Doubling down on his magnificent, gender-nonconforming voice while pushing his songcraft forward, Smith's second LP knights one of the mightiest, most expressive vocalists of his generation.

More Life is his finest longform collection in years, cheerfully indulgent at 22 tracks and 82 minutes, a masterful tour of all the grooves in his head, from U.K. grime ("No Long Talk") to Caribbean dancehall ("Blem") to South African house ("Get It Together") to Earth, Wind & Fire ("Glow"). Yet the more expansive he gets, the more himself he sounds--and the further he roams around the globe, the deeper he taps into the heart of Drakeness.

The melodies are stickier than hot tar, but it's those vivid little scenes that lodge in your head the longest.

Indigo is an adventurous sonic portrait of RM’s inner world, the work of an artist who finds his voice by bringing together the influences that resonate with his soul.

It adds up to one of the most purposeful full-length statements in her quarter-century career.

Some Rap Songs is the rare album by an immensely talented lyricist who deigns not to pull out any fireworks, opting to sink into the cushion’s of a therapist’s couch in the search for an honest work of art. It’s a delicate statement of restraint, and in this case the process shows more of the artist than ever before.

He’s pulled off the neat trick of making his music at once elegant and more refined but also warmer and more intimate — the polished-marble smoothness of Steely Dan with the generosity of an Al Green or Yo La Tengo record.

The result is a record that makes the competition sound sad and idea-starved by comparison.

This is music that merges raw physical pleasure and dreamscape explorations. The stakes are high, and the payoffs are real.

Their most sonically surprising - full of brash lust and tender beauty. [May 2022, p.79]

Her music mixes an almost impersonal professionalism--it's so rigorously crafted it sounds like it has been scientifically engineered in a hit factory--with confessions that are squirmingly intimate and true.

Most of the time, Baby is in prime form here — technical enough to earn his hip-hop cred, and stylistic enough to keep the uncommon kids from feeling like he’s common. When he’s at his best, it’s best to let him gobble you whole.

It feels like one big loft party, even when it veers into psychotic, dissonant No Wave by DNA and Mars.

So why is it one of the best hip-hop albums of the year? For one, nobody gets the beats -- dry, hard and evil -- that Clipse get from Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.

The extras on the deluxe box set show how Corgan's mid-Nineties creative peak couldn't even be contained by two CDs.

These alternative-country heroes steer clear of the complacency that afflicts their genre, electrocharging their music with the heat and heart of conjugal passion, and, at spots, with a rock & roll stomp that puts many a vaunted garage band to shame.

The Family is a brutally honest high-point to cap an amazing body of work.

Fuse picks up right where Temperamental stopped, as if they’re hitting play on a cassette they’ve kept on pause for 24 years. But they keep it fresh, using the latest digital effects to warp, filter, mutate Thorn’s voice into a deeper, more dolorous instrument. That suits the adult tone of the songs.

In refusing to pander, either to easy nostalgia or to current trends, she touches on something timeless.

This album is, above all, a textural triumph, a quantum bounce from the brittle jitter and insect-chatter fuzz of the band's 2001 Yeah Yeah Yeahs EP and 2003's full-length Fever to Tell. It's as if the Velvet Underground had gone from the black-crusted minimalism of their first album right to the pop bloom of their fourth, Loaded.

The result is both her catchiest and subtlest album yet--and one of the best R&B records of 2012.

Put this record on and see how long it takes to utter your first joyful expletive.

This brother duo from Elvis Presley's hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi, radiate an inescapable exuberance, shouting with the zeal of freshly minted stars.

While the sound of Lux Prima feels unexpected based off these artists’ distinct histories, Karen O and Danger Mouse have unlocked a new creative force within each other. They reach their shared destination with little turbulence and quite a gorgeous view to boot. Plus on this trip, all the seats are first class.

On Los Campesinos' second LP, he sings about puking in a Mexican restaurant and fucking up some dude's teeth, but he makes those lyrics sound almost uplifting thanks to a supercharged mix of violins, guitars and glockenspiel.

Dalle lets her voice flicker to an airy glow, with jittery strings providing the tension guitars might have in the past. Clearly, she never really needed an amp to unleash her strength.

Every Loser contains some of Iggy’s hardest rockers in years, and emphasizes all of the things the man does well: blistering rock, po-faced ballads, and a genuine way with words.

Recalls Janet Jackson at her best.

This barebones performance absolutely sparkles — a “Tombstone Blues” that’s much quieter than the original, but so spry that it’s irresistible. It stands totally on its own, and so does the album it’s on.

