The result is an eclectic mix of tempos and moods that maintain Kozalla’s sense of whimsy without sacrificing earnestness.

The band recorded in a real New York City studio, with a real producer, Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House). And the songs are even better.

Aided by producers Organized Noize and Mr. DJ, Sir Lucious Left Foot is a monster of an album.

The result is artistic click bait, and its genius and connective power is that it doesn’t treat music fans as factions. This one is for everyone, all at once.

Roni Size and Reprazent come back so fast and furious on In the Mode that their record sounds less like a jungle reinvention than a call to arms. [Nov. 2000, p.207]

It’s an album of expertly crafted dark-pop confessions with flecks of glitter and aspiration — a purposefully fitful project mimicking her racing thoughts. The high-gloss pop production marks Midnights as a sullen sister to Lover, her honey-dipped 2019 effort, rather than a successor to 2020’s heartstrung Folklore and Evermore.

Over and over, these songs reveal how a wisecracking record geek can still achieve rapture. [Mar 2007, p.98]

M.I.A.'s border-crossing dance pop is a revolutionary manifesto set to the victory-party vibe of the future. [Sep 2007, p.127]

There’s a good balance here: classicist in the Lee Ann Womack neo-countrypolitan sense, yet neither stodgy, frail, nor nostalgic, but rather as thoroughly in tune with modern millennial existence as Taylor Swift.

Accept its odd phrasings and vast negative spaces and Lorde’s sophomore effort reveals itself dark and glorious. ... The smoky, slightly hoarse warmth of her maturing voice immediately sets the new material apart from rivals, and from her 2013 debut Pure Heroine.

[An] all-consuming a ritual as rock music is capable of giving us, and also as viscerally, joyously life-affirming.

The Dirty Projectors' best album by a mile holds that balance, all magnificent wobble, no collapse.

Kendrick is at his best when he’s rapping through the abyss, and better when his flow pulls in rappers from times past.

The ten songs here are a euphoric whirl of church choirs, lushly layered cymbals, poppy clap tracks, and heady psych rock, evoking peers like Tough Alliance and Tanlines.

On Reloaded, he's written perhaps the most vivid rap album of the year--and possibly of his lifetime.

There was little to nothing as picturesque and vivid in major-label rock as OK Computer in 1997, and it’s debatable if there’s been anything since. ... If OK Computer seemed to wither over its runtime, there is a more consistent, punchier quality to the second album sequenced out on OKNOTOK–full of big guitars, sweeping sentimentality, and drier wit. Here, its bold half-ideas, this many years on, sound better than ever, and find a new coherence.

It's still the best mix of fury and fluency since phony Beatlemania bit the dust. [Jan 2002, p.107]

An impishly brilliant 12-song set of scruffy garage rock with moments of dreamy shimmer, Monomania leaves no confusion about what sort of band Deerhunter are: one that won't stoop to conquer.

With Cash gone and Willie spent, hopes hang on Hag to deliver classic country, musically and poetically. And he doesn't disappoint.

We Got It from Here could’ve been a self-referential nostalgia piece, a militant call to arms, or a Tribe and Friends-style fame flex, but it transcends such shallow concerns.

They've also inflected the mix with OutKast's quick complexity; and, like 'Kast, the Coup have progressed from story rapping to more mercurial rhymes. [Oct 2001, p.125]

XTC proudly displays its roots while subsuming them into a larger sound, one that is wholly their own.

Planet Earth is a consistent, exhilarating winner from our reigning genius. [Sep 2007, p.121]

For a lo-fi project, Celebration is a particularly imaginative, lengthy work full of vivid character portraits, using additional instrumentation and computer-generated distortion to expand far beyond the boundaries of more straightforward guitar-driven indie acts.

Ida Maria throws herself into every song as if it's all a big finale, which makes for an auspicious beginning.

In her tuneful insistence that every unhappy couple is unhappy in its own way, Lewis remains one of our foremost chroniclers of heartache and its discontents.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest distinguishes itself in Callahan’s catalog not just by its subject matter, but also by the holism of its compositions. Paradoxically, they achieve their feeling of tossed-off informality through an astounding intricacy of form.

Musically, the hooks are softer, the arrangements more ambitious, and 1960s British psychedelic folk (Fairport Convention, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle) a far more palpable influence than the Americana that fueled the band's 2008 debut.