The only dicey part is an uneven disc of six remixes: some provide new insights, others fall flat. ... With three other discs and a book of the Edge's moving black & white portraits of the band in the California desert, the box is a thorough portrait of a band on the verge, ready to burst into the arms of America and the rest of the world.

By the fourth line — "Being this young is art" — it's obvious, the track ["Slut!"] is a stunner. .... The chorus [of "Say Don’t Go"] ("Why'd you have to lead me on? Why'd you have to twist the knife?") hits so tragically hard that it was destined to be screamed by stadiums full of fans at future Eras shows. "Suburban Legends" is a euphoric, dizzying rush to the head, with Antonoff's production making it sound like the soundtrack to the world's most addictive arcade game.

On the evidence of this excellent debut, few people can challenge Skinner right now except himself.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is another evolution: a mix of quotidian-yet-elliptical lyricism, classic country accompaniment, daring orchestral movements, and the musician’s unique brand of storytelling.

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.

Waits' ravaged voice surrendered all pretensions to melody ages ago; his throat is now pure theater, a weapon of pictorial emphasis and raw honesty.

More Blood, More Tracks does not contradict the choices Dylan made on the way to Blood on the Tracks. It fills in his road to wisdom.

Funeral aches with elegiac intensity.

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

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.

For the die-hards, the ones who have charted the Classic Quartet's every move, from the early glories of the Coltrane LP to the fiery outpourings heard on albums like Sun Ship from 1965, it's another small but crucial puzzle piece in the group's still-stunning evolution during its roughly three-year lifespan. For everyone else, it's an unvarnished, day-in-the-life portrait of an icon--and the three musical giants that helped him achieve that status--at work.

The LP remains corrosively beautiful.

He's less pimp than craftsman, packing more style--and more substance--into his four-minute-long songs than other rappers deliver in an entire album.

All over The Record, they keep recombining their individual styles into a different kind of chemistry for each song. That’s why they transcend any kind of “supergroup” cliché. After all, supergroups are a dime a dozen compared to actual great bands. And boygenius leave no doubt about where they stand.

woods fulfills the literary expectations he’s often saddled with. Each work is a different chapter in an impressively consistent collection, and Maps finds him in repose, taking stock of the world of him.

The Live Anthology redresses that wrong with a panoramic picture of the Heartbreakers' indestructible groove.

Somehow, the Primals' fury never seems misguided: This is one ball of aggression that hangs together, thanks to the band's smarts and funk.

There is an emphasis on keyboards, in pulse and architecture, that adds buoyancy and color to James' writing and flatters his keening, stratospheric tenor.

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

Nine songs, 32 minutes, no false moves.

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.

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

What keeps it from being a crackling mess is Markus Acher's sweet, plaintive voice pushing these selected ambient works toward song structure and melody.

A record this layered and quirky is easier to make than it was when Prince Paul first started cutting up old 45s (case in point: the Wiseguys), but to do it well - keeping intact an aesthetic that threads together all these disparate sounds - is true talent.

Like a great DJ set, songs morph into one another thematically and structurally, most notably in the album’s central triptych. ... The music works its magic, and like a perfect night a clubbing, the uplift is ultimately irresistible.

With its carefully-crafted sequencing and seamless interludes, Kiwanuka feels like a proper old-fashioned album constructed as such, with some of its brightest highlights buried deep into the record’s latter half.

His third straight masterwork. [7 Sep 2006, p.99]

The banter's remarkably jocular, Young shouting out Fifties superstar stripper Candy Barr and cracking wise like a tipsy hippie Henny Youngman ("Welcome to Miami Beach! I'd like to thank my managers for introducing me. … Ten years in the business, folks. I feel like Perry Como!") But the songs are dark as a moonless night.