On their second album as Run the Jewels, noise-loving Brooklyn rapper-producer El-P and Atlanta's Killer Mike make the most explosive hip-hop you'll hear all year.

It's stronger and more assertive than 2004's "Uh Huh Her."

Their second LP is a gem of indie-rock-revivalism, making faux-naif surf licks and Mo Tucker drum beats seem new all over again.

This British singer-songwriter and psychedelic cult hero keeps issuing delightful, incisive rec ords, and this is one of his recent best.

At 76, her music remains truly vital: unsettling, touching, funny, undeniable.

The Menace, the long-delayed follow-up, finds Elastica in an unrepentant mood, scuffing up their terse, trashy guitar rock with fun-house noise while adding a handful of ambient mood pieces that sound like Aphex Twin castoffs.

there is a great leap in the songwriting--closer to classic hard-rock force and melodic drama--that, in 'Goliath,' 'Cavaletta'" and the Holy City atmospheres of 'Soothsayer,' is even more jolting than the weirdness.

"Hotshit player" doesn't begin to describe the underappreciated blues-rock figurehead, as this beautiful four-disc set makes clear.

Her third LP imagines a 2015 mainstream by reflecting what it once was--Loretta and Dolly in the Sixties, sure, but also Emmylou in the Eighties and Reba in the Nineties.

Far matches "Kitsch's" rococo flow with the follow-up's pop smarts.

It’s the cheekiness and humor of Deacon that really shines, without sacrificing the complex theatricality that has made Serpentwithfeet such a standout project.

Their music has grown lusher, their cadences more complex, making the leap to Sr3mm less of a stretch that it might seem. Where recent marathons like Migos' gratuitous Culture II felt more about streaming algorithms than art, Sr3mm rarely wears out its welcome.

with fits of glam flamboyance and a raw rockabilly bluntness, Moz's third solo LP made clear what Smiths fans already knew: Here was a new kind of superstar. For more proof, check this remastered reissue's must-see bonus DVD.

Blur have returned with inspiration to spare.

There are treasures aplenty here, among them a rehearsal take on "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking" that seems to find the band jamming on the Rolling Stones' "Bitch" and two very different versions of "Caribbean Wind," an epic full of lust, divinity and a mystery that he never resolved. But there's also bitterness and stridency, as the restless spirit of "Like a Rolling Stone" stops dead on the Biblical literalism of "Solid Rock."

Ignorance, solidifies the 36 year-old as one of the most audaciously inventive auteurs working in the broad singer-songwriter tradition. This ten song collection broadens the Weather Station’s sonic palette by foregrounding fluttering flutes, crisp orchestral sections, and, most importantly, a propulsive rhythm section.

Cardinology is a classic-rock record to the bone, nodding to influences that Adams has conjured before but never so well.

Some of the best baby-making music since Barry White.

Yuck channel their college-rock jones with skill and charm, balancing in-the-red guitar fuzz with melodic sweetness.

For these guys, disappearing completely and disappearing into the groove are pretty much the same thing.

In/Out/In feels less like a random collection of toss-offs and more like a lost Sonic Youth album before everyone figured out who would sing each track.

Along with co-writer and fellow synth dude Ben Langmaid, she's ruling U.K. radio with splashy dance hits about sex and betrayal.

The best bullets here are like excerpts from a fantasy mix tape of classic glam and garage rock.

In every skewed guitar note and crackling drum beat, every cello stroke and modulation of MacKaye's malleable voice, there's a passion for rigor - intellectual, political and musical.

More than 50 years later, the fuzzed-out riffs and mellow harmonies are still intact, the lyrics just as heartfelt.

But Brothers, recorded largely in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with little outside help, has a higher ratio of compelling songs and distress [than 2008's Attack & Release].

Vernon remains an oblique lyricist, but the knottiness can be compelling.

The enhanced instrumentation and dreamy songwriting make this the singer’s strongest album yet.

It's the hard-boiled stuff that really brings a lump to the throat--when it's not cracking you up.

Lyrically and sonically, the National's seventh LP plumbs anxieties more deeply than ever. The result is a disarmingly potent album, not just emotionally but politically as well.

The fourth album from Detroit's Danny Brown is the year's most thrilling cry for help.

Their most compellingly dire-sounding [album], not as grabby as their 2005 debut, Funeral Dress, but rocking out in a frayed, mordant way that makes every stick-in-your-head chorus they share seem like a small triumph.

