Finally, the Cribs deliver the tour de force they had in them, and it's about time.

It’s a tight 10-track collection that lyrically and musically probes the concept of freedom—what it means, whether it’s a blessing or a curse.

Marshall has always been one of the most emotionally intense songwriters around, but with Sun she has made her riskiest, most vital album, not to mention one of her greatest.

Reznor's first NIN album in five years, it is one of his best, combining the textural exploration on the 1999 double CD The Fragile, and the tighter fury of his 1994 master blast, The Downward Spiral.

Mavis Staples takes her comeback higher still with this set, using an A list of songwriters informed, but not bound, by roots music.

Heavy-breathing sex chants with a heart of darkness.

Lazaretto [is] literally a house of blues (the title is Italian for a lepers' hospital), with each room outfitted according to White's mood and trials.

When I Was Cruel is a collection of tough tunes and textures that recalls -- but doesn't recycle -- the records that endeared him to his earliest admirers.

The reissue may not be a treasure trove of unheard material, but the gems that echo the sounds of the American South are comforting and familiar. And that’s not a bad thing.

His most jubilant disc since Born in the U.S.A. and more fun than a tribute to Pete Seeger has any right to be.

'Wrestlers' epitomizes what makes this quintet the sharpest dance rockers this side of their pals LCD Soundsystem: catchy tunes, monster grooves, and lyrics resolving the heartfelt and the smartass.

The most exciting thing about No Cities is that Sleater-Kinney are one of those bands again--they sound as hungry, as unsettled, as restless as any of the rookies on their jock.

New Blue Sun is not the best ambient record you can hear in 2023. .... However, New Blue Sun will probably be the only ambient record many people do hear in 2023, and it’s great that such a lively, sumptuous album gets the gig.

The big news, though, isn't YYY's groovier sound--it's the heat they radiate.

They don't mess around much outside their tessitura - they like to keep everything light, fast and punchy.

Her perfectly turned sixth LP deals with identity and autonomy; it's got feminist musculature and the dirt of a working musician under its fingernails.

The set radiates playfulness and pleasure – the opener "Arisen My Senses" is a breathless barrage of abstract beats and pop timbres, a musical multiple orgasm. But Utopia's no more "pop" than Vulnicura, and not all shiny, happy fantasias.

This debut EP is a small masterpiece of downtempo sound sculpture, finely detailed and often as gorgeous as it is discomforting.

On this seven-song EP, Bethany Cosentino combines the sundown power-pop buzz of Best Coast's 2010 debut with the Hulk-hug melodies and emotional gravity of last year's The Only Place to make for something masterfully archetypal but utterly her own.

This expanded reissue adds Not Forever the 1989 demo tape that got them signed.... It shows a vision startlingly complete, and its scrappiness occasionally serves the songs better.

The irony is that The Eternal might be their most concise record ever. It's also a rock & roll ass-kicker.

Angry, bold, pointed and eclectic as hell, Stag suggests that Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney are just as important to Ray as Simon and Garfunkel.

Her knack for heart-swelling choruses shines through on a set of tracks you might play while winning a marathon.

Ode To Joy shows off some of Wilco’s prettiest and most comforting songs, Tweedy’s enlarged heart transplanted back into a band — its lineup now unchanged for roughly half of its 25-year history — that’s never sounded more empathic.

It's heartbreaking and hilarious, in equal measure.

“Suspirium” is a radium-glow piano ballad that would have fit in nicely on Radiohead’s most recent album; the jazzy soul of “Unmade” and the trip-hop shiver of “Has Ended” are even more surprising, carrying welcome echoes of Yorke and co.’s brilliant Amnesiac-era B-sides. These tunes are vintage Yorke, and they make you wish he’d written more of them for Suspiria. At least until you hear the second half of this record, where the song-songs thin out in favor of even weirder electronic buzzes.

Thanks for the Dance is a surprise, a sort of séance as shiva, a magnificent parting shot that’s also that exceptionally rare thing — a posthumous work as alive, challenging, and essential as anything issued in the artist’s lifetime.

St. Vincent is her tightest, tensest, best set of songs to date, with wry, twisty beats pushing her lovably ornery melodies toward grueling revelations.