R.A.P. Music, the sixth album by from Atlanta firebrand Killer Mike, is a stunning anachronism.

The album feels epic in scope, imbuing the banality of everyday life with stunning tension and emotional weight in a way few producers can hope to touch.

Before Today still sounds like it was dubbed to cassette and left on the dash of a 1983 Datsun for an entire summer. Every aspect seems faded and warped, but that doesn't obscure Pink's savvy maneuvering.

Long on cryptic references (you mean you haven't read Curzio Malaparte's 1944 novel Kaputt?) and Euro-weary mood, the vintage electronic-pop ambience of Destroyer's ninth album recalls the days when MTV emphasized music.

Playing songs about cops on the take and dying in Penn Station with a hurtling forward motion that prevents the music from sounding (entirely) like a book report. Killer accordion solos, too.

Dance Fever is a worthy addition to the band’s catalog, with enough moments to be plucked for what will surely be an invigorating series of live shows beginning in September. It’s a sly and polished effort, sustained by Welch’s fearlessness both in vocal technique and lyrical vulnerability. No modern artist commands such power in both moments of ethereal humanity and mountainous throttle.

It's a thoroughly satisfying album, but surprises are in short supply. [May 2002, p.120]

The album feels unprecedented within his catalog because it strikes a balance Thug has never quite pulled off on a single project: mixing a unified, album-wide sound with moments of aggressive experimentation and nagging hooks.

The songs are flat-out rollicking, like what Fugazi might come up with if their tour-van radio got stuck on the classic-rock station. [Feb 2003, p.98]

Aggressive and big-grinned, sophomore album Big Day in a Small Town sounds fantastic; it’s often a superb piece of recorded music, designed to move people and make them feel things.

Like all Baker’s work so far, Little Oblivions is an album that rewards close listening and multiple run-throughs — afternoons lost to foot-tapping despair and, hopefully, some catharsis as the wildly talented songwriter welcomes us back to her saddest show on Earth.

Holmes' Bow Down breaks from the elegant flow-noir of his previous platters by spinning luridly out of control. [12/2000, p.220]

Fantasy Empire equally splits its time between the physical and metaphysical. It belongs as much in a musty basement as it does in an art gallery.

Turn is a haunting, often painfully beautiful example of how songs that may seem dead and buried can sublimely rise from the grave.

That pairing of punk force and country grit is nothing new, but Lydia Loveless makes it her own through the strength of a blazing voice, a fully formed persona, and bluntly crafty songwriting.

Parquet Courts' over-the-top energy, speed, and succinctness makes the combination sound fresher than anything the original elements have managed in years.

There are interesting moments... but too often they're smothered in a formless buzz of guitar, samples, voilin, harmonica--you name it. [Jul 2006, p.87]

Luaka Bop has done a remarkable job of collecting recordings that were originally scattered across multiple releases and giving them the feeling of a consistent whole.

Old Ramon is sinuous and unhurried, a beautiful downer of a folk rock record that has the lithe and shadowy promise of the ocean.

One of the best psych-rock records of our young century. [Sep 2004, p.117]

It's no mere gimmick. [Oct 2004, p.111]

Her fifth album is indeed one of the most alt-friendly jazz cycles you’ve ever heard, pivoting constantly on tight, proggy arrangements that evoke St. Vincent, tUnE-yArDs, and Incubus in their odd-angled crunch more than anything on Blue Note.

Ghostface Killah's ninth album consoles his hardcore constituency: Forty-plus minutes of gritty, soul-sampling beats soundtracking bizarro street tales ("Starkology," "Ghetto"), with lyrical tough-guys Busta Rhymes, Redman, and more than half the Wu Tang Clan tagging along.

What keeps Murphy from being an insufferable know-it-all is how he folds deeper emotions into his references....Older, snottier, his edge remains.

Besides restoring the muscle lacking on the emaciated An Object, the opening trio on Snares presents No Age as everything they’ve been (gritty, propulsive, atmospheric, a motorcycle taking on a sandstorm head-on) and the immediately accessible rawk band they’ve never been.

Monumentally caustic but hypothetically a dance band, Sleigh Bells sculpt infectious double-dutch funk from an unlikely acid bath of distorted drum machines and nasal pigfuck guitars.

What could have been an assless art-groove experiment turns out to be a synth-pop idyll. [Feb 2003, p.99]

After ten years, Rancid's still-rock-solid kinship is evident in their lock-step chemistry. [Oct 2003, p.108]