It's a winning rethink, salvaging the best bits of a musical style that's too easily missed. [Apr 2008, p.100]

Unlike Beck during his purple-paisley "Midnite Vultures" phase, Damian Kulash employs a soul-freak falsetto that's sincerely accurate, and with the help of Lips producer David Fridmann, he and his power-pop pals master the Okie pranksters' baroque whirls.

The most booty-shaking, speaker-twinkling, glitz-intensive pop-soul record to come down the turnpike in years, out-dazzling even kindred efforts by Timberlake, Bruno Mars, and Miguel.

2 Chainz forges deeper emotional connections, but that surface is as entrancing as ever. B.O.A.T.S II ups the production values like a true sequel should.

Unlike Someday World, the far thornier High Life doesn’t improve much with repeated plays: These are egghead jams whose esoteric textures bewitch more than their relatively static frameworks.

Though Blow Your Head leans hard on the Diplo cohort (Major Lazer, Rusko, Borgore), its colossus is James Blake, whose shower of warped arcade-game synths and butchered old gospel vocals is stunning--heaven for believers and headaches for everyone else.

The DJ's fleet-fingered precision and explosive, intimidating drum-machine attacks are a distinct form of performance art, and one that's hard to fully appreciate through headphones alone; Remixes is simply no substitute for his live act. But these tracks are still a crucial part of his identity.

This Oakland quartet teams with Yo Ma Tengo producer Roger Moutenot to create a make-or-break manifesto that often trumps indie rock's big-leaguers. [Oct 2007, p.110]

On Pebble to a Pearl--an authoritative, refreshingly organic pop-funk manifesto featuring musicians who've played with Al Green and Stevie Wonder--the exhilaration of liberation literally screams from R&B workout 'Can't Please Everybody.'

Evil Urges is easily MMJ's most accomplished and ambitious record, masterfully sifting through genres.

Chopped gives a thrilling, real-time glimpse into one of indie's true adventurers creating her legacy on the fly.

Omaha-based multi-instrumentalist Joe Knapp spent three years making Someone Else's Déjà Vu, and the album is another reminder that lush studio-reliant soft and prog rock of the late '70s can still offer legitimate inspiration.

It’s a consistent, methodical unsteadiness that hangs a song on a single blurred synth tone, a suspension bridge between two guitars acres apart in the mix, and then shoots it with bolts of electricity.

Between these boy-noise roils you can see how much the band want to be their generation's Yes. [Feb 2005, p.87]

In terms of maturity and effort, each of these six reverb-soaked romps is as much of a leap forward from last year's King of the Beach as that record was from Nathan Williams' homemade 2009 debut.

[Hannon] deserves to be recognized as the unsung genius of symphonic pop. [Nov 2006, p.97]

FUTURE is lively and engaging, with production and rapping that feels consciously animated.

It's immersive and transgressive, if you care about this stuff.

A fond, funky farewell.

Like your favorite dive bar, it feels uncomfortably familiar. [Feb 2006, p.87]

Across the album’s 13 exceedingly catchy yet contradictory tracks, Puth laments his success and desirability while boasting about both. ... Voicenotes feels like a step, at the very least, in the right direction.

Black Dice are the perpetually esoteric older Crumb brother Charles: inscrutable, agoraphobic, undeniably brilliant but just as undeniably demented. All descriptions apply to their fifth album, with each track bursting at the seams with warped sounds.

Eagerly filling the recent vacuum of great U.K. guitar bands, this London foursome draws on the Jesus & Mary Chain tradition of sweet early '60s pop'n'roll married to sour punk noise.

Unlike much of the current post-Animal Collective psychedelia, there's a palpable, full-bodied force and galloping beat behind the bliss.

Just as winningly sloppy as its source material. [Nov 2006, p.104]

With Wiley's vocal attack as sharply acerbic as ever, 100% Publishing is a boldly independent declaration.

Sheets is Campbell's hallucination of a cozy English garden party. [Jan 2007, p.94]

John Shade moves with composure and ease through arch, almost dour indie pop ("The Believers") as well as joyous dollops of Of Montreal–inspired electro pop.