Her magnificent fourth LP grows her trademark examinations of romantic decay to cathedral-like scale.

It's the best classic-rock record anyone under 50 is likely to make this year.

The best thing about Zeitgeist is that Corgan is back to what he does best: hard-rock architecture.

Over nine songs and 42 minutes--old-school LP length--they [producer Josh Homme and Dean Fertita] juggle tight and loose, conjuring a ravaged cadaver in a sharp funeral suit.

There are lots of ideas here, and lots of notes--a plus or a minus depending on your mindset--distributed over 27 tracks, nearly half of which clock in under two minutes. Some of these short sketches provide the most delicious moments.

That these intimations of progress come slowly for Webster is part of the album’s relatable charm.

All told, these are soulful, uplifting songs by Afrobeats’ top artist. He’s all about dropping heat, even as he continues to evolve. More Love, Less Ego gives you more life.

Jane's Addiction have finally come up with music that can stand alongside their previous albums.

Following a string of records that have each felt like a swan song, You Want It Darker may be Cohen's most haunting LP.

Rather Ripped is an excellent record, one of the strongest to emerge from Sonic Youth's amazing late period.

For listeners who like their music loud and fierce and pissed off at just about everything, there aren't too many better options than The Slip. Plus, the price is right.

The album is like a wild ride in a muscle car where someone’s constantly fiddling with the radio, forever chasing the high that comes with hearing the perfect riff at the perfect moment. ... Viva Las Vengeance sounds great, its piston-like licks and soaring solos acting like time machines to a rose-colored-glasses-refracted era.

It is a kind of virtual rock in which the roots have been cut away, and the formal language -- hook, riff, bridge -- has been warped, liquefied and, in some songs, thrown out altogether. If you're looking for instant joy and easy definition, you are swimming in the wrong soup.... Kid A is a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession.

These Montreal post-punks write harsh songs for harsh times on their excellent second album, building on last year's debut More Than Any Other Day.

If the songs sometimes feel a bit undercooked, the spirit is dazzling.

Supported by an A-list cast including brother Rufus, Pete Townshend and Steely Dan keyboardist Donald Fagen, she's collected some impressive endorsements. But they're just a backdrop to a riveting one-woman show.

The beauty is fleeting but piquant.

Peachtree highlights once again just how soulful John's music can be. [25 Nov 2004, p.92]

As on Musicology, the beats get pretty wicked here... But while 3121 is no funkier than Musicology, it does emphasize speedier tempos and, two nods to Zapp aside, more conventional sonics. [6 Apr 2006, p.60]

Rico Nasty and Kenny Beats operating at full throttle can be almost unbearably intense sensation to behold, like looking directly into the sun. Anger Management finds them working in tandem to pair the adrenal bangers everyone expected with an abundance of slightly more sensitive and playful material.

The album holds up as one of the Eighties' smartest megapop statements, full of passion and surefire hooks.

His latest, the five-song EP Add Violence, contains all the aggression, abjection and self-loathing that solidified his position as alt-rock's Original Angster but with the measured restraint of a man his age.

Recorded in a Louisville church gymnasium, Circuital is just as adventurous, yet more organic and focused.

The music's shift from trivial to memorable dominates Maladroit; this is Cuomo's attempt to make his voice and guitar move as quick as his mind.

Most of the originals are strong enough to pass as covers of classic jams. The actual covers, meanwhile, are spot on.

The mostly epic-length tracks--almost entirely written by drummer Lars Ulrich and singer-guitarist James Hetfield--are melodically assured furies of serial riffing and tempo shocks.

At times, it sounds like Kristi has simply moved her rock-historic references up a few years into the later Nineties, when some of the best indie-pop was getting sonically cleaner and more refined. ... All these innovations work and feel natural, and they serve as a nice backdrop for songs that stare down tough emotions while looking for clarity.

Dylan is the unquestioned star, the magnetic, assured center of the sprawl. ... The longer view afforded by Dylan’s full set lists, rehearsals almost to opening night (with songs that appear nowhere else in the set) and a disc of additional rarities from along the itinerary captures both the acute showman’s focus the singer brought to this enterprise and the accelerating, play-for-the-moment drive that climaxes in that “Isis” from Montreal.