistic party album for extremely consenting adults.

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.

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

Halos & Horns doesn't so much rehash bygone eras as showcase Parton's skills as an interpreter -- especially of herself.

A solid return to roots, Matriarch of the Blues finds Etta James reclaiming her throne -- and defying anyone to knock her off it.

The refrains may be featherweight ("You and me were meant to be"), but the musical touches that surround "Love Is Rare" (particularly Ross Godfrey's arching slide-guitar leads) and the dream-cloud vocals of "World Looking In" are strong enough to carry even the tired cliches - rarely has the shallow end sounded so richly appointed.

Faith and Courage speaks with the jaw-clenched directness for which O'Connor is both famous and infamous.... an album of approachable pop that's both defiant and diverse and that flaunts rock's swagger, electronica's experimentalism, folk's introspection and hip-hop's social critique.

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

While each of the nine tracks exhibits that Gorillaz irreverence and typically taut sense of rhythm, the standout is the rumbling "Ghost Train."

Throughout, Jackson digs deep into his sources and parties all the time.

On Iron Flag, the Wu are not just back - they're overhauled and determined to compete.

Although it's getting a trifle elderly to hear "Fly" endlessly reconfigured like the Rubik's Cube it turned out to be, that song is all over Sugar Ray...

There's as much rock here as there are dark, dreamy laments.

Ferry's voice, even for Earth's maestro of remote-control Sinatra-esque soul, is plainly spectacular.

Gutterflower proves once again that they are masters at crafting instantly appealing pop songs.

The music by bands on this kind of eternal blissful bummer trip walks a fine line between bewitching and dire; in the case of Mogwai, it's usually the former.

Osborne impresses with the warmth and human embrace of her voice.

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 glance, Staind may look like a Korn tribute band. But within the first few seconds of Break the Cycle, they let loose enough Mothra-heavy riffs to prove they can rock circles around peers such as Limp Bizkit and fellow Bostonians Godsmack.

Red Devil Dawn is as intricate and bewitching as the work of Tom Waits or the Tindersticks.

Revitalizes Duran's early synth-pop magic. [28 Oct 2004, p.103]

Buck shows that he's talented enough to run his own crew. [2 Sep 2004, p.146]

Not since Bob and Doug McKenzie have two jokers nailed the clod-metal aesthetic so accurately: Nearly every lyric here comes straight from your high school's bathroom wall.

The only real weakness on Survivor is the self-righteous tone creeping into the songs.

What makes Dear Heather tick are the ladies who look back: longtime co-composer/producer Sharon Robinson and producer-engineer Leanne Ungar, as well as occasional co-lead vocalist Anjani Thomas, who open up the arrangements from the often repetitive Casio-lounge feel of 2001's Ten New Songs.

I doesn't have all of 69 Love Songs' expansiveness and droll humor, but there's no denying the bittersweet charisma of Merritt's pop craftsmanship. [27 May 2004, p.80]

Elegant tech-house, sexy without being stoopid. [28 Oct 2004, p.100]

Self-loathing, navel-gazing and occasionally hilarious.

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

There's a lightness about the Indigo Girls' ninth album, even on the songs about heartbreak.

There is just enough sour questioning and irritation in Matthews' delivery to keep the radio candy from melting into raging glucose.

It all ends up sounding very expressive, in a blurry sort of way.

Laurie Anderson is a singer-songwriter of crushing poignance - a minimalist painter of melancholy moods who addresses universal themes in the vernacular of the commonplace.

Snoop Dogg's strongest album since 1993's Doggystyle.

This is music that is bent on connecting with the dance floor and won't deny itself anything.

Rounds is almost accidentally poignant--it's like hearing shattered transmissions of sentimental old music. [15 May 2003, p.134]