It's impossible to discern whether Mimi Parker's newfound assertiveness as a harmony singer was inspired by, or the inspiration for, this more aggressive batch of songs, but it's this record's signal grace. [Apr 2001, p.158]

It's all willfully abrasive, unflinchingly depressing, occasionally tedious, and intermittently triumphant.

Purple Mountains was produced and accompanied by Jarvis Taveniere and Jeremy Earle of Woods, with eight other musicians filling the gaps. The arrangements, some of the most gracious Berman’s ever had, hum and glow with foggy organs and soft golden horns. Their serenity is at odds with his desperation: This is a portrait of a shattered man.

Puberty 2 isn’t shaped like an opus; it’s jagged and slight and the auteur has already expressed second thoughts about the liberties taken with its addiction-themed coda. But it’s a high-watermark of post-irony indie, a cracked safe of perspectives previously unheard in lump-throated punk.

Peeling back the density and obtuseness of Xen and Mutant, Arca is his most engaging, emotionally draining and confrontational album to date.

Virtually every song slaps like crazy.

Let's Stay Friends almost captures the band's sweaty, live weirdness on record, and it leaves enough breathing room for their wicked smarts to shimmy up through the hip-shaking indie punk. [Oct 2007, p.106]

After a decade of diving deep into the abstract, Björk's now more grounded and human than ever, thanks to the two most unfathomable ideas of them all: love and heartache.

Airtight's Revenge has its soul affectations, but even standard fare like "Little One" bears Bilal's impressively reedy, insistent voice. He sounds like a man unburdening himself.

It is the best distillation yet of his tortured hustler mystique.

If Tillman's this brilliantly pointed as a paramour, we're scared to hear the breakup album.

There's an exhilarating bleakness at the center of Virgins--the hollow at the heart of all things, nibbling inexorably away.

Be the Cowboy largely dispenses with the distortion of Mitski’s guitar-oriented recent work, getting all the fuzz out with intro track “Geyser.” What’s left are short and thwarted pop songs. (Only two are longer than three minutes.)

[Wet Leg] is witty, self-referential and danceable, loaded with anthems for the extroverted introvert.

They're not robots, they're "robots." They "rock" and want you to "dance." In that sense, this is absolutely in keeping with the band's legacy. It is theater: absolutely sincere and totally fake.

The resulting soil is almost tangibly immediate.

Neither a timid repeat nor a knee-jerk departure, the bigger, bolder Neon Bible better captures what Arcade Fire achieve live. [Mar 2007, p.85]

Being bombarded with mortality is a tall order for what is ostensibly a summer pop album; but rather than let her words fade into the background of washed synths and drum machines, as on previous releases, the breathing room in the production of Norman Fucking Rockwell leans into the intimacy.

The Roots have never sounded this raw on record, this much like an actual band playing in an actual room. [Jan 2003, p.95]

At times, that there’s as much “subversive” pop music as there is music that is supposedly being subverted, not all of it as deep as advertised. Poem, thankfully, is far more thoughtful about it than most.

Though it's not exactly Leave Home to its predecessor's Ramones, Annie Up is still a pretty tasty serving of grits and sass.

Radiant with apocalyptic tension and grasping to sustain real bonds, The Suburbs extends hungrily outward, recalling the dystopic miasma of William Gibson's sci-fi novels and Sonic Youth's guitar odysseys.

It is exceedingly rare to find a producer who does so much, with so little, that he distilled from, again, so much.

Like Elliott Smith after ten years of Sunday school. [May 2004, p.108]

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]

McMahon’s most transcendent statement yet. ... Freedom rings as both immediate and timeless, intensely personal and easily understood. ... Freedom exalts in subtlety. It offers powerfully economical songwriting.

Simultaneously joyous and joyless, all downloaded beats, downhearted lyrics and down-the-hatch daring. [Aug 2003, p.113]

The wonder of 22, A Million is how beautifully he melds the disparate forms--inside and outside, acoustic and digital, past and future, ground level and interstellar. It’s a stunning record, well worth the wait.