By the time Price sings about losing a first-born and crying out to God, bruised stoicism muting the sound of her knees hitting the floorboards, you're reminded of the incredible power that lies in tradition well-used. It's a power the rest of this record makes plain.

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.

Her brilliant third album, Things Take Time, Take Time, is her most reserved and thoughtful yet, full of everyday observation and wry wisdom — it grows slowly, but pay attention and you’ll grow with it.

Some of the 31 tracks will resonate only with deep Nirvana scholars, and the album could be seen as stretching an incredible legacy a little too thin. But it’s surprising how much of it is compelling, even revelatory.

What shines throughout these 45 tracks is the unerring songcraft, and a voice that's lost none of its power over a quarter-century.

As a whole, 77–81 presents Gang of Four’s brilliance while putting it on context.

As a whole, the collection is as indispensable as Either/Or. [31 May 2007, p.96]

The real "concept" here is: Michael Jackson tribute album. And a damn good one.

A triumphant album.

Through it all, he manages to steer clear of all the traps that ordinarily sabotage a boy-band star's solo move. But as the whole album proves, there's not a thing ordinary about this guy.

They can still teach their garage offspring a thing or two.

McKay mixes pathos and goofiness with egghead glee.

Mercy, Cale’s first in a decade, is one of his most compelling.

Bad Bunny conquered the singles game with ease. On X100PRE, he cements his place among the elite in Latin pop--and in pop music writ large.

The result is simultaneously stranger and poppier, more celebratory and more serious.

Everything's OK is much more than OK -- it's one more righteous, red-hot reason to treasure this surviving genius of soul.

Dream Hunting may not be traditionally lovely, but it lives and breathes. And that’s really all we can do these days.

Northern Aggression, made with his long-running Miracle 3, is a new peak in that hard-boiled moral aggression.

Black Cherry is both retro and futuristic, like vintage synth pop heard through a wall of distortion. [15 May 2003, p.134]

Batmanglij has a boyish, intimate tenor, charming when not overdoing the breathy, verge-of-a-giggle delivery. Ultimately, though, it's the gorgeously inventive tracks that steal the show.

White's definition of acoustic includes pedal steel and pretty much everything except punk guitar. You may miss the electric buzz blowing the melancholy away, but this foot stomping music does the job.

Wainwright's fanciful songs about love and faith place him in the rarefied company of Bjork and Brian Wilson, whose audacious Medulla and SMiLE his album most resembles.

The warm strumming and sparse beats make for an aching melancholy that stirs memories of Radiohead.

Her first solo album shows that there are even more sides to this virtual-insanity innovator.

Culture III surpasses the sequel, and lives up to the greatness of 2017’s brilliantly concise breakthrough Culture. One could argue that every song has a different MVP.

Funny, propulsive, queer, dissonant, and utterly intoxicating, it gilds a record to put on next time some stooge tells you indie rock is dead.

If listeners have the stamina — and the patience — Senjutsu is one of the most rewarding and vital albums in Maiden’s catalog.

This latest one, which lasts more than double the length of the studio Love Supreme, shows additionally how for Coltrane, his weightiest statement to date wasn’t a fixed masterpiece but a perpetual work in progress, a launchpad to the next phase of his quest.

Sleater-Kinney deliver the goods almost immediately on their new LP, on a title track that begins with industrial clangs, then explodes into rock fury rivaling anything in their catalog.

Retribution, is her strongest outing yet, shedding practically all of Animism's tethers to pop structure and mirroring her freer, convulsing, lung-busting, throat-flexing live shows.

There’s something about the way she presents her diary entries that makes her more than just an exhibitionist. She’s not afraid to sing about her innermost feelings, things people would never say out loud. In fact, she sounds comfortable belting out about how broken she is, and it’s that courage that makes the mood of the record complete.

His latest seals the deal.

Snider has heart, which is why his wit and erudition virtually never sounds smug, patronizing or overtly self-serving. He’s got hooks, too.

The band achieves a new unity in variety here, winding from near-glam romp and fireside-folk warmth to slow-climb grandeur with an attention to the repeated payoff in a sturdy hook and hum-along chorus.

More than a sentimental journey, it's an album that wants to be part of the 21st-century pop dialogue.

Yeah, it's literary; yeah, it's the polar opposite of cosmetic-surgery pop. As such, it's not for everyone. But its jazzy rawness represents a high point of emotional craft in a career defined by it.

For a band able to push the limits of songwriting, it's a revelation, and a chance to see how deep simplicity goes. Very deep, it turns